ITwas this very phase of his intellectual life which had drawn the two friends so intimately together. Happy at being alive, in the flower of her spring-time, expanding to the light of life,—a harp thrilling with all the harmonies of Nature,—the beautiful Northern girl still sometimes dreamed of the fays and elves of her native clime, of the angels and mysteries of the Christian religion which had soothed her childhood. The credulity of her early days had not obscured her understanding; she thought freely, and sought sincerely for the truth; while regretting perhaps that she no longer believed in the paradise of the preachers, she felt nevertheless a strong desire to live forever. Death seemed to her a cruel injustice. She never thought of her mother lying on her death-bed in the ripe beauty of her thirtieth year,—taken away to the green and fragrant cemetery, filled with the songs of birds, while the roses were in full bloom; crossed off the book of life while all Nature still sang, still bloomed and shone,—she never thought of her mother's pale face, as I said, without a sudden shudder creeping all over her from head to foot. No, her mother was not dead! She would not die at thirty, or at any time! And he? He die! That sublime mind to be blotted out by a stoppage of the heart or breath? No, it was not possible! Men are mistaken! We shall know some day!
Then, too, sometimes she thought of these mysteries under a form rather more æsthetic and sentimental than scientific; but she thought of them. All her questionings, her doubts, the secret object of her conversations, perhaps her rapidly developed attachment for her friend,—the cause of it all was the insatiable thirstfor knowledge which consumed her soul. She hoped in him because she had already found in his writings a solution to the highest problems. He had taught her to know the universe; and she found this knowledge more beautiful, more vivid, more poetic, grander, than the old errorsand illusions. From the time when he told her that life had no object other than the search for truth, she had felt sure that he would find it; and her mind clung to and bound itself to his even more strongly than her heart.
They had lived a common intellectual life in this way for about three months, almost every day spending several hours reading original essays, written in different languages, on science and philosophy,—the theory of atoms, molecular physics, organic chemistry, thermo-dynamics, and the different sciences whose object is the knowledge of existence,—or in discoursing upon the real or apparent contradictions of hypotheses; sometimes finding statements and coincidences most remarkable for their scientific axioms, in the books of purely literary writers, and occasionally astonished at the foresight of some great authors. These readings, investigations, and comparisons had especially interested them by the discrimination which their minds were led to make, as they became more and more enlightened, between nine tenths of the writers whose works are absolutely worthless, and half of the last tenth, whose writings have but a superficial value. Having thus cleared thefield of literature, they took great delight and satisfaction in the restricted society of superior minds. Perhaps mixed with it was a little feeling of pride.
One day Spero arrived earlier than usual. "Eureka!" he cried. But correcting himself quickly, added, "Perhaps."
Leaning against the chimney-piece, where a bright fire crackled, while his companion looked at him with her large eyes full of curiosity, he began to speak with a sort of unconscious solemnity, as though he were discussing something with his own mind in the solitude of the woods.
*****
"What we see is only apparent. Reality is quite different.
"The sun apparently turns about us, rising every morning, setting at night; the earth where we are seems to be motionless: but the contrary is the truth. We live on a whirling projectile, thrown into space with a speed seventy-five times as great as that which carries a cannon-ball.
"Our ears are pleased by a harmonious concert. Sound does not exist; it is merely an impression of the senses produced by vibrationsof a certain size and rapidity on the air, which in themselves are silent. There would be no sound without the acoustic nerve and the brain. In reality there is nothing but motion.
"The rainbow spreads its radiant circle; the rose and corn-flower, dripping with rain, glitter in the sun; the green meadow, the golden furrow, diversify the plain with their bright colors. There are no colors; there is no light,—there is nothing but the ether waves, which cause a vibration of the optic nerve. Appearances are deceitful. The sun warms and fertilizes; fire burns. There is no heat, only sensation; heat, like light, is but one form of motion,—invisible but supreme, sovereign motion!
*****
"Take a strong iron beam, like one of those used so generally in building nowadays. It is set up in space, ten metres high, between two walls which support its ends. It is 'solid.' In the middle of it is placed a weight of one, two, or ten thousand kilograms; but it does not even show this enormous weight,—a level would hardly find a depression in it. And yet this beam is composed of particles which do not touch each other, which are in perpetual vibration,which separate under the influence of heat, and are drawn together by cold. Tell me, if you please, in what the solidity of this bar of iron consists. Its material atoms? Assuredly not, since they do not touch. That solidity lies in molecular attraction,—that is to say, in an immaterial force.
