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Updated: June 23, 2025
To employ a servant to play the spy on her mistress, and report to him her actions and movements, might be worthy of a Miraudin, but was it quite the thing for a Marquis Fontenelle?
Roemer's discovery of the progressive motion of light, though denounced by Fontenelle as a seductive error, and not admitted by Cassini, at length forced its way to universal acceptance. Next it was necessary to obtain correct ideas of the dimensions of the solar system, or, putting the problem under a more limited form, to determine the distance of the earth from the sun.
The evening fell, and a faint silver moon rose in the sky and grew brighter and brighter over park and mere. The Princess went in to play cards, followed by the others. Germain and the Baroness walked up and down the terrace alone, talking of the stars and the delightful speculations about them in the book of Fontenelle.
Finding himself strong enough at last to take decided measures, he quietly dethroned Childeric III.; and shaving off his long hair, the symbol of royalty among the early Frankish kings, sent him to one monastery at St. Omer, and his son Thierry to another at Fontenelle. This accomplished, Pepin proceeded to obtain justification for his acts from the Pope.
Fontenelle says: "I knew two men, a soldier and a mathematician, who had never heard of any other play that had ever been written, but the name of Cid had penetrated even the barbarous state in which they lived." The dramatist had enemies no man can quickly achieve renown without making them and some of them were exceedingly bitter in their attacks upon him.
Montesquieu, with more calmness, waited for the ball to come to him, but he waited. Mairan watched his opportunity. Astruc did not deign to wait. Fontenelle alone let it come to him without seeking it, and he used so discreetly the attention given him, that his witty sayings and his clever stories never occupied more than a moment.
Angela smiled, and Sylvie Hermenstein noted the warm and tender flush of pleasure that spread over her fair face. "Yes, Florian is an idealist," she said, "There is nothing of the brute in him." "And you think Fontenelle a brute?" queried Sylvie, "Yes, I suppose he is; but I have sometimes thought that all men are very much alike, except Florian!"
Ennui never came to shed its torpors over these reunions, of which the Academy furnished the most distinguished guests, in company with grands seigneurs eager to show themselves as worthy by intelligence as by rank to play a role in these gatherings of the intellectual elite. Fontenelle was the presiding genius of this salon, and added to its critical and literary spirit a tinge of philosophy.
And, indeed, I am not unwilling to have a little relaxation of pleasure, after all these dull and dusty travails of state. What say you to Boulainvilliers to-night? you are asked?" "Yes! all the wits are to be there, Anthony Hamilton, and Fontenelle, young Arouet, Chaulieu, that charming old man. Let us go, and polish away the wrinkles of our hearts.
It is unequal, rather tedious in parts, and in conception merely a pastiche of Lucian and Fontenelle: but it contains some remarkable things in the way of shrewd satirical observation of human nature.
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