Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/43

Rh of this poor child, who lived but a few months, he called the second also Sadi, in memory of the celebrated Persian poet and moralist.

Scarcely a year had passed when the proscription, which included the Director, obliged him to give up his life, or at least his liberty, to the conspirators of fructidor. Our mother carried her son far from the palace in which violation of law had just triumphed. She fled to St. Omer, with her family, while her husband was exiled to Switzerland, then to Germany.

Our mother often said to me, “Thy brother was born in the midst of the cares and agitations of grandeur, thou in the calm of an obscure retreat. Your constitutions show this difference of origin.”

My brother in fact was of delicate constitution. He increased his strength later, by means of varied and judicious bodily exercises. He was of medium size, endowed with extreme sensibility and at the same time with extreme energy, more than reserved, almost rude, but singularly courageous on occasion. When he felt himself to be contending against injustice, nothing could restrain him. The following is an anecdote in illustration.

The Directory had given place to the Consulate. Carnot, after two years of exile, returned to his