d granddaughter of the highly respected Jean Rehu,
the father of the Academie Francaise, the elegant translator of Ovid and
author of the Letters to Urania, whose hale old age is the miracle of
the Institute. By his friend and colleague M. Thiers Leonard Astier-Rehu
was called to the post of Keeper of the Archives of Foreign Affairs.
It is well known that, with a noble disregard of his interests, he
resigned, some years later (1878), rather than that the impartial pen of
history should stoop to the demands of our present rulers. But deprived
of his beloved archives, the author has turned his leisure to good
account. In two years he has given us the last three volumes of his
history, and announces shortly New Lights on Galileo, based upon
documents extremely curious and absolutely unpublished. All the works of
Astier-Rehu may be had of Petit-Sequard, Bookseller to the Academie.

As the publisher of this book of reference entrusts to each person
concerned the task of telling his own story, no doubt can possibly be
thrown upon the authenticity of these biographical notes. But why must
it be asserted that Leonard Astier-Rehu resigned his post as Keeper of
the Archives? Every one knows that he was dismissed, sent away with no
more ceremony than a hackney-cabman, because of an imprudent phrase let
slip by the historian of the House of Orleans, vol. v. p. 327: 'Then, as
to-day, France, overwhelmed by the flood of demagogy, etc.' Who can see
the end of a metaphor? His salary of five hundred pounds a year, his
rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that
wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap
of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky
'flood,' all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even
after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his
office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on
certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on
'Teyssedre's Wednesdays.' Teyssedre was the man who polished the floors.
He came to the Astiers' regularly every Wednesday. On the afternoon
of that day Madame Astier was at home to her friends in her husband's
study, this being the only presentable apartment of their third floor in
the Rue de Beaune, the remains of a grand house, terribly inconvenient
in spite of its magnificent ceiling. The disturbance caused to the
illustrious historian by this '