Vlii PREFACE. 



entered the Society on the 27th of June previous. He was sub 

 sequently entrusted with some message or advertisement to 

 the Queen ; which having performed with great approbation, 

 he returned back into France again, with intention to continue 

 for some years there. (Rawley.) Here we find him still keen 

 in his observation of natural phenomena, sounds as before 

 occupying a great share of his attention. Let him describe 

 what he heard in his own words written nearly fifty years 

 later. For echoes upon echoes, there is a rare instance thereof 

 in a place which I will now exactly describe. It is some three 

 or four miles from Paris, near a town called Pont-Charenton ; 

 and some bird-bolt shot or more from the river of Seine. 

 The room is a chapel or small church. The walls all stand 

 ing, both at the sides and at the ends. Two rows of pillars, 

 after the manner of aisles of churches, also standing ; the roof 

 all open, not so much as any embowment near any of the walls 

 left. There was against every pillar a stack of billets above a 

 man s height ; which the watermen that bring wood down the 

 Seine in stacks, and not in boats, laid there (as it seemeth) for 

 their ease. Speaking at the one end, I did hear it return the 

 voice thirteen several times : and I have heard of others, that 

 it would return sixteen times : for I was there about three of 

 the clock in the afternoon ; and it is best (as all other echoes 



are) in the evening I remember well, that when I went to 



the echo at Pont-Charenton, there was an old Parisian, who 

 took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits. For 

 (said he) call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the 

 devil s name ; but will say, *va fen ; which is as much in French 

 as apage or avoid. And thereby I did hap to find that an 

 echo would not return S, being but a hissing and an interior 

 sound. (Sylva Sylvarum, cent. iii. 249, 251.) Another story 

 which he tells of himself belongs to this period of his life. * I 

 had, from my childhood, a wart upon one of my fingers : after 

 wards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, 

 there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at the 

 least an hundred) in a month s space. The English ambassador s 

 lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, 



