To be lost is interesting, especially for a comet. But this, doubtless, was not enough; for it reserved for us a still more complete surprise. Its orbit intersects the terrestrial orbit at a point which the earth passes on November 27th. Well, nothing more was thought about it--it was given up as hopeless, when, on the evening of November 27, 1872, there fell from the sky a veritable _rain of shooting stars_. The expression is not exaggerated. They fell in great flakes. Lines of fire glided almost vertically in swarms and showers--here, with dazzling globes of light; there, with silent explosions, recalling to mind those of rockets; and this rain lasted from seven o’clock in the evening till one o’clock next morning, the maximum being attained about nine o’clock. At the observatory of the Roman College, 13,892 were counted; at Montcalieri, 33,400; in England a single observer counted 10,579, etc. The total number seen was estimated at _a hundred and sixty thousand_. They all came from the same point of the sky, situated near the beautiful star Gamma of Andromeda. On that evening I happened to be at Rome, in the quarter of the Villa Medicis, and was favored with a balcony looking towards the south. This wonderful rain of stars fell almost before my eyes, so to say, and I shall never cease regretting not having seen it. Convalescent from a fever caught in the Pontine Marshes, I was obliged to go into the house immediately after the setting of the sun, which on that evening appeared from the top of the Coliseum to sleep in a bed of purple and gold. My readers will understand what disappointment I felt next morning when, on going to the observatory, Father Secchi informed me of that event! How had he observed it himself? By the most fortunate chance: A friend of his, seeing the stars fall, went to him to ask an explanation of such a phenomenon. It was then half-past seven. The spectacle had commenced; but it was far from being finished, and the illustrious astronomer was enabled to view the marvelous shower of nearly _fourteen thousand_ meteors. This event made a considerable stir in Rome, and the pope himself did not remain indifferent; for, some days afterwards, having had the honor of being received at the Vatican, the first words that Pius IX addressed to me were these: “Have you seen the shower of Danaë?” I had admired, some days before in Rome, some admirable “Danaës,” painted by the great masters of the Italian school in a manner which left nothing to be desired; but I had not had the privilege of finding myself under the cupola of the sky during this new celestial shower, more beautiful even than that of Jupiter.