203 THE RAINBOW 



perfection; but we had also our share of foggy and 

 drizzly weather. On the night of the 22nd of Septem- 

 ber the atmosphere was especially dark and thick. At 

 9 P.M. I opened a door at the end of a passage and 

 looked out into the gloom. Behind me hung a small lamp, 

 by which the shadow of my body was cast upon the fog. 

 Such a shadow I had often seen, but in the present 

 case it was accompanied by an appearance which I had 

 not previously noticed. Swept through the darkness 

 round the shadow, and far beyond, not only its boun- 

 dary, but also beyond that of the illuminated fog, was a 

 pale, white, luminous circle, complete except at the 

 point where it was cut through by the shadow. As I 

 walked out into the fog, this curious halo went in 

 advance of me. Had not my demerits been so well 

 known to me, I might have accepted the phenomenon 

 as an evidence of canonisation. Benvenuto Cellini saw 

 something of the kind surrounding his shadow, and 

 ascribed it forthwith to supernatural favour. I varied 

 the position and intensity of the lamp, and found even 

 a candle sufficient to render the luminous band visible. 

 With two crossed laths I roughly measured the angle 

 subtended by the radius of the circle, and found it to 

 be practically the angle which had riveted the attention 

 of Descartes namely, 41. This and other facts led 

 me to suspect that the halo was a circular rainbow. A 

 week subsequently, the air being in a similar misty 

 condition, the luminous circle was well seen from 

 another door, the lamp which produced it standing on 

 a table behind me. 



It is not, however, necessary to go to the Alps to 

 witness this singular phenomenon. Amid the heather 

 of Hind Head I have had erected a hut, to which I 

 escape when my brain needs rest or my muscles lack 

 vigour. The hut has two doors, one opening to the 