"Speaking absolutely, solidity does not exist. Take up a heavy iron cannon-ball: this ball is composed of invisible molecules which do not touch each other. The continuity which the surface seems to have, and the apparent solidity of the ball are, then, pure illusions. To the mind which would analyze it, its inner structure is an eddying swarm of little gnats, like those darting about in the air on a summer day. Then suppose we heat this apparently solid ball: it will melt; heat it more, it will evaporate,—but without changing its nature for all that; gas or liquid, it will still be iron.
"We are in a house. All these walls, these floors, these carpets, this furniture, the marble mantelpiece, are also composed of particles which do not touch each other; and all these particles which constitute these objects are in constant motion, circulating around each other.
"Our body is in the same condition. It is formed by a perpetual circulation of molecules; it is a flame which is ceaselessly consumed and renewed; it is a stream on whose banks one sits down, expecting to see the same water again, but the perpetual course of things always brings fresh water. Each globule of our blood is a world (and we have five millions per cubic millimetre). Constantly, without let or hindrance, in our arteries and veins, in our flesh, in our brain, all circulates,—all moves, all hurries along in a vital whirl as rapid, proportionately, as that of the heavenly bodies. Molecule by molecule, our brain, our skull, our eyes, our nerves, our entire flesh ceaselessly renews itself, and so rapidly that in a few months our entire body is reconstituted.
*****
"From estimates founded on molecular attraction it has been calculated that in a tiny drop of water taken up on the point of a pin, a drop invisible to the naked eye, measuring one thousandth of a cubic millimetre, there are more than two hundred and twenty-five million molecules.
"In the head of a pin there are not less than eight sextillions of atoms, or eight thousandmillions of millions of millions; and these atoms are separated from each other by distances greater than their dimensions, these dimensions being invisible even to the most powerful microscope. If one felt inclined to count the number of these atoms contained in the head of a pin, by detaching in thought a thousand million of them per second, it would be necessary to continue the operation for two hundred and fifty-three thousand years, in order to finish the enumeration.
"In a drop of water, in the head of a pin, there are incomparably more atoms than there are stars in all the sky known to astronomers, armed with their strongest telescopes.
*****
"What upholds the earth, the sun, and all the stars of the universe in the eternal void? What upholds that heavy iron beam thrown between two walls, and upon which several stories are to be built? What keeps all bodies in shape? Force.
"The world, beings, and things, all that we see, is formed of invisible and imponderable atoms. The universe is a dynamism. God is the universal soul;in eo vivimus, movemur, et sumus.
"As the soul is force moving the body, the Infinite Being is force moving the universe. The purely mechanical theory is incomplete to an analyst who goes to the bottom of things. It is true that the humanwillis weak, in comparison to cosmic forces; yet by sending a train from Paris to Marseilles, a ship from Marseilles to Suez, I freely displace an infinitesimal portion of the earth's matter, and modify the moon's course. Blind men of the nineteenth century, come back to the swan of Mantua:Mens agitat molem.
"If I dissect matter, I find the invisible atom at the base of everything. Matter disappears, fades away into smoke. If my eyes had power enough to see the truth, they would see, through walls and bodies composed of separate molecules, atomic swarms. The eyes of the flesh do not see what is. The mind's eye must see. Do not rely on the evidence of your senses alone; there are as many stars over our heads in the daytime as there are during the night.
"In Nature there is neither astronomy nor chemistry nor philosophy nor mechanics; those are subjective methods of observation. There is but a single unit. The infinitely great is identicalwith the infinitely small. Space is infinite without being great. Time is eternal without being long. Stars and atoms are one.
*****
"The unity of the universe is constituted of invisible, imponderable, immaterial force, which moves atoms. If a single atom should cease to be moved by force, the universe would stop. The earth turns round the sun, the sun gravitates around a sidereal arch, which is itself capable of motion; the millions, the thousand millions of suns which people the universe move much more rapidly than gunpowder projectiles; these stars which seem to us to be motionless are suns thrown into the eternal void at the speed of ten, twenty, thirty millions of kilometres a day, all rushing towards an unknown goal,—suns, planets, earths, satellites, wandering comets ...; the fixed point, the centre of gravity sought after by analysts, flies as fast as it is pursued, and really exists nowhere. The atoms of which bodies are composed, move relatively as fast as stars in the sky. Motion regulates all things, forms all things.
