162 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



Pantheon (the Westminster Abbey of Paris) was the 

 church of St Genevieve, and its foundation stone was 

 laid by Louis XV. in 1764. In 1885 it was secularized, 

 under the name it now bears, and all traces of religious 

 worship were removed. The frescoes in the interior, by 

 Puvis de Chavannes, Laurens, Cabanel, and others, are 

 among the finest compositions of the nineteenth century. 

 In the crypt were buried the remains of Voltaire, 

 Rousseau, Mirabeau, Marat, Victor Hugo, and others ; and 

 it was Berthelot who, in 1897, was instrumental in having 

 Voltaire's and Rousseau's sarcophagi opened to see if 

 their bodies had been tampered with, as stated, but 

 the great philosophers' remains had not been removed. 

 Berthelot, in examining the remains of Rousseau, found 

 fragments of the winding-sheet substances of an antiseptic 

 and aromatic nature, such as are used in embalming, 

 some teeth, and even a little hair still adhering to the 

 frontal part of the skull, and forming a sort of crown, or 

 tonsure, like that of monks. 



