These brief considerations seem to knock away all the main props of Mr. Delepierre's hypothesis, save that furnished by the apparent testimony of Jeanne's brothers, given at second hand in the Metz archives. And those who are familiar with the phenomena of mediaeval delusions will be unwilling to draw too hasty an inference from this alone. From the Emperor Nero to Don Sebastian of Portugal, there have been many instances of the supposed reappearance of persons generally believed to be dead. For my own part, therefore, I am by no means inclined to adopt the hypothesis of Jeanne's survival, although I have endeavoured to give it tangible shape and plausible consistency. But the fact that so much can be said in behalf of a theory running counter not only to universal tradition, but also to such a vast body of contemporaneous testimony, should teach us to be circumspect in holding our opinions, and charitable in our treatment of those who dissent from them. For those who can discover in the historian Renan and the critic Strauss nothing but the malevolence of incredulity, the case of Jeanne d'Arc, duly contemplated, may serve as a wholesome lesson. We have devoted so much space to this problem, by far the most considerable of those treated in Mr. Delepierre's book, that we have hardly room for any of the others. But a false legend concerning Solomon de Caus, the supposed original inventor of the steam-engine, is so instructive that we must give a brief account of it. In 1834 "there appeared in the Musee des Familles a letter from the celebrated Marion Delorme, supposed to have been written on the 3d February, 1641, to her lover Cinq-Mars." In this letter it is stated that De Caus came four years ago [1637] from Normandy, to inform the King concerning a marvellous invention which he had made, being nothing less than the application of steam to the propulsion of carriages. "The Cardinal [Richelieu] dismissed this fool without giving him a hearing." But De Caus, nowise discouraged, followed close upon the autocrat's heels wherever he went, and so teased him, that the Cardinal, out of patience, sent him off to a madhouse, where he passed the remainder of his days behind a grated window, proclaiming his invention to the passengers in the street, and calling upon them to release him. Marion gives a graphic account of her visit, accompanied by the famous Lord Worcester, to the asylum at Bicetre, where they saw De Caus at his window; and Worcester, in whose mind the conception of the steam-engine was already taking shape, informed her that the raving prisoner was not a madman, but a genius. A great stir was made by this letter. The anecdote was copied into standard works, and represented in engravings. Yet it was a complete hoax. De Caus was not only never confined in a madhouse, but he was architect to Louis XIII. up to the time of his death, in 1630, just eleven years BEFORE Marion Delorme was said to have seen him at his grated window!