How many events have happened since those far-off days! Nations, languages, religions, all have changed. Where are the eyes which looked upon Venus 3,000 years ago? Where are the hearts which confided to her their vows of love for all eternity? And who will be _our_ successors when, 3,000 years hence, the Parisians of the fiftieth century admire, as we do now, the star of the Iliad twinkling in their sky? The history of man passes quickly, the waves succeed each other and disappear in the ocean of the ages; the heavens remain, and the astronomer smiles at great ambition and puny achievements. * * * * * Venus passes every eighth year through the period of greatest brilliance (1889-1897-1905-1913-1921-1929). She is then so bright that she casts a shadow like a small moon. This is easily seen either in a dark room or when walking past a wall in the country. She can be seen in daylight with the naked eye, not only before sunset, but at midday if one knows where she is. No star or planet attains anything comparable to such brightness. This visibility of Venus in daylight has been noticed for a long time; sometimes it becomes a public event, as in the spring of 1905. That year among others our beautiful neighbour was under exceptionally favourable conditions of observation. Everyone could see the radiant planet flaming in the west in the spring; in February, March, and April, the proximity of Jupiter, and sometimes of the Moon showed to all eyes a most charming spectacle. The astronomical ignorance of the inhabitants of the Earth is so universal that a free rein was given to fancy, and in France one could read in the papers, under the title: “The Luminous Phenomenon of Cherbourg,” a series of the oddest and most contradictory descriptions. They spoke of an oval disc describing curves in the sky; the appearance of an electric meteor; a halo due to the deviation of the sun; of an illuminated captive balloon, of a new kind of maritime signals, of an unknown star, of a comet, even of a “constellation”! And there was more to come. On the eleventh day of observation, April 11 (the strange apparition had commenced on April 1, and mariners might have thought of an April hoax), the maritime prefect of Cherbourg ordered the commander of the _Chasseloup-Laubat_ to study the luminous phenomenon, A vessel was sent to look for Venus! The naval officers could not explain the mystery; one of them, however, wrote that it might be the planet Jupiter! Other commanders, having heard of the comet discovered at the Nice Observatory by M. Giacobini, announced that the “unexplained light” might well be that comet! They did not know that that comet was a telescopic one, invisible to the naked eye. In the night of April 10-11 a meteorite was seen at Tunis. The question arose whether it was not this meteorite which had first been seen every evening at Cherbourg!