"The atom itself is not an inert mass, it is a centre of force.
"That which essentially constitutes and organizes the human being, is not his material substance; it is not the protoplasm, nor the cell, nor those marvellous and fertile combinations of carbon with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,—it is animate, invisible, immaterialForce. It is that which groups, directs, and keeps together the innumerable particles which compose the exquisite harmony of the living body.
"Matter and energy have never been seen separated from each other; the existence of one implies the existence of the other; they are perhaps substantially identical.
"If the body should suddenly decay after death, as it slowly disintegrates and perpetually renews itself during life, it would matter little. The soul remains.The organizing cerebral atom is the centre of this force.It also is indestructible.
"What we see is deceitful.The real is the invisible."
*****
He began to pace up and down the floor. The young girl had listened to him as one listens to an apostle, a loved apostle; andalthough he had really spoken but for her, he had not apparently realized her presence,—she had been so silent and motionless. She went to him and took one of his hands in hers. "Oh!" she cried, "if you have not yet conquered Truth, she cannot elude you."
Then, growing excited herself, and alluding to an often-expressed reservation of his, "You think," she added, "that it is impossible for terrestrial man to attain to the truth because we have but five senses, and that a multitude of natural manifestations are unknown to our minds because we have no means of reaching them. Just as sight would be denied us if we were deprived of the optic nerve, hearing if we had no acoustic nerve, etc.; just as the vibrations, the exhibitions of force which pass between the strings ofour organic instrument, without causing those we have to quiver, are unknown to us. I concede that, and agree with you that the inhabitants of certain worlds maybe incomparably more advanced than we; but it seems to me that although earthly, you have found it out."
"My darling," he answered, sitting down beside her on the wide library lounge, "it is very certain that some of the strings in our terrestrial harp are missing: probably a citizen of the Sirius system would laugh at our pretentions. The smallest pieceof magnetized iron is stronger in finding the magnetic pole than either Newton or Leibnitz, and the swallow knows the variations of latitude better than did Christopher Columbus or Magellan. What did I say just now? That appearances are deceitful, and that our minds must see invisible force through matter. That is perfectly sure. Matter is not what it seems to be, and no man informed about the progress of the positive sciences could now pretend to be a materialist."
"Then," she said, "the cerebral atom, the principle of human organism, would be immortal, like all other atoms, if one should admit the fundamental assertions of chemistry. But it would differ from the others, possessing a higher rank, the soul being attached to it. And would it preserve the consciousness of its existence? Would the soul be comparable to an electric substance? Once I saw the lightning go through a drawing-room and extinguish the lights; when they were re-lighted, we found that the gilding had all been taken off the clock, and that the chased silver candlestick was gilded in several places. That is a subtle force!"
"Do not draw comparisons; they would betoo far from the truth. There is no doubt that the soul exists, as force does. We can admit that it and the cerebral atom are one; that it thus survives the dissolution of the body we can imagine."
"But what becomes of it? Where does it go?"
"The greater number of souls never even suspect their own existence. Out of the fourteen hundred millions of human beings who people the earth, ninety-nine one hundredths do not think. Great heavens! what would they do with immortality? As the molecule of iron floats in the blood, throbbing in Lamartine's or Hugo's temple, or is fixed for a time in Cæsar's sword; as the molecule of hydrogen shines in the lobby of a theatre, or merges itself into the drop of water swallowed by a fish in the dusky depths of the sea, so living atoms sleep which have never thought. Thinking souls are the inheritance of the intellectual life. They preserve humanity's patrimony, and increase it for the future. Without this immortality of human souls which are conscious of their existence and live through the mind, all the history of the earth would end in nothing, and the whole creation, that of the most sublime worlds aswell as that of our mean little planet, would be a deceptive absurdity, more miserable and pitiable than the cast of an earthworm. That has a right to be; but the universe would not have. Do you imagine that the thousand millions of worlds attain the splendors of life and thought, to succeed each other without end in the sidereal universe, only to give birth to constantly deceived hopes, and grandeurs which are perpetually destroyed? It is useless for us to humble ourselves; we cannot admit that nothing is the supreme object of perpetual progress, proved by all the history of Nature. Now, souls are the seeds of planetary humanities."
"Can they transport themselves from one world to another?"
