Why the professor doesn't like stars:
With his mouth full of cakes, which he was engulfing in quantities
that made Brigitte uneasy, the professor made a sign that he would
soon answer; then, having mistaken his glass and swallowed the
contents of Colleville's, he replied:--
"You ask what that insolent young man had done to me? A rascally
thing; and not the first, either. He knows that I cannot abide stars,
having very good reason to hate them, as you shall hear: In 1807,
being attached to the Bureau of Longitudes, I was part of the
scientific expedition sent to Spain, under the direction of my friend
and colleague, Jean-Baptiste Biot, to determine the arc of the
terrestrial meridian from Barcelona to the Balearic isles. I was just
in the act of observing a star (perhaps the very one my rascally pupil
has discovered), when suddenly, war having broken out between France
and Spain, the peasants, seeing me perched with a telescope on Monte
Galazzo, took it into their heads that I was making signals to the
enemy. A mob of savages broke my instruments, and talked of stringing
me up. They were just going to do it, when the captain of a vessel
took me prisoner and thrust me into the citadel of Belver, where I
spent three years in the harshest captivity. Since them, as you may
well believe, I loathe the whole celestial system; though I was,
without knowing it, the first to observe the famous comet of 1811; but
I should have taken care not to say a word about it if it had not been
for Monsieur Flauguergues, who announced it. Like all my pupils,
Phellion knows my aversion to stars, and he knew very well the worst
trick he could play me would be to saddle one on my back; and that
deputation that came to play the farce of congratulating me was mighty
lucky not to find me at home, for if they had, I can assure those
gentlemen of the Academy, they would have had a hot reception."
Everybody present thought the old mathematician's monomania quite
delightful... before leaving, the careful housewife removed everything
that was at all fragile from his reach...
(
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