Slow improvement in the beliefs relative to comets–Bayle's remarks upon the comet of 1680–Passage from Madame de Sevigné's letter referring to this comet and the last hours of Mazarin–In the eighteenth century belief in the supernatural exchanged for belief in the physical influence of comets–Remains of cometary superstitions in the nineteenth century–The comet of 1812 and the Russian campaign ; Napoleon I. and the comet of 1769; the great comet of 1831 in Italy.

We have just seen that the superstitious ideas of the Middle Ages were yet dominant in the height of the Renaissance, since a man of learning like Ambrose Paré–no astronomer, it is true–could attribute to comets the same malign influences as those ascribed to them in- the year 1000, when the end of the world was confidently expected. Nor could it be otherwise, science not having then assigned to comets, in common with other extraordinary meteors, their true place in the order of nature.

Little by little, however, healthier ideas make their way, and to the supernatural influence of comets we shall now see gradually succeed in the minds of men of science and the more enlightened of the people the idea of an influence purely physical, at first under the form of simple hypotheses, and afterwards as a probability deduced from observations and facts.