Naturally cool and moderate, when it was nothing to do with Mdlle.

de Lespinasse, the great affection of his life, the illustrious geometer was content with a little.

"Twelve hundred livres a year are enough for me," he wrote to the Great Frederick who was pressing him to settle in his dominions.

"I will not go and reap the succession to Maupertuis during his lifetime.

I am overlooked by government, just as so many others by Providence; persecuted as much as anybody can be, if some day I have to fly my country, I will simply ask Frederick's permission to go and die in his dominions, free and poor." [Illustration: Alembert----317] Frederick II.