One night, in May, 1814, about two o'clock in the morning, a cab stopped near the barrier of La Gare, which faces Bercy, at the door of an enclosure of planks. This enclosure surrounded a large vacant piece of ground, reserved for the projected _entrepôt_, and belonging to the city of Paris. The cab was coming from the Pantheon, and the coachman had been ordered to take the most deserted streets. The closed planking opened. Some men alighted from the cab and entered the enclosure. Two carried a sack between them. They were conducted, so tradition asserts, by the Marquis of Puymaurin, afterward deputy to the Invisible Chamber, and director of the mint, accompanied by his brother, the Comte de Puymaurin. Other men, many in cassocks, were waiting for them. They proceeded toward a hole dug in the middle of the field. This hole, according to one of the witnesses, who since has been waiter at the inn of the Marronniers at La Rapée, was round, and looked like a blind well. At the bottom of the hole was quicklime. These men said nothing, and had no light. The wan break of day gave a ghastly light. The sack was opened. It was full of bones. These were, pell-mell, the bones of Jean Jacques and of Voltaire, which had just been withdrawn from the Pantheon. The mouth of the sack was brought close to the hole, and the bones were thrown into that darkness. The two skulls struck against each other; a spark, not likely to be seen by such men as those present was doubtless exchanged between the head that had made the "Dictionnaire Philosophique" and the head which had made the "Contrat Social," and reconciled them. When that was done, when the sack had been shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau had been emptied into that hole, a digger seized a spade, threw inside the opening all the earth which was at the side, and filled tip the hole; the others stamped with their feet on the ground, so as to remove from it the appearance of having been freshly disturbed. One of the assistants took for his trouble the sack, as the hangman takes the clothing of his victim; they all left the enclosure, closed the door, got into the cab without saying a word, and hastily, before the sun had risen, those men got away. [Footnote 1: Deserving of being broken on the wheel.] [Footnote 2: _Vol_ meaning _theft_, _taire_ meaning to be silent.] CHAPTER IV. Saumaise, that worse Scaliger, does not comprehend Æschylus, and rejects him. Who is to blame? Saumaise much, Æschylus little.