VALENTINE JAMERAI DUVAL.

DUVAL, whose history is perhaps the most romantic of any in this volume, was born at the little village of Artonnay, in Champagne, some time in 1695. His parents were in an extreme state of poverty, and before he was ten years of age he had the misfortune to lose his father. To contribute in some small degree to the sustenance of his mother's family now became an object of the utmost importance. On a neighboring farm he obtained the privilege of looking after the turkeys, for which he obtained a small remuneration. It was not till he was fourteen that Duval had an opportunity of obtaining the faintest rudiments of an education. He then learned the alphabet. When he was fourteen he ceased to be a watcher of turkeys, the agricultural distress which prevailed rendering it necessary for the farmers to pursue a system of the strictest economy. To add to the troubles of the period (1709), a winter of unprecedented severity set in. Such was its arctic rigor that the courts of justice were closed, the sacramental offices were suspended, from the impossibility of keeping fluid the wine which was used, and numbers of even the strongest travelers were struck dead upon the high roads. In such a cruel winter the poor were exposed to the most frightful hardships, and even those whose circumstances were not actually indigent experienced many pressing wants. Young Duval was unwilling to become a burden on his poor mother at such a season, and, friendless and helpless, went forth in the bitter wind to procure shelter and food among the villages and hamlets of Champagne. For several days he continued his dreary way, nearly frozen and famished, when suddenly he was attacked by an excruciating pain in the head. It was with the greatest difficulty that he struggled to a small farm-house which he observed in the distance. Arrived there, he begged that he might be permitted to rest his limbs in an out-house. A female servant took compassion on him, and led him into a building where the sheep were kept. In the morning the farmer discovered the poor boy in a most deplorable condition. He was in a burning fever, and angry

pustules had made their appearance on different parts of his body. The farmer knew the symptoms, and bluntly declared that Duval was laboring under an attack of small-pox, assuring him also, by way of consolation, that it would infallibly kill him. Although rough and uncultivated, he was a good-hearted man, and did more for the little patient than might have been expected, considering the fearful nature of the disease, and the alarm it is apt to occasion. He procured a bundle of rags, stripped off the boy's clothing, and wrapped him up in the rags like a mummy. Having done this, he took off several layers of dung from a heap, and in the warm place thus created made a purely agricultural bed, placed the patient on it, strewed chaff on him, covered him up to the neck with the layers which he had taken off, and then concluded by making the sign of the cross on the boy, whom he recomended to God and the saints, believing that it would be little else than a miracle if he escaped death.

Duval's biographer thinks that, rude as were the bed and the chamber where the youth lay, they were perhaps more beneficial to him than any he could have found in the farmer's humble abode. The fermenting of the dung and the breath of a flock of sheep diffused a warmth which he would not elsewhere have enjoyed, and which brought on a profuse perspiration. The virus of the disease was thrown out to the surface instead of being repelled into the vital parts. While he was lying helpless, he was exposed to one annoyance from his fellow-lodgers. The sheep would lick his face. He did his best, he says, to avoid these cruel caresses, less on his own account than in the fear that the poison with which he was covered might be hurtful to the poor sheep. He did not then know that the poison of the small-pox is reserved for the human family alone. He was exposed to other troubles even more dangerous. The place in which he was sheltered was overhung with large trees. Often in the dead of night he was aroused by loud reports as of cannon or thunder. When he inquired what had occasioned these strange sounds, he was informed that the intensity of the frost had rent many of the trees to the roots, and caused them to " go off" in the way mentioned, scattering huge fragments on the place where lay the poor boy. The crisis passed, he slowly recovered, receiving to the last all the little attentions which his kindly host could bestow on him. Inexpensive as was his food and lodging, they were more than the

impoverished farmer could bear. When he had sufficiently recovered, he was reluctantly compelled to tell his guest that he could no longer support him. He, however, found him a temporary asylum by applying to the parish priest, and with this functionary Duval remained until the extreme severity of the weather had abated, and his health was completely restored. It was then hinted that he must provide for himself.

Past sufferings had taught him that one of the greatest calamiities a poor man could encounter was cold. When he left the priest's house, he asked in what direction were warmer lands, and being told that to the east the sun exercised more power, he resolved to bend his course to the eastward. His ideas concerning the earth and the sun were of the most primitive kind; the former he believed to be a plane, bounded by the horizon and supporting the heavens; the latter, which he had always seen represented with a human face, was an animated and intelligent being, moving at a small distance from the ground, and dispensing light and heat. With these ideas in his mind, and with the most generous and appreciative feelings toward the sun, he took his departure in an easterly direction. He passed through districts stricken with famine and oppressed with the most horrible poverty-districts in which it was mockery to ask for. charity, and which could yield nothing but herbs and roots for the hungered boy. When he reached the boiling springs of Bourbonne les Bains, the spectacle of hot water issuing from a cold earth so alarmed him that he seriously believed he was in the vicinity of the infernal regions, and fled the town with precipitation.

