When Francais died, he inherited his papers to his brother Jaques who was a professor of military art and a mathematician. He found Legendre’s letter describing Argand’s mathematical results, but Legendre failed to mention Argand. Jaques published an article in 1813 in the Annales de Math´emathiques giving he basics of complex numbers. In the last paragraph of the paper, Jaques acknowledged his debt to Legendre’s letter, and urged the unknown author to come forward. Argand
learned of this and his reply appeared in the next issue of the journal.