Uranie. English Read online

  II.

  UNKNOWN HUMANITIES.

  Then I saw the Earth sinking down into the yawning depths of immensity;the cupolas of the observatory, Paris with its lights, were rapidlyfading away. Although feeling as if I were motionless, I had the samesensation which one experiences on rising in a balloon and seeing theearth descend. I went up, up, in a magic flight toward the inaccessiblezenith. Urania was with me, a little higher up, looking at me kindly andpointing out the kingdoms below. Day had come again. I recognizedFrance, the Rhine, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain,the Atlantic Ocean, the Channel, England. But all this liliputiangeography soon shrank away. Speedily the terrestrial globe was reducedto the dimensions of the moon in its last quarter; then to a little fullmoon.

  "There," said she, "is the famous terrestrial globe on which so manypassions stir, within whose narrow limits the thought of so manymillions of human beings is confined, whose sight cannot extend beyondit. See how its apparent size diminishes as our horizon develops. We canno longer distinguish Europe from Asia; and there is North America. Howvery small it all is!"

  As we passed through the Moon's neighborhood I had noticed oursatellite's hilly landscapes, the mountain crests radiant with light,deep valleys filled with shadows, and I should have liked to stop for anearer study of the surroundings; but Urania did not deign to bestow somuch as a passing glance at it, and drew me on in a rapid flight towardthe sidereal regions.

  We were still ascending. The Earth grew smaller and smaller as wereceded from it, until it looked like a simple star shining from solarillumination on the bosom of dark and empty space. We turned toward theSun, which shone in space, but without filling it with light, so that wecould see stars and planets at the same time, no longer obscured by itsrays, because it could not illumine empty space. The angelic goddessshowed me Mercury, in close neighborhood to the Sun, Venus, shining onthe other side, the Earth, equalling Venus in appearance and brilliancy,Mars, whose inland seas and canals I recognized, Jupiter, with its fourenormous moons, Saturn, Uranus. "All these worlds," said she, "areupheld in vacancy by the attraction of the Sun, around which theyrevolve with great speed. It is an harmonious choir gravitating aboutits centre. The Earth is but a floating island, a little hamlet of thisgreat solar country; and the solar empire itself is but a littleprovince on the breast of sidereal vastness."

  We rose still higher. The Sun and its system were rapidly passing. TheEarth was but a little spot now; Jupiter himself, that colossal world,had melted away, like Mars and Venus, to a tiny little dot scarcelylarger than the Earth. We passed within sight of Saturn, surrounded byhis gigantic rings, whose study alone would be sufficient to prove theimmense and unimaginable variety reigning in the universe. Saturn is awhole system in itself, with its rings composed of particles torn fromit in its dizzy revolution, and with its eight satellites accompanyingit like a celestial retinue.

  As we soared aloft, our Sun decreased in grandeur. Soon it had descendedto the rank of a planet, then lost all majesty, all superiority over thesidereal population, and was nothing more than a star, scarcely morebrilliant than the others. I looked about me at all this vast extent,on whose spangled bosom we were still going upward, and tried torecognize the constellations; but their forms were beginning to changeperceptibly, from the lengthening perspective caused by my journey. Ithought I could see that our Sun had insensibly dwindled to a tiny starand joined the constellation of the Centaur; while a new light, pale,bluish, and very strange, seemed to greet me from the direction towardwhich Urania was bearing me. This new brightness had nothing terrestrialabout it, and reminded me of no effect that I had ever seen on the Earthamong the changing tints of the sunset after a storm, or in theundefined mists of morning, or during the calm and silent moonlighthours on the mirror of the sea. This last effect is nearer itsappearance; but the strange light was, and became more and more, of areal blue,--blue, not like a reflection of celestial azure, nor like acontrast analogous to that produced by an electric light compared withgas, but blue, as if the Sun itself were blue.

  Imagine my amazement when I discovered that we were approaching theinfluence of an absolutely blue sun, like a shining disk, which mighthave been cut from one of our most beautiful terrestrial skies, standingout luminously upon a perfectly black background all thickly studdedwith stars. This sapphire sun was the centre of a planetary systemlighted by its rays. We were to pass quite near one of