In the flourishing duchy of Lorraine, the scene changed as if by magic; the people were well clad, and of cheerful, healthy countenances; the houses were commodious and solidly built, and the soil was carefully tilled and richly productive. Charmed with these external indications of prosperity, and with the beauty of the country, Duval wished to stay in a land so genial and happy. He succeeded in obtaining a situation as a shepherd-boy, and for two years pursued that pastoral life. During the time he made the acquaintance of a hermit named Brother Palemon, who lived at the hermitage of La Rochelle. With this recluse Duval now took up his residence, assisting him in his rural labors, and making himself generally useful. Palemon was a kind-hearted, devout man, who respected God's gifts to man. In a very little time he

discovered that Duval was blessed with a mind which craved

He encouraged and assisted to fame by imparting to him At the end of twelve months

knowledge and could digest it. him, and placed him on the road the rudiments of an education. Duval was forced to leave this worthy old man, the superiors of his order having sent another brother to reside with him in Duval's place. Palemon parted from the youth with regret, and gave him a letter of introduction to the hermits of St. Anne, whither he proceeded.

The hermits of St. Anne were four in number, aged men, of virtuous hearts and kind dispositions, indulgent to others, austere only to themselves. Their subsistence and the means of dispensing charity were derived from the cultivation of twelve acres of land, partly planted with fruit-trees, and from six cows. In the management of their farm it was thought that Duval might find some kind of employment, and he was not disappointed. His opportunities for obtaining knowledge were thus preserved. One of the hermits undertook to teach him to read, and from a book which he found in the hermitage he obtained a smattering of arithmetic. His chief employment was not intellectual, tending cattle in the woods, but it was favorable to the reflective disposition of Duval. From the earliest days astronomy has been indebted to shepherd-boys for much of its just interpretation. Duval's mind soon became deeply interested in the contemplation of the heavens. He had seen in almanacs that on such a day the sun would enter the sign of the Ram or the Bull, and imagining that there must be some clusters of stars resembling those animals, he began to look for them. He constructed a rude observatory in the forest on the top of the tallest oak he could find, but his untutored eyes gazed on the starry field without result. He was about to give up his astronomical inquiries in despair, when a lucky chance put him on the right road. He was fortunate enough to procure half a dozen maps of the constellations, the world, and the four quarters of the globe. With these he soon learned the relative places of the constellations; but, to render this knowledge useful, he had yet to find out a fixed point in the heavens to serve as a basis for his proceedings. He had heard it said that the polar star was the only star of our hemisphere which had no apparent motion; but where to find this star? His first plan was to pick out a star of the proper magnitude, and then

bore a hole immediately opposite it to observe if it changed its position. He next hollowed out a piece of elder so as to make a tolerably straight tube, and, suspending this rude telescope to a branch of a tree, made observations through it until he discovered the exact position of the polar star. It was now easy for him, with the aid of his map, to become acquainted with all the principal stellar groups of the northern hemisphere. The immensity into which he thus penetrated filled him with awe and surprise to such an extent that for a time he was compelled to desist, lest his reason should be overthrown. From the study of the skies Duval turned to the study of the earth, and thus brought into use the remaining maps of his collection. He was a long time before he could understand the various lines and figures which are so important in works of this kind; but a friend loaned him an Introduction to Geography, and by the help of this guide, and perpetual reference to his maps, which he always took out with him, he made such rapid advances that "the knowledge of the globe became almost as familiar to him as that of the forest of St. Anne."

The appetite for knowledge was now thoroughly aroused. All his scanty means were devoted to the purchase of books, and he devised means to add to his available funds for this purpose. He set snares for the wild animals, and sold their skins to a furrier at Luneville, and he caught birds, which, he says, contributed to his instruction by the loss of their liberty. Hares, too, would occasionally come in his way, although they were not allowed to do so by law. In these hunting excursions he was often exposed to danger, and on one occasion a wild-cat fixed her teeth and talons so deeply in his head that it was with the greatest difficulty he could release himself and dispatch the brute. He did not regret the wounds, for the skin brought a good price. In a few months he amassed a small fortune of thirty or forty crowns, and with a joyful heart carried his treasure to Nancy to purchase books. Of their value he knew nothing, but he had confidence in human honesty, and, when he entered the shop, said to the bookseller, "You will have the goodness not to charge me too much, for I am very poor, and want to get all the books I can.” There was only one bookseller in Nancy who did not cheat him ; all the others took advantage of his simplicity. The honest tradesman supplied him on equitable terms, and even gave him credit