nd, the
Waters, and, above all, the great Teutates, who is the Saturn of the
Pagans; for Saturn, when he reigned in Phoenicia, wedded a nymph named
Anobret, by whom he had a child called Jeued. And Anobret presents the
same traits as Sara; Jeued was sacrificed (or near being so), like Isaac;
therefore, Saturn is Abraham; whence the conclusion must be drawn that
the religion of the Gauls had the same principles as that of the Jews.

Their society was very well organised. The first class of persons
amongst them included the people, the nobility, and the king; the
second, the jurisconsults; and in the third, the highest, were ranged,
according to Taillepied, "the various kinds of philosophers," that is to
say, the Druids or Saronides, themselves divided into Eubages, Bards,
and Vates.

One section of them prophesied, another sang, while a third gave
instruction in botany, medicine, history, and literature, in short, all
the arts of their time.

Pythagoras and Plato were their pupils. They taught metaphysics to the
Greeks, sorcery to the Persians, aruspicy to the Etruscans, and to the
Romans the plating of copper and the traffic in hams.

But of this people, who ruled the ancient world, there remain only
stones either isolated or in groups of three, or placed together so as
to resemble a rude chamber, or forming enclosures.

Bouvard and Pecuchet, filled with enthusiasm, studied in succession the
stone on the Post-farm at Ussy, the Coupled Stone at Quest, the Standing
Stone near L'Aigle, and others besides.

All these blocks, of equal insignificance, speedily bored them; and one
day, when they had just seen the menhir at Passais, they were about to
return from it when their guide led them into a beech wood, which was
blocked up with masses of granite, like pedestals or monstrous
tortoises. The most remarkable of them is hollowed like a basin. One of
its sides rises, and at the further end two channels run down to the
ground; this must have been for the flowing of blood--impossible to
doubt it! Chance does not make these things.

The roots of the trees were intertwined with these rugged pedestals. In
the distance rose columns of fog like huge phantoms. It was easy to
imagine under the leaves the priests in golden tiaras and white robes,
and their human victims with arms bound behind their backs, and at the
side of the bowl the Druidess watching the red stream, whilst around her
the multitude yelled, to the accompanime