"Nothing is so difficult to understand as that of which one is ignorant, nothing more simple than what one knows. Who is surprised now to see that the electric telegraph instantly sends human thought across continents and seas? Who is surprised to see lunar attraction raise the waters of the ocean and produce tides? Who is surprised to see light transmit itself from one star to another at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres per second? Besides,thinkers alone could appreciate the grandeur of these marvels; the vulgar are surprised at nothing. If some new discovery to-morrow should enable us to make signals to the inhabitants of Mars and receive replies from them, three quarters of mankind would think nothing of it the day after. Yes, the animating forces can transport themselves from one world to the other; not everywhere nor always, to be sure, and not all of them. There are laws and conditions. My will, with the help of my muscles, can raise my arm or throw a stone; if I take a weight of twenty kilos, it will still raise my arm; if I want to raise a weight of a thousand kilos, I can no longer do it. Some minds areincapable of any activity; others have acquired transcendent faculties. Mozart at six years of age surprised all his hearers by the power of his musical genius, and at eight published his first two sonatas; while the greatest dramatic author who ever existed, Shakspeare, had written nothing worthy of his name until after he was thirty years old. It is not necessary to believe that the soul should belong to some supernatural world. Everything is in Nature. It is hardly more than a hundred thousand years since terrestrial humanity evolved itself from the animal chrysalis. For millions of years, during the long historic series of the primary, secondary, and tertiary periods, there was not a single eye on the earth to see these grand sights, a single human mind to contemplate them. Progress has slowly raised the inferior souls of plants and animals; man is quite recent on the planet. Nature is in ceaseless progress, the universe is a perpetual growth, ascent is the supreme law.
"All worlds," he added, "are not actually inhabited. Some are at the dawn, others at twilight. For example, in our solar system, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and several of his satellitesseem to be in full vital activity. Jupiter appears not to have passed its primary period; the Moon has perhaps no longer any inhabitants. Our own period is of no more importance in the general history of the universe than one anthill in the infinite. Before the existence of the earth, there had been, from all eternity, worlds peopled with humanities. When our planet shall have ceased to live, and the last human family shall have fallen asleep on the brink of the last lagoon of the frozen ocean, numberless suns will still shine in the infinite, there will still be mornings and evenings, spring-time and flowers, hopes and joys, other suns, other earths, other humanities,—boundless space, peopled with tombs and cradles. But life, thought, eternal progress, are the final object of creation.
"The earth is a star's satellite. Now, as well as in the future, we are citizens of the sky; whether we know it or not, we are really living in the stars."
Thus the two friends conversed about the deep subjects which engrossed their thoughts; when they were conquering a problem, even if it were incomplete, they experienced a true happiness at having taken another step in theirsearch for the unknown, and could then talk more quietly about the ordinary things of life. They were two minds equally eager for knowledge, imagining in their youthful fervor that they could isolate themselves from the world, look down upon human ideas, and in their celestial flight reach the star of Truth, which shone above their heads in the depths of the infinite.
INtheir life together, pleasant and intimate as it was, there was something lacking. These conversations on the serious topics of being or non-being, their exchange of ideas on the analysis of humanity, their inquiries into the final end of the existence of things, satisfied their minds sometimes, but not their hearts. When they had been together for a long time, talking under the garden trellis which towered above the picture of the great city, or in the silent library, the student, the thinker could not leave his companion; they sat hand inhand, mute, attracted and repelled by an irresistible power. After leaving each other, both felt a singular, painful void in their breasts, an indefinable uneasiness, as though some link necessary for both their lives had been broken; and each hoped for nothing but the hour of meeting. He loved her, not for himself, but for herself, with an almost impersonal affection, with a feeling of high esteem as well as ardent love; and by a constantly fought combat with his desire he had been able to resist it. But one day, when they were both sitting on the wide divan in the library, strewn, as usual, with books and loose leaves, a silence fell upon them, and it happened that, overcome perhaps by the weight of his long-continued efforts to resist so powerful an attraction, the young author's head insensibly drooped to his companion's shoulder, and almost at once ... their lips met....
Oh, unutterable joys of requited love; insatiable intoxication of the heart transported with happiness; never-ending delights of the uncurbed imagination; sweet music of the heart,—to what ethereal heights have you not raised the chosen ones, given up to your supreme felicities!Suddenly forgetful of this lower world, they fly on outstretched wings to some enchanted paradise, lose themselves in celestial depths, and soar away to the sublime regions of eternal rapture. The world, with its joys and its sorrows, no longer exists for them; they live in light, in fire,—they are salamanders, phœnixes, freed from all weight, light as flame, burning themselves out, rising again from their ashes, always luminous, always ardent, invulnerable, invincible.
