[434] Varius Avitus Bassianus, known as Heliogabalus, Roman Emperor (205-222) was proclaimed Emperor in 218 and gave himself up to the most extravagant licentiousness. He was killed, in the eighteenth year of his age, by his soldiers, whom his rapacity and debaucheries had irritated.--T. [435] Lamennais (_cf._ Vol. I., p. 27, n. 1) had been prosecuted for one of his political writings, the _Pays et le Gouvernement_, and sentenced, on the 26th of December 1840, to twelve months' imprisonment and a tine of 2,000 francs.--B. [436] Lamennais' pamphlet had just been published when Chateaubriand was writing these last pages of the Memoirs in the autumn of 1841.--B. [437] Lamennais was locked up at Sainte-Pélagie from January to December 1841. He here composed his _Voix de prison_, an admirable little volume containing, beside the furious rage of the pamphleteer, pages of exquisite poetic feeling.--B. [438] It is interesting in this connection to note that Lamennais was a dwarf in stature and Chateaubriand himself only five feet four inches high.--T. [439] Lamennais' name was not François, but Félicité Robert.--T. [440] 1817-1823.--T. [441] Lamennais was born at Saint-Malo on the 19th of June 1782, fourteen years after Chateaubriand.--T. [442] Lamennais died in Paris on the 27th of February 1854, six years after Chateaubriand. His funeral was held almost by stealth, on the 1st of March. The hour of the funeral was accelerated by the authorities, who were afraid of disturbances; six or eight persons followed the hearse, from which the crowd was kept off by an armed force. "The coffin," says M. Blaize, in his _Essai biographique sur M. F. de La Mennais_, "was lowered into one of those long and hideous trenches in which the common people are buried. When it was covered with earth, the grave-digger asked: "'Is there to be a cross?'" M. Barbet answered: "'No. M. de La Mennais said, "They must put nothing on my grave.'" "Not a word was spoken over the tomb."--B. [443] JOHN, I., 14.--T. [444] JOHN, XV., 22.--T. [445] LUKE, XI., 46.--T. [446] _Cf._ LUKE, XIII., 1: "And there were present at that very time some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood _Pilate_ had mingled with their sacrifices." An earlier edition gives _Herodotus!_ I have little doubt that the misquotation was a slip on the part of the author's pen.--T. [447] Epilepsy.--T. [448] _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. XXI.-XXIV.: _The Author's Preface._--T. [449] Australia was explored by Cook in 1770-1777. The first settlement was at Port Jackson in 1788.--T. [450] Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) visited the Antarctic Ocean in the _Coquille_, in 1839. He was killed in the burning of a railway train between Paris and Versailles on the 8th of May 1842.--T. [451] Ferdinand Vicomte de Lesseps (1805-1894) made his first investigation of the Isthmus of Suez in 1849. The Canal was thrown open for navigation in 1869. Work on the Panama Canal began in 1881.--T.