Six years later, in 1668,the French ambassador, Colbert, occupied Leicester House. Pepys relates how he left a joyous dinner early, on October 21, to join Lord Brouncker, the president, and other members of the Royal Society, in paying a formal return visit to Colbert; but the party had started before Pepys arrived at the Society’s rooms. The little man hastened after them; but they were ‘gone in’ and ‘up,’ and Pepys was too late to be admitted. His wife, perhaps, was not sorry, for he took her to Cow Lane; ‘and there,’ he says, ‘I showed her the coach which I pitch on, and she is out of herself for joy almost.’ It is easy to guess why the Royal Society honoured themselves by honouring Colbert. The great Frenchman was something more than a mere Marquis de Segnelai. Who remembers M. le Marquis? Who does not know Colbert--the pupil of Mazarin, the astute politician, the sharp finance-minister, the patron--nay, the pilot--of the arts and sciences in France? The builder of the French Royal Observatory, and the founder of the Academies of Painting and Sculpture and of the Sciences in France, was just the man to pay the first visit to the Royal Society. Leicester House was nobly tenanted by Colbert, and nobly frequented by the men of taste and of talent whom he gathered about him beneath its splendid roof. The house fell into other hands, and men who were extremely opposite to philosophers were admitted within its walls _with_ philosophers, who were expected to admire their handiwork. In October 1672, the grave Evelyn called at Leicester House to take leave of Lady Sunderland, who was about to set out for Paris, where Lord Sunderland was the English ambassador. My lady made Evelyn stay to dinner, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. A few years ago a company of Orientals, black and white, exhibited certain feats, but they were too repulsive (generally) to attract. What the members of this company did was done two hundred years ago in Leicester Square by Richardson alone. ‘He devoured,’ says Evelyn, ‘brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them; he melted a large glass and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster, the coal was blowed on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped and was quite boiled. Then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed. I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while. He also took up a thick piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in their smoothing-boxes, when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hands, and threw it about like a stone; but this I observed, that he cared not to hold very long. Then he stood on a small pot, and bending his body, took a glowing iron in his mouth from between his feet, without touching the pot or ground with his hands; with divers other prodigious