I leave it to be imagined with what despair I received this confidence. I made every imaginable effort to deter Brissot from his sinister project; I remarked how all those who had rushed on enterprises of this nature had been branded in history by the odious title of assassin. Nothing succeeded in shaking his fatal resolution; I only obtained from him a promise on his honour that the execution of it should be postponed for a time, and I put myself in quest of means for rendering it abortive. The idea of announcing Brissot's project to the authorities did not even enter my thoughts. It seemed a fatality which came to smite me, and of which I must undergo the consequences, however serious they might be. I counted much on the solicitations of Brissot's mother, already so cruelly tried during the revolution. I went to her home, in the Rue de Conde, and implored her earnestly to cooeperate with me in preventing her son from carrying out his sanguinary resolution. "Ah, sir," replied this lady, who was naturally a model of gentleness, "if Silvain" (this was the name of her son) "believes that he is accomplishing a patriotic duty, I have neither the intention nor the desire to turn him from his project." It was from myself that I must henceforth draw all my resources. I had remarked that Brissot was addicted to the composition of romances and pieces of poetry. I encouraged this passion, and every Sunday, above all, when I knew that there would be a review, I went to fetch him, and drew him into the country, in the environs of Paris. I listened then complacently to the reading of those chapters of his romance which he had composed during the week. The first excursions frightened me a little, for armed with his pistols, Brissot seized every occasion of showing his great skill; and I reflected that this circumstance would lead to my being considered as his accomplice, if he ever carried out his project. At last, his pretensions to literary fame, which I flattered to the utmost, the hopes (though I had none myself) which I led him to conceive of the success of an attachment of which he had confided the secret to me, made him receive with attention the reflections which I constantly made to him on his enterprise. He determined on making a journey beyond the seas, and thus relieved me from the most serious anxiety which I have experienced in all my life. Brissot died after having covered the walls of Paris with printed handbills in favour of the Bourbon restoration. I had scarcely entered the Observatory, when I became the fellow-labourer of Biot in researches on the refraction of gases, already commenced by Borda. While engaged in this work the celebrated academician and I often conversed on the interest there would be in resuming in Spain the measurement interrupted by the death of Mechain. We submitted our project to Laplace, who received it with ardour, procured the necessary funds, and the Government confided to us two this important mission.