at
the illustrious old man, yielding to the pressing solicitations of the
Duke de Praslin, one of the most active patrons of the Swiss doctor,
promised to study the work and give his opinion of it.

The author was at the acme of his wishes. After having pompously
announced that the seat of the soul is in the _meninges_ (cerebral
membrane), could there be any thing to fear from the liberal thinker of
Ferney? He had only forgotten that the patriarch was above all a man of
good taste, and that the book on the body and soul offended all the
proprieties of life. Voltaire's article appeared. He began with this
severe and just lesson--"We should not be prodigal of contempt towards
others, and of esteem for ourselves, to such a degree as will be
revolting to our readers." The end was still more overwhelming. "We see
harlequin everywhere cutting capers to amuse the pit."

Harlequin had received a sufficient dose. Not having succeeded in
literature, he threw himself upon the sciences.

On betaking himself to this new career, the doctor of Neufchatel
attacked Newton. But unluckily his criticisms were directed precisely to
those points wherein optics may vie in evidence with geometry itself.
This time the patron was M. de Maillebois, and the tribunal the Academy
of Sciences.

The Academy pronounced its judgment gravely, without inflicting a word
of ridicule; for example, it did not speak of harlequin; but it did not
therefore remain the less established that the pretended experiments,
intended, it was said, to upset Newton's, on the unequal refrangibility
of variously coloured rays, and the explanation of the rainbow, &c., had
absolutely no scientific value.

Still the author would not allow himself to have been beaten. He even
conceived the possibility of retaliation; and, availing himself of his
intimacy with the Duke de Villeroy, governor of the second city in the
kingdom, he got the Academy of Lyons to propose for competition all the
questions in optics, which for several years past had been the subjects
of its disquisitions; he even furnished the amount of the prize out of
his own pocket, under an assumed name.

The prize so longed for, and so singularly proposed, was not obtained,
however, by the Duke de Villeroy's candidate, but by the astronomer
Flaugergues. From that instant, the pseudo-physicist became the bitter
enemy of the scientific bodies of the whole universe, of whoever bore
the title of an academician. Putt