The expansion of their first long-repressed delights threw the lovers into an ecstatic existence in which metaphysics and its problems were for a time forgotten. This lasted six months. The sweetest but most imperious of feelings had suddenly absorbed and taken possession of them, thus completing the insufficient intellectual satisfactions of the mind. From the day of the kiss, George Spero not only entirely disappeared from society, but even ceased to write; and I lost sight of him myself, notwithstanding the long and true affection he had professed for me. Logicians might have been able to conclude from this that for the first time in his life he was satisfied that he had found thesolution of the great problem,—the supreme object of the existence of beings.
They were living in this "selfishness for two" which, while moving mankind from our optic centre, diminishes its defects and makes it appear more beautiful. Satisfied by their mutual affection, everything in nature and humanity sang a perpetual hymn of happiness and love. Often in the evening they walked along the banks of the Seine, dreamily contemplating the effects of light and shade which make the sky of Paris so exquisite at twilight, when thesilhouettes of towers and buildings are thrown out against the luminous background in the west. Piles of rose-colored and purple clouds, illuminated by the distant reflection of the sea over which the vanished sun is still shining, give our skies a character of their own, not like that of Naples, bathed in the west by the Mediterranean mirror, but surpassing Venice perhaps, whose illumination is pale and eastern. It might chance that, their steps having led them to the old island of the Cité, theywould stroll along the river bank, passing in sight of Notre Dame and the old Châtelet, whose dark outlines might still be seen against the dimly lighted sky. Sometimes, often indeed, enticed by the brilliance of the setting sun and by the fresh green of the country, they went along thequais, out beyond the ramparts of the great city, and strayed as far as the solitudes of Boulogne or Billancourt, shut in between the dusky hills of Meudon and Saint-Cloud. They were contemplating Nature; they forgot the noisy city lost behind them; and walking with the same step, forming but one being, they received the same impressions, thought the same thoughts, and by their silence spoke the same language. The stream flowed on at their feet, the noises of the day were dying away, the first stars were peeping out. Icléa liked to tell George their names as they appeared.
March and April often offer Paris mild evenings, on which the first warm breezes, forerunners of spring, greet us. Orion's brilliant stars, the dazzling Sirius, the Twins, Castor and Pollux glitter in the immense sky; the Pleiades sink towards the western horizon; but Arcturus and Boötes, shepherd of the celestial flocks,return, and a few hours later white and resplendent Vega rises on the eastern horizon, soon followed by the Milky Way. Arcturus with its golden rays is always the first star to be recognized, from its piercing brilliancy and from its position in the prolongation of the tail of the Great Bear. Sometimes the lunar crescent was hanging in the western sky, and the young girl gazed admiringly, like Ruth by Boaz' side, at "that golden sickle in the field of stars."
The stars surround the earth, the earth is in the sky. Spero and his companion realized this, and perhaps no other couple on any other celestial earth lived on more intimate terms than they with the sky and infinity.
And yet by degrees, perhaps without noticing it himself, the young philosopher was gradually taking up again by shattered fragments his interrupted studies; analyzing subjects now with a deep feeling of optimism which he had never known before, in spite of his natural kindliness; excluding cruel conclusions because they seemed to him to be due to an insufficient knowledge of causes, looking at the panoramas of Nature and of humanity in a new light. She too had taken up, at least partially, the studies which she hadbegun in common with him; but a new feeling filled her soul, and her mind had not the same freedom for intellectual work. Absorbed in this constant affection for a being whom she had wholly won, she saw only through him, acted only by him. In quiet evening hours, when she went to the piano and played a sonata by Chopin, which she was astonished to find she had not understood until she was in love, or to accompany her pure rich voice while singing the Norwegianliederby Grieg or Bull, or our own Gounod's melodies, it seemed to her, unconsciously perhaps, that her lover was the only listener capable of appreciating these inspirations of the heart. What delicious hours he spent, stretched on a divan in that spacious library in the house at Passy, sometimes idly following the capricious rings of smoke from a Turkish cigarette, while she gave herself up to fanciful memories, singing the sweetSaetergientens Sondagof her native land, the serenade from "Don Juan," Lamartine's "Lake," or else when running her skilful fingers over the keys she sent the melodious dream of Boccherini's minuet floating into the air.
