You can imagine how deeply moved was Chasles, the naïve mathematician. He rushed with them to the French Academy of Science, and at once the scientific world was stirred into a commotion. At the height of this agitation Sir David Brewster came forward and announced that the letters must be from the pen of an impostor, proving conclusively at the same time that Newton was a mere child of ten when these pretended messages of Pascal were written. Thus began the beginning of the end for the forger.
Certain testimony given by Chasles at Lucas’s trial before a tribunal of the Seine, in 1870, is almost unbelievable. It seems ridiculous to me that any man, especially a collector, could have been so simple and gullible as was Chasles. He spent 140,000 francs, a lot of money in those days, for a list of autograph letters that is too good to pass over lightly. Although Monsieur Lucas supplied his customer with the important names of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, including Boccaccio, Cervantes, Dante, Racine, Shakespeare, and Spinoza, he likewise delved into the remote past and produced letters from Abélard, Alcibiades, Attila, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Ovid, Pliny, Plutarch, and Pompey!
Lucas was careful enough to mix an ink for his forgeries which, when dry, gave the appearance of age. Then he treated the completed masterpieces in such a way as to make them look worn and of great age. But his cleverness was only half-witted! He had the audacity not only to write these ancient epistles on paper from local mills, which showed the watermarks of Angoulême, but most daringly inscribed them in modern French!
The late Simon Gratz, in his delightful and authoritative volume, A Book about Autographs, gives translations of several of these shameless fabrications. Here is the letter which Chasles believed Cleopatra wrote to Julius Cæsar:—
Cleopatra, Queen, to her very beloved Julius Cæsar, Emperor.
My very beloved:—
Our son Cæsarion is well. I hope that he will soon be able to support the travel from here to Marseilles, where I need to send him to study, as much for the good air one breathes there as for the fine things which are taught. I beg you will tell me how long you will still remain in that country, for I want myself to take our son there and see you on this occasion. This is to tell you, my very beloved, the pleasure I feel when I am near you, and meanwhile I pray the gods to have you in their guard.
The XI March year of Rome VCCIX
Cleopatra
Think with what pious glee Monsieur Chasles read the following priceless letter from Lazarus, the resuscitated, to Saint Peter!