At any rate this confession was a frank one, and the same frankness characterized the replies from the observatory of Montsouris and the magnetic station in the park of St.Maur.

The same respect for the truth distinguished the Bureau des Longitudes.
The provinces were slightly more affirmative.

Perhaps in the night of the fifth and the morning of the sixth of May there had appeared a flash of light of electrical origin which lasted about twenty seconds.

At the Pic du Midi this light appeared between nine and ten in the evening.

At the Meteorological Observatory on the Puy de Dome the light had been observed between one and two o'clock in the morning; at Mont Ventoux in Provence it had been seen between two and three o'clock; at Nice it had been noticed between three and four o'clock; while at the Semnoz Alps between Annecy, Le Bourget, and Le Leman, it had been detected just as the zenith was paling with the dawn.
Now it evidently would not do to disregard these observations altogether.