Spring had come. May had brought theopening fêtes at the Universal Exhibition of which we spoke at the beginning of this story, and the great trees in the garden at Passy shaded the Eden of the loving couple. Icléa's father, who had suddenly been called to Tunis, returned with a collection of Arabian arms for his museum at Christiania. He intended to go back to Norway very soon, and it had been agreed between the young Norwegian girl and her lover that the marriage should take place in her native land on the anniversary of the mysterious apparition.
Their love was, from its very nature, very far removed from all those common-place unionsfounded, some on gross sensual pleasure, others on motives of interest more or less disguised, which represent the greater part of human love. Their cultivated minds kept them isolated in the loftier regions of thought; their delicacy of feeling kept them in an ideal atmosphere where all material burdens were forgotten; the extreme impressibility of their nerves, the exquisite refinement of all their sensations, brought them delights whose enjoyment seemed to have no end. If there is love in other worlds, it can be no deeper or more exquisite feeling. To a physiologist they would have been the living witnesses of the fact that, contrary to ordinary opinion, all enjoyment comes from the brain, the intensity of sensation corresponding to the psychic sensibility of the being.
Paris was for them, not a city, not a world, but the theatre of human history. They lived the past centuries over again. The old quarters which had not yet been ruined by modern changes,—the Cité, with Notre Dame, Saint-Julien le Pauvre, whose walls still recall Chilpéric and Frédégonde; the old houses where Albert le Grand, Petrarch, Dante, Abelard, had lived; the old University, anterior to the Sorbonne,and belonging to the same vanished centuries; the cloister of Saint-Merry with its sombre little paths, the abbey of Saint-Martin, Clovis' tower on the mountain, Saint-Geneviève, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a relic of the Merovingians, Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, whose bell sounded the tocsin, the Sainte-Chapelle at Louis IX.'s palace, all memorials of French history, were the object of their pilgrimages. They were alone in crowds, looking into the past and seeing what very few people know how to see.
And so the immense city spoke its language of other days,—either when, lost amid the monsters, griffins, pillars, and capitals, the arabesques of the tower and galleries of Notre Dame, they saw the human hive go to sleep at their feet in the evening dusk, or, when rising higher still, they tried from the top of the Panthéon to restore the old outlines of Paris and its gradual development from the Roman emperors who lived in the Baths, to Philip Augustus and his successors.
The spring sunshine, the blooming lilacs, the joyous May mornings, full of bird-songs and nervous exhilaration, often drew them at random away from Paris into the meadows and woods.The hours flew by like a breath of wind, the day had passed like a thought, and the night prolonged the divine dream of love. In the swiftly revolving world of Jupiter, where the days and nights are twice as rapid as they are here, and do not even last ten hours, lovers do not find the time fade away any more quickly. The measure of time is in ourselves.
They were sitting one evening on the roof of the old tower at the Château de Chevreuse; there was no railing, and they were close together in the centre, from whence one can look down over the unobstructed surrounding landscape. The warm air from the valley, impregnated with wild perfumes from the neighboringwoods, rose to where they sat; the warbler was still singing, and the nightingale in the growing shadows was trying over his melodious hymn to the stars. The sun had just set in a blaze of crimson and gold, and the west alone was still illuminated by a glowing radiance. Everything seemed to be asleep on Nature's broad bosom.
Icléa was a little pale; but in the glow of the western sky her skin was so clear, so delicate, so ideal that the light seemed to penetrate itand illuminate it from within. Her eyes were misty with soft languor, and her little, childlike mouth was lightly parted; she seemed lost in contemplation of the sunset light. Leaning on Spero's breast, her arms twined about his neck, she was sinking into a revery when a shooting-star crossed the sky just over the tower. She started with a little feeling of superstition.
The most brilliant stars were already sparkling in the heavenly depths. Arcturus, a brilliant golden yellow, was very high, almost at the zenith; Vega, a pure white light, had already risen towards the west; in the north, Capella; in the west, Castor, Pollux, and Procyon. The seven stars of the Great Bear, Regulus, Spica Virginis, were also discernible. Noiselessly, one by one, the stars came out to punctuate the heavens. The north star showed the only motionless spot in the celestial sphere.
The moon was rising, its reddish disk somewhat diminished from being on the wane. Mars was shining between Pollux and Regulus in the southwest, Saturn in the southeast. Twilight was slowly yielding its place to the mysterious reign of night.
"Does it not seem to you," she asked, "thatall these stars are like eyes looking down at us?"
