knew only an ancient kinswoman.  She introduced him to a priestly relative of the Canon of Noyon, who in turn recommended him to the “Sous-principal” of the College Du Plessis.  Here he made such notable progress in Oriental studies, that M. Petitpied, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, struck by his abilities, enabled him to study at the College Royal and eventually to catalogue the Eastern MSS. in the great ecclesiastical Society.  Thence he passed to the College Mazarin, where a Professor, M. Godouin, was making an experiment which might be revived to advantage in our present schools.  He collected a class of boys, aged about four, and proposed to teach them Latin speedily and easily by making them converse in the classical language as well as read and write it.[FN#199] Galland, his assistant, had not time to register success or failure before he was appointed attache-secretary to M. de Nointel named in 1660 Ambassadeur de France for Constantinople.  His special province was to study the dogmas and doctrines and to obtain official attestations concerning the articles of the Orthodox (or Greek) Christianity which had then been a subject of lively discussion amongst certain Catholics, especially Arnauld (Antoine) and Claude the Minister, and which even in our day occasionally crops up amongst “Protestants."[FN#200] Galland, by frequenting the cafes and listening to the tale-teller, soon mastered Romaic and grappled with the religious question, under the tuition of a deposed Patriarch and of sundry Matrans or Metropolitans, whom the persecutions of the Pashas had driven for refuge to the Palais de France.  M. de Nointel, after settling certain knotty points in the Capitulations, visited the harbour-towns of the Levant and the “Holy Places,” including Jerusalem, where Galland copied epigraphs, sketched monuments and collected antiques, such as the marbles in the Baudelot Gallery of which Pere Dom Bernard de Montfaucon presently published specimens in his ’’Palaeographia Graeca,” etc. (Parisiis, 1708).

In Syria Galland was unable to buy a copy of The Nights:  as he expressly states in his Epistle Dedicatory, il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie.  But he prepared himself for translating it by studying the manners and customs, the religion and superstitions of the people; and in 1675, leaving his chief, who was ordered back to Stambul, he returned to France.  In Paris his numismatic fame recommended him to mm.  Vaillant, Carcary and Giraud who strongly urged a second visit to the Levant, for the purpose of collecting, and he set out without delay.  In 1691 he made a third journey, travelling at the expense of the Compagnie des Indes-Orientales, with the main object of making purchases for the Library and Museum of Colbert the magnificent.  The commission ended eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the Company, when Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois caused him to be created “Antiquary to the King,” Louis le Grand, and charged him with collecting coins and medals for the royal cabinet.  As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow escape from the earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some fifteen thousand of the inhabitants:  he was buried in the ruins; but, his kitchen being cold as becomes a philosopher’s, he was dug out unburnt.[FN#201]