Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife
Peronelle wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our
grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle
us to-day owned even a pig-sty."

The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing
more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is
in question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir,
discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the
name of the potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself
that it was his ancestors' helmet. In this way was Cæsar descended from
a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such
is, within very small margins, the knowledge of early antiquity.

The scholars of Armenia _demonstrate_ that the terrestrial paradise was
in their land. Some profound Swedes _demonstrate_ that it was near Lake
Vener which is visibly a remnant of it. Some Spaniards _demonstrate_
also that it was in Castille; while the Japanese, the Chinese, the
Indians, the Africans, the Americans are not sufficiently unfortunate to
know even that there was formerly a terrestrial paradise at the source
of the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, or, if you
prefer it, at the source of the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro
and the Ebro; for from Phison one easily makes Phaetis; and from Phaetis
one makes the Baetis which is the Guadalquivir. The Gehon is obviously
the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia,
is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E."

But a Scotsman appears who _demonstrates_ in his turn that the garden of