Note 5 — Chapter I · Dawnings of Steam Power—The Marquis of Worcester.

De Caus eventually returned to France, and was appointed engineer to the King. During the later years of his life he was employed in carrying out plans for the better supply of Paris with water. The story so often told of De Caus having been shut up in the Bicêtre turns out to be a fiction. Though a Huguenot, he was not persecuted by Richelieu, but was, on the contrary, employed by him; and in 1624 he dedicated to that prelate his treatise entitled ‘Horologes Solitaires.’ Mr. Charles Read, editor of several interesting memoirs of early French Protestants, has recently brought to light and published in the ‘Gazette des Tribunaux’ the proofs of the patronage of De Caus by Richelieu, and reproduced the original documents, which he discovered slumbering in the dust of the State Records at Paris. In 1621 De Caus is found proposing to Louis XIII. to adopt measures for cleansing Paris and the faubourgs of dirt and uncleanness, by a system of reservoirs established at elevated points, and by fountains at various places which he indicated. The king and his council sent the propositions to the chief magistrate of Paris, and Mr. Read transcribes the deliberation which took place on the subject at the City Council, as handed down in the records deposited in the Imperial Archives. De Caus died at Paris, and was buried in the church of La Trinité in February, 1626.