THE SACRED NUMBERS. 
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ries and of all miracles ? . . . Study the properties of the num- 
ber 3. Do you ask, for example, why Eudes, the brave count of 
Paris, knocked down the Normans only by threes and threes ? Ab- 
bon, a holy churchman, answers you that it was from respect to 
the Holy Trinity . . . The Holy Trinity is the allegorical figure 
of God, who is everywhere represented under the form of a radi- 
ant triangle. 
Certainly, the historical and mathematical importance of the num- 
ber 3 is immense, and none contest it ; yet young persons pre- 
fer a lesson on the number 4, the number of charm, the number of 
the musical quatuor, and of the blessed marriage, consecrated by 
maternity ! The number 3 is respectable ; the number 3 is wise ; 
but the number 3 is prose, and 4 is poetry. The brain, organ of 
thought, operates by three levers (cerebrum, cerebellum, and me- 
dulla oblongata), but the heart, which distributes the blood and nour- 
ishes the body, operates by quadrilles of valves, chambers, and canals. 
^ 3 is the number of the distributives, guardian passions, and 
regulators of the passional movement ; 4 is the number of the af- 
fections. I know but one defect in the number 4, that of being a 
little selfish, a little drawing to self, like the family household ; 
but what is there that is perfect ? 
See now how order and charm in the numbers 3 and 4 unite in 
the simple mode, addition, to produce the second sacred number, v ; 
and in the compound mode, multiplication, to produce the third 
sacred number, 12. Have you decomposed ambition, whose 
double moving spring is the corporate spirit (honor, the sentiment 
of hierarchy), the number of the natural series, of the musical 
gamut, of the solar gamut, of the branches of the chandelier of 
justice, of the satellites of Saturn, of the seven sacraments, of the 
seven lymbic scourges. I one evening saw an illustrious mathe- 
matician very much embarrassed before ladies because an adora- 
ble mischief of fifteen (this age is pitiless) had asked him the rea- 
sons why the number 7 had such boundless ambition, which he 
could not answer. The same, another time, rendered no less un- 
happy a celebrated maestro, who had gathered many palms on 
our lyric scenes, and who was no more able to explain to her the 
causes of the excessive sensibility of the note which she de- 