"Celestial eyes, like yours. What can they see on earth more beautiful than you—and our love?"
"And yet—" she added.
"Yes, 'and yet,'—the world, family, society, custom, moral laws, and all that. I understand your thought. We have forgotten all these things to obey attraction alone,—like the sun, like all those stars, like the warbling nightingale, like all Nature. Very soon we shall give those social customs the part which belongs to them, and can openly proclaim our love. Shall we be any happier for that? Is it possible to be any happier than we are at this very moment?"
"I am yours," she replied, "I do not exist for myself. I am swallowed up in your light, your love, in your happiness, and I care for nothing, nothing more. No. I was thinking of those stars, of those eyes looking down at us, and wondering where all the human eyes are which have watched them for millions of years as we do to-night. Where are all the hearts that have beaten as our heart beats now? Where are allthe souls who have lost themselves in endless kisses in the mysterious vanished nights?"
"They all exist, nothing can be destroyed. We associate heaven and earth, and we are right. In all the ages, with all peoples, among all beliefs, mankind has always asked the secret of its destiny of the starry heavens. That was one kind of divination. The Earth is a star of heaven, like Mars and Saturn, which we see yonder, earths of the sky, lighted by the same sun as we are, and like all these stars, which are distant suns. Thought translates what man has believed ever since it existed. All eyes have sought the answer to the great enigma in the skies, and Urania has replied to them since the early days of mythology."
The night was coming on. The moon, slowly rising in the eastern sky, was shedding her radiance through the atmosphere, insensibly displacing the twilight; and in the city at their feet, below the thickets and ruins, a few lights were already beginning to appear here and there. The two had risen, and were standing in the centre of the tower roof, closely clasped together. She was beautiful, framed in the aureole of her hair, whose curls floated over her shoulders; littlepuffs of spring-like air, fragrant with perfume of violets, gillyflowers, lilacs, and May roses were rising from the neighboring gardens. Solitude and silence were about them. Their lips united in a long kiss,—the hundredth at least of that beautiful day of spring. She was still dreaming. A fugitive smile suddenly lighted up her face, then faded away like a passing cloud.
"Of what are you thinking?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing! A worldly, foolish thought; a little silly—nothing."
"But what was it?" he asked, taking her again in his arms.
"Oh! I was only wondering if people had mouths in those other worlds; because, you know—a kiss—lips—"
And so the hours passed away,—days, weeks, months, in a perfect union of all their thoughts, all their feelings and impressions. The June sun was already shining at its solstice, and the time to leave for Icléa's home had come. At the appointed time she left with her father for Christiania, and Spero followed them a few days later. It was the young savant's intention to stay in Norway until autumn, and continue the studies on the aurora borealis he had begun theyear before,—observations which were especially interesting to him, and which he had had scarcely time to begin.
This visit to Norway was the prolongation of a happy dream. The fair Northern girl cast an aureole of perpetual winsomeness about him which would perhaps have made him still forget the attractions of science if she herself had not had, as we have seen, an insatiable taste for study. The experiments which the indefatigable seeker had undertaken on atmospheric electricity interested her as much as they did him. She too wanted to know about those mysteriousflames in the aurora borealis which palpitate at night in high atmospheres; and as his series of investigations led him to desire a balloon ascension, in order to reach and surprise the phenomenon at its source, she also experienced the same wish. He tried to dissuade her from it, those aeronautic expeditions not being free from danger. But the very idea of sharing a peril with him would have been enough to make her deaf to her loved one's entreaties. After long hesitation Spero decided to take her with him, and prepared for an ascension from the University of Christiania on the first night of the aurora borealis.
THEdisturbances of the magnetic needle had announced the aurora's presence even before the sun went down, and the inflation of the balloon with pure hydrogen gas was begun while the sky showed in the magnetic North that coloring of golden green which is always the sure indication of an aurora borealis. The preparations were ended in a couple of hours. The atmosphere, entirely free from all clouds, was perfectly limpid, the stars twinkled in the bosom of a sky profoundly dark and without a moon; but towards the North a soft light shone in an arc above a black segment, throwing into the upper atmosphere slight flushes of a pale greenish rose color, symbolizing the palpitations of an unknown life. Icléa's father, who was watching the inflation of the balloon, had no suspicion that his daughter was going; but at the last moment she stepped into the car as if to inspect it. Spero gave the signal, and the balloon rose slowly, majestically, over the city of Christiania, which, lighted by thousands of lamps, appeared under the eyes of the travellers rising through the air, to diminish in size as it disappeared in the darkness.
