Apparently Messier’s path was beset with difficulties, for in his book entitled _Planetary Worlds_ Breen tells us that on one occasion while Messier was walking in President Saron’s garden he was doubtless looking up at the sky on the chance of detecting a comet, when he fell into an icehouse, and was temporarily disabled. Later on, we are told in the same book, the revolution deprived Messier of his little income and every evening he was wont to repair to the house of the noted astronomer Lalande to replenish the supply of oil for his midnight lamp. The political storm made it necessary for him to remove to another neighborhood, “where he no longer heard the clocks of forty-two churches sounding the hours during the night watchings.” Possibly his most trying experience occurred in connection with the expected return of Halley’s comet in 1758. It was first observed by a farmer named Palitzsch, living at Prohlis, near Dresden, who saw it on Christmas Day, 1758, with a telescope of eight-foot focus. He was an amateur astronomer possessed of keen sight, and was in the habit of searching the heavens with the naked eye, which seems to have given rise to the statement that he found Halley’s comet with the naked eye at a time when the professional astronomers were searching for it in vain with their telescopes. Meanwhile, Messier had been carrying on a prolonged watch of the heavens, extending over the whole of the year 1758, but he did not actually get a view of Halley’s comet until January 21, 1759, when he observed it regularly for three weeks. He was the first noted astronomer to do so, but according to the account given by J. Russell Hind, in his book on _The Comets_ (page 41): “Delisle, then director of the Observatory at Paris, would not allow him to give notice to the astronomers of that city that the long-expected body was in sight, and Messier remained the only observer before the comet was lost in the sun’s rays. Such a discreditable and selfish concealment of an interesting discovery is not likely to sully again the annals of astronomy. Some members of the French Academy looked upon Messier’s observations, when published, as forgeries, but his name stood too high for such imputations to last long, and the positions were soon received as authentic, and have been of great service in correcting the orbit of the comet at this (1835) return.”