The right of asylum accorded to some churches was one of the most obnoxious privileges among those of which the revolution of 1789 rid France.  In 1807, this right still existed in Spain, and belonged, I believe, to all the cathedrals.  I learnt, during my stay at Barcelona, that there was, in a little cloister contiguous to the largest church of the town, a brigand,—­a man guilty of several assassinations, who lived quietly there, guaranteed against all pursuit by the sanctity of the place.  I wished to assure myself with my own eyes of the reality of the fact, and I went with my friend Rodriguez into the little cloister in question.  The assassin was then eating a meal which a woman had just brought him.  He easily guessed the object of our visit, and made immediately such demonstrations as convinced us that, if the asylum was safe for the robber, it would not be so long for us.  We retired at once, deploring that, in a country calling itself civilized, there should still exist such crying, such monstrous abuses.

In order to succeed in our geodesic operations, to obtain the coeoperation of the inhabitants of the villages near our stations, it was desirable for us to be recommended to the priests.  We went, therefore,—­M.  Lanusse, the French Vice-Consul, M. Biot, and I,—­to pay a visit to the Archbishop of Valencia, to solicit his protection.  This archbishop, a man of very tall figure, was then chief of the Franciscans; his costume more than negligent, his gray robe, covered with tobacco, contrasted with the magnificence of the archiepiscopal palace.  He received us with kindness, and promised us all the recommendations we desired; but, at the moment of taking leave of him, the whole affair seemed to be spoiled.  M. Lanusse and M. Biot went out of the reception room without kissing the hand of his grace, although he had presented it to each of them very graciously.  The archbishop indemnified himself on my poor person.  A movement, which was very near breaking my teeth, a gesture which I might justly call a blow of the fist, proved to me that the chief of the Franciscans, notwithstanding his vow of humility, had taken offence at the want of ceremony in my fellow visitors.  I was going to complain of the abrupt way in which he had treated me, but I had the necessities of our trigonometrical operations before my eyes, and I was silent.

Besides this, at the instant when the closed fist of the archbishop was applied to my lips, I was still thinking of the beautiful optical experiments which it would have been possible to make with the magnificent stone which ornamented his pastoral ring.  This idea, I must frankly declare, had preoccupied me during the whole of the visit.

M. Biot having at last come to seek me again at Valencia, where I expected, as I have before said, some new instruments, we went on to Formentera, the southern extremity of our arc, of which place we determined the latitude.  M. Biot quitted me afterwards to return to Paris, whilst I made the geodesical junction of the island of Majorca to Iviza, and to Formentera, obtaining thus, by means of one single triangle, the measure of an arc of parallel of one degree and a half.