olleague, Jean-Baptiste Biot, to determine the arc of the terrestrial
meridian from Barcelona to the Balearic isles. I was just in the act
of observing a star (perhaps the very one my rascally pupil has
discovered), when suddenly, war having broken out between France
and Spain, the peasants, seeing me perched with a telescope on Monte
Galazzo, took it into their heads that I was making signals to the
enemy. A mob of savages broke my instruments, and talked of stringing me
up. They were just going to do it, when the captain of a vessel took me
prisoner and thrust me into the citadel of Belver, where I spent three
years in the harshest captivity. Since them, as you may well believe, I
loathe the whole celestial system; though I was, without knowing it, the
first to observe the famous comet of 1811; but I should have taken care
not to say a word about it if it had not been for Monsieur Flauguergues,
who announced it. Like all my pupils, Phellion knows my aversion to
stars, and he knew very well the worst trick he could play me would
be to saddle one on my back; and that deputation that came to play the
farce of congratulating me was mighty lucky not to find me at home, for
if they had, I can assure those gentlemen of the Academy, they would
have had a hot reception."

Everybody present thought the old mathematician's monomania quite
delightful, except la Peyrade, who now, in perceiving Felix Phellion's
part in the affair, regretted deeply having caused the explanation.

"And yet, Monsieur Picot," said Minard, "if Felix Phellion is only
guilty of attributing his discovery to you, it seems to me that his
indiscreet behavior has resulted in a certain compensation to you: the
cross of the Legion of honor, a pension, and the glory attached to your
name are not to be despised."

"The cross and the pension I take," said the old man, emptying his
glass, which, to Brigitte's terror, he set down upon the table with a
force that threatened to smash it. "The government has owed them to me
these twenty years; not for the discovery of stars,--things that I
have always despised,--but for my famous 'Treatise on Differential
Logarithms' (Kepler thought proper to call them monologarithms), which
is a sequel to the tables of Napier; also for my 'Postulatum' of Euclid,
of which I was the first to discover the solution; but above all, for
my 'Theory of Perpetual Motion,'--four volumes in quarto with plates;
Paris, 1825. You see, therefore, m