[82] On February 8, 1843, at half-past ten in the morning, an earthquake shock which lasted seventy seconds caused great damage at Guadeloupe, destroyed the town of La Pointe à Pitreand, almost the whole of this French colony, and engulfed thousands of dead and wounded. A great deal of damage was also done in the English Antilles.
[83] In 1843 a Frenchman, M. Faye, discovered a periodic comet, whose orbit he calculated, and which bears his name. This discovery made some stir. M. Faye was awarded the Lalande prize of the Academy of Sciences and was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour.
[84] A remarkable fragment upon Saint Cyr was printed and published in 1843 for private circulation. It may be regarded as the basis of the work of the Duc de Noailles on _Madame de Maintenon and the Chief Events of the Reign of Louis XIV._ The fragment appears at the beginning of the third volume of this work, which was to open the doors of the French Academy to the Duc de Noailles.
_Paris, April 3, 1843._--Yesterday I called upon Madame de Rambuteau at the Hotel de Ville. She was coming back from service at Notre Dame and had just heard the Abbé de Ravignan preaching against feminine luxury and the want of decency in feminine fashions. He used the word "low-cut" and in speaking of low-cut dresses, he went so far as to say "Where will they stop?" and asserted that excess in this direction was not even pretty. Father de Ravignan is by temperament grave, simple and austere and such expressions were regarded as particularly daring in his mouth. However, his criticism is only too true. Women are far too extravagant: our toilets are complicated by a thousand accessories, which double the expense without producing any better effect, and young women or those who wish to be fashionable, are hardly dressed. My late uncle M. de Talleyrand, when I began to take Pauline into society, advised me most seriously to respect the decencies of dress and said to me on this subject, expressing almost the same ideas as those of M. de Ravignan, "If people show what is pretty, it is indecent, and if they show what is ugly, it is very ugly indeed." He also said of a very thin woman who disdained to wear the lightest gauze, "No one could disclose more and show less."