500 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
visit to Paris, — applied to Le Yerrier to arrange for a recep- 
tion of the Eastern potentate and his bejewelled and glittering suite 
at the grandly restored Observatoire, he only received the follow- 
ing short note from the State’s chief paid Astronomer : — 
Marechal, — La Science, n’illumine pas, les sauvages. 
Le Yerrier. 
Even in ordinary conversation it was almost terrible to see how 
the old-man-misanthrope, in merely describing the course of an 
argument with another scientist, could egregiously clench his fist 
and act to the very life as though delivering a regular knock-down 
blow right between the eyes. Or when the other’s equations were 
faultless, and no other complaint could he found, he would be stig- 
matised in society as “ that man with the big ugly mouth.” 
All this would soon have become unbearable, but that it was 
accompanied by two things, even three, which induced wise men to 
be exceptionally tolerant. 
First, for instance, they knew that there was still a truly heroic 
spirit in that querulous disposition and decrepit frame. When all 
the rest of educated society in Paris was utterly frightened at the 
sudden rise of the Red Republic, and sought only to strike their 
colours, and disappear by putting on the aspect of being more 
canaille than the Red men themselves, — Le Yerrier stood out firm 
in his appreciation of hereditary order, historic experience, accumu- 
lated wisdom, and preservative rule. Red-republicans indeed claim 
to be equal to, and on the same level with, him ! Let any Red- 
republican of them all essay on the grandest test of man’s intel- 
lectuality, to tread with him, if they could, the mathematical founda- 
tions of the stability of the Solar system ! And they couldn’t: — 
so were they to inscribe their wretched shibboleth of “ Liberte, 
Egalite, Fraternite” over his door? No ! he would have none of 
that sort of thing. And hence, when visitors from distant parts of 
the world, even from the very antipodes, came to pay their homage 
to the first physical Astronomer of France, and had been disgusted 
on passing through Paris, to see its grandest public buildings, and 
even the most sacred of its churches, scribbled all over, in fright, to 
pacify the Red men, with those three most falsifying, misleading 
words of their political creed and pretences,— such visitors read over 
