The French Revolution thus threw the learned geometer, whose discoveries I am about to celebrate, far away from the route which destiny appeared to have traced out for him.  In ordinary times it would be about Dom[40] Joseph Fourier that the secretary of the Academy would have deemed it his duty to have occupied your attention.  It would be the tranquil, the retired life of a Benedictine which he would have unfolded to you.  The life of our colleague, on the contrary, will be agitated and full of perils; it will pass into the fierce contentions of the forum and amid the hazards of war; it will be a prey to all the anxieties which accompany a difficult administration.  We shall find this life intimately associated with the great events of our age.  Let us hasten to add, that it will be always worthy and honourable, and that the personal qualities of the man of science will enhance the brilliancy of his discoveries.

FOOTNOTE: 

[40] An abbreviation of Dominus, equivalent to the English prefix Reverend.—­Translator.

BIRTH OF FOURIER.—­HIS YOUTH.

Fourier was born at Auxerre on the 21st of March, 1768.  His father, like that of the illustrious geometer Lambert, was a tailor.  This circumstance would formerly have occupied a large place in the eloge of our learned colleague; thanks to the progress of enlightened ideas, I may mention the circumstance as a fact of no importance:  nobody, in effect, thinks in the present day, nobody even pretends to think, that genius is the privilege of rank or fortune.

Fourier became an orphan at the age of eight years.  A lady who had remarked the amiability of his manners and his precocious natural abilities, recommended him to the Bishop of Auxerre.  Through the influence of this prelate, Fourier was admitted into the military school which was conducted at that time by the Benedictines of the Convent of St. Mark.  There he prosecuted his literary studies with surprising rapidity and success.  Many sermons very much applauded at Paris in the mouth of high dignitaries of the Church were emanations from the pen of the schoolboy of twelve years of age.  It would be impossible in the present day to trace those first compositions of the youth Fourier, since, while divulging the plagiarism, he had the discretion never to name those who profited by it.

At thirteen years Fourier had the petulance, the noisy vivacity of most young people of the same age; but his character changed all at once, and as if by enchantment, as soon as he was initiated in the first principles of mathematics, that is to say, as soon as he became sensible of his real vocation.  The hours prescribed for study no longer sufficed to gratify his insatiable curiosity.  Ends of candles carefully collected in the kitchen, the corridors and the refectory of the college, and placed on a hearth concealed by a screen, served during the night to illuminate the solitary studies by which Fourier prepared himself for those labours which were destined, a few years afterwards, to adorn his name and his country.