isitants appeared in the
Heavens. It was in the reign of Lewis the Debonair. Directly the King
perceived the comet, he sent for an astrologer, and asked what he was to
conclude from the apparition. As the answers were unsatisfactory he
tried to avert the augury by prayers to Heaven, by ordaining a general
fast to all his Court, and by building churches. Notwithstanding, he
died three years later, and the historians profited by this slender
coincidence to set up a correlation between the fatal star and the death
of the Sovereign. This comet, famous in history, is no other than that
of Halley, in one of its appearances.

This comet returned to explore the realms near the Sun in 1066, at the
moment when William of Normandy was undertaking the Conquest of England,
and was misguided enough to go across and reign in London, instead of
staying at home and annexing England, thus by his action founding the
everlasting rivalry between France and this island. A beneficial
influence was attributed to the comet in the Battle of Hastings.

A few centuries later it again came into sight from the Earth, in 1456,
three years after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Feeling
ran high in Europe, and this celestial omen was taken for a proof of the
anger of the Almighty. The moment was decisive; the Christians had to be
rescued from a struggle in which they were being worsted. At this
conjuncture, Pope Calixtus resuscitated a prayer that had fallen into
disuse, the _Angelus_; and ordered that the bells of the churches should
be rung each day at noon, that the Faithful might join at the same hour
in prayer against the Turks and the Comet. This custom has lasted down
to our own day.

Again, to the comet of 1500 was attributed the tempest that caused the
death of Bartholomew Diaz, a celebrated Portuguese navigator, who
discovered the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1528 a bearded star of terrific aspect alarmed the world, and the
more serious spirits were influenced by this menacing comet, which
burned in the Heavens like "a great and gory sword." In a chapter on
Celestial Monsters the celebrated surgeon Ambroise Pare describes this
awful phenomenon in terms anything but seductive, or reassuring, showing
us the menacing sword surrounded by the heads it had cut off (Fig. 50).

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--What our Ancestors saw in a Comet.

_After Ambroise Pare (1528)._]

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Prodigies seen in the Heavens by our
Forefat