At a later date we find the word applied to very different objects, though always retaining the signification of _light_ or _brilliancy_. A _pharos_ of fire—_i.e._, a ball or meteor—was seen, says Gregory of Tours, to issue from the church of St. Hilaire, and descend upon King Clovis. The same historian uses the word to describe a conflagration:—“They (the barbarians) set fire to the church of St. Hilaire, kindled a great pharos, and while the church was burning, pillaged the monastery.” The old French historian frequently employs the word in this sense, which leads us to suppose that in his time an incendiary was probably designated “a maker of pharoses” (_un faiseur de phares_). Still later, the term _pharos_ was applied to certain machines in which a number of lamps or tapers were placed, as in a candelabrum. A modern French writer quotes from Anastasius the Librarian, that Pope Sylvester caused “a pharos of pure gold” to be constructed; and that Pope Adrian I. made one, “in the form of a cross,” capable of receiving one hundred and seventy candles or tapers. And Leon of Ostia, in his “Chronicle of Monte Cassino,” says, that the Abbot Didier had a pharos, or great silver crown, weighing one hundred pounds, constructed, which was surmounted by twelve little turrets, and from which were suspended six and thirty lamps. We may add that the poets have employed the word “pharos” in a still more metaphorical sense, to signify an object which instructs while it illuminates, or those remarkable individuals whose genius becomes for all time the light of the world, and a beacon to posterity. Says the French poet Ronsard to Charles IX.:— “Soyez mon phare, et gardez d’abymer, Ma nef qui nage en si profonde mer.” My guide, my pharos be, and save from wreck My boat, which labours in so deep a sea. But from this digression we return to the Alexandrian Wonder. The long narrow island of Pharos lay in front of the city of Alexandria, sheltering both its harbours—the Greater Harbour and the Haven of Happy Return (Εὔνοστος)—from the fury of the north wind and the occasional high tides of the Mediterranean.