We show that the pairing on de Rham realizations of 1-motives in "Theorie di
Hodge III", IHES 44, can be defined over any base scheme and we prove that it
gives rise to a perfect duality if one is working with a 1-motive and its
Cartier dual. Furthermore we study universal extensions of 1-motives and their
relation with ♮-extensions.Comment: 21 pages. Last section rewritten. New proof