Soon the balloon, taking an oblique ascent, hovered over the darkened landscape, and the paling lights also disappeared. The noises of the city died away at the same time into profound silence: it was the silence of the upper heights which enveloped the air-ship now. Icléa was impressed by this extraordinary stillness,perhaps, above all, by the novelty of the situation, and clung to her rash lover's side. They mounted rapidly. The aurora borealis appeared to descend, and spread itself out under the stars, like an undulating drapery of fleecy gold and purple, overrun with electric flashes. Spero watched his instruments, and by the helpof a little crystal globe filled with glow-worms, wrote down the indications corresponding to the heights attained. The balloon went up steadily. What a delight to the investigator! In a few moments he would soar to the crest of the aurora borealis; he would find an answer to the question about the aurora's height which had been asked in vain by so many philosophers, and especially by his beloved masters, the two great "psychologists and philosophers," Oersted and Ampère!
Icléa's emotion had calmed itself. "Were you afraid?" asked her lover. "The balloon is safe; you need fear no accident,—everything has been provided for. We will go down in an hour; there is not a breath of wind stirring on the earth."
"No," she said, while the celestial light threw over her a roseate and transparent illumination; "but it is so strange, so beautiful, so divine. It is grand for little me! I shuddered for a moment. It seems to me that I love you more than ever!" and throwing her arms about his neck, she kissed him in a long, passionate, clinging embrace.
The solitary balloon was moving silentlythrough the aerial heights, a spheroid of transparent gas enclosed in its silken envelope, whose vertical gores, joining each other at the valve on the top, could be seen from the car; the lower part of the balloon being open for the dilation of the gas.
The dusky brightness that falls from the stars, of which Corneille speaks, would have been sufficient without the gleams from the aurora borealis to enable them to distinguish the whole of the aerial skiff. The car was hung to the net which enveloped the silken vessel by strong ropes tied to the basket-work and interlaced under the feet of the aeronauts. The silence was impressively solemn; the beating of their hearts could have been heard. They were sailing at a height of five thousand metres, with an unaccustomed gravity; the upper wind was carrying them along without the faintest breath being felt in the car, for the balloon floated in the moving air like a simple bubble,—motionless, except as the current carried it along. Our travellers—sole inhabitants of these lofty regions, in full enjoyment of the exquisite elation which aeronauts know when once they have breathed that rare and sublimated atmosphere—looked down upon the realms below, forgetful of all earthly cares and associations, in the silence of their vast isolation. But they appreciated and enjoyed their unique situation more than any of those who had preceded them, for they added to the pleasures of an aerial voyage the rapture of their own happiness. They spoke in low tones, as if afraid of being overheard by the angels, and of seeing the magic charm dissolved which held them so near to heaven.... Sometimes sudden flashes came to them,—gleams from the aurora borealis; then darkness, deeper and more unfathomable than before, reigned again.
They were floating thus in their starry dream when a quick, shrill noise, like that of a new whistle, sounded in their ears. They listened, leaned far out over the car, and listened again. The noise did not come from the earth. Was it an electrical blast from the aurora borealis? Was it the hiss of some magnetic storm in the upper air? Lightning coming from the depths of space flashed about them and disappeared. They listened breathlessly again. The sound was quite close to them.... It was the gas escaping from the balloon!
Either the valve had partly opened of itself, or they had pressed upon the connecting rope while incautiously moving about in the car; at all events, the gas was escaping.
Spero at once detected the cause of the disquieting noise, and it terrified him, for it was impossible to close the valve again. He examined the barometer, which had begun slowly to rise, while the balloon was beginning to descend. The fall, slow at first, but inevitable, would increase in mathematical proportion. Trying to fathom the abyss below them, he saw the flames of the aurora borealis reflected in the water of an immense lake. The balloon was now descending with great rapidity, and was not more than three thousand metres from the ground. Outwardly calm, but fully conscious of the certain and impending peril, the unfortunate aeronaut threw out one after the other the two sacks left for ballast, then the maps, the instruments, the anchor, and emptied the car; but this lightening of the weight was not enough, and served only to slacken momentarily their accelerated speed. The balloon was now descending, or rather falling, at a tremendous rate, and was but a few hundred metres above the lake.Strong wind-currents blew up and down and whistled in their ears.