When his studies were completed, he devoted himself to geometry, for which he had a passion that nothing could extinguish.

For the old monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he adopted the manlier substitute of poverty, truth, and liberty--the worthy device of every man of letters.

When he awoke in the morning, he thought with delight of the work that had been begun the previous day and would occupy the day before him.

In the necessary intervals of his meditations, he recalled the lively pleasure that he felt at the play: at the play between the acts, he thought of the still greater pleasure that was promised to him by the work of the morrow.

His mathematical labours led to valuable results in the principles of equilibrium and the movement of fluids, in a new calculus, and in a new solution of the problem of the precession of the equinoxes.[99] These contributions to what was then the most popular of the sciences brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual distractions.