'One should have seen M. Lescarbault,' says Moigno, 'so small, so simple, so modest, and so timid, in order to understand the emotion with which he was seized, when Leverrier, from his great height, and with that blunt intonation which he can command, thus addressed him: "It is then you, sir, who pretend to have observed the intra-mercurial planet, and who have committed the grave offence of keeping your observation secret for nine months. I warn you that I have come here with the intention of doing justice to your pretensions, and of demonstrating either that you have been dishonest or deceived. Tell me, then, unequivocally, what you have seen."' This singular address did not bring the interview, as one might have expected, to an abrupt end. The lamb, as the Abbé calls the doctor, trembling, stammered out an account of what he had seen. He explained how he had timed the passage of the black spot. 'Where is your chronometer?' asked Leverrier. 'It is this watch, the faithful companion of my professional journeys.' 'What! with that old watch, showing only minutes, dare you talk of estimating seconds. My suspicions are already too well confirmed.' 'Pardon me, I have a pendulum which beats seconds.' 'Show it me.' The doctor brings down a silk thread to which an ivory ball is attached. Fixing the upper end to a nail, he draws the ball a little from the vertical, counts the number of oscillations, and shows that his pendulum beats seconds; he explains also how his profession, requiring him to feel pulses and count pulsations, he has no difficulty in mentally keeping record of successive seconds. Having been shown the telescope with which the observation was made, the record of the observation (on a piece of paper covered with grease and laudanum, and doing service as a marker in the 'Connaissance des Temps,' or French Nautical Almanac), Leverrier presently inquired if Lescarbault had attempted to deduce the planet's distance from the sun from the period of its transit. The doctor admitted that he had attempted this, but, being no mathematician, had failed to achieve success with the problem. He showed the rough draughts of his futile attempts at calculation on a board in his workshop, 'for,' said he naïvely, 'I am a joiner as well as an astronomer.'