Never did a man act more in harmony with his principles.  Bailly was led to reprimand severely a man belonging to the humblest and poorest class of society.  Anger does not make him forget that he speaks to a citizen, to a man.  “I ask pardon,” says the first magistrate of the capital, addressing himself to a rag-gatherer; “I ask your pardon, if I am angry; but your conduct is so reprehensible, that I cannot speak to you otherwise.”

Bailly’s friends were wont to say that he devoted too much of his patrimony to pleasure.  This word was calumniously interpreted.  Merard Saint Just has given the true sense of it:  “Bailly’s pleasure was beneficence.”

So eminent a mind could not fail to be tolerant.  Such in fact Bailly constantly showed himself in politics, and what is almost equally rare, in regard to religion.  In the month of June, 1791, he checked in severe terms the fury with which the multitude appeared to be excited, at the report that at the Theatines some persons had taken the Communion two or three times in one day.  “The accusation is undoubtedly false,” said the Mayor of Paris; “but if it were true, the public would not have a right to inquire into it.  Every one should have the free choice of his religion and his creed.”  Nothing would have been wanting in the picture, if Bailly had taken the trouble to remark how strange it was, that these violent scruples against repeated Communions emanated from persons who probably never took the Sacrament at all.

The reports on animal magnetism, on the hospitals, on the slaughter-houses, had carried Bailly’s name into regions, whence the courtiers knew very cleverly how to discard true merit. Madame then wished to attach the illustrious academician to her person as a cabinet secretary.  Bailly accepted.  It was an entirely honorary title.  The secretary saw the princess only once, that was on the day of his presentation.

Were more important functions reserved for him?  We must suppose so; for some influential persons offered to procure Bailly a title of nobility and a decoration.  This time the philosopher flatly refused, saying, in answer to the earnest negotiators:  “I thank you, but he who has the honour of belonging to the three principal academies of France is sufficiently decorated, sufficiently noble in the eyes of rational men; a cordon, or a title, could add nothing to him.”

The first secretary of the Academy of Sciences had, some years before, acted as Bailly did.  Only he gave his refusal in such strong terms, that I could not easily believe them to have been written by the timid pen of Fontenelle, if I did not find them in a perfectly authentic document, in which he says:  “Of all the titles in this world, I have never had any but of one sort, the titles of Academician, and they have not been profaned by an admixture of any others, more worldly and more ostentatious.”