What did they when the wife of Marshal d'Ancre was given up in the Grève to the barbarity of her persecutors? When Marshal de Marillac was dragged to execution in a wagon, by virtue of a paper signed by robed lackeys in Cardinal de Richelieu's ante-chamber? When a lieutenant-general of the army, a foreigner, who had shed his blood for the state, condemned by the cries of his infuriated enemies, was led to the scaffold in a dung-cart, with a gag in his mouth? When a young man of nineteen, full of candor, courage and modesty, but very imprudent, was carried to the most dreadful of punishments? They sang vaudevilles. Such is man, at least man on the banks of the Seine. Such has he been at all times, for the same reason that rabbits have always had hair, and larks feathers. SECTION V. _On the Origin of the Arts._ What! we would know the precise theology--of Thoth, Zerdusht, or Sanchoniathon, although we know not who invented the shuttle. The first weaver, the first mason, the first smith were undoubtedly great geniuses; yet no account has been made of them. And why? Because not one of them invented a perfect art. He who first hollowed the trunk of an oak for the purpose of crossing a river did not build galleys; nor did they who piled up unhewn stones, and laid pieces of wood across them, dream of the pyramids. Everything is done by degrees, and the glory belongs to no one. All was done in the dark, until philosophers, aided by geometry, taught men to proceed with accuracy and safety. It was left for Pythagoras, on his return from his travels, to show workmen the way to make an exact square. He took three rules: one three, one four, and one five feet long, and with these he made a right-angled triangle. Moreover, it was found that the side 5 furnished a square just equal to the two squares produced by the sides 4 and 3; a method of importance in all regular works. This is the famous theorem which he had brought from India, and which we have elsewhere said was known in China long before, according to the relation of the Emperor Cam-hi. Long before Plato, the Greeks made use of a single geometrical figure to double the square. Archytas and Erastothenes invented a method of doubling the cube, which was impracticable by ordinary geometry, and which would have done honor to Archimedes. This Archimedes found the method of calculating exactly the quantity of alloy mixed with gold; for gold had been worked for ages before the fraud of the workers could be discovered. Knavery existed long before mathematics. The pyramids, built with the square, and corresponding exactly with the four cardinal points, sufficiently show that geometry was known in Egypt from time immemorial; and yet it is proved that Egypt is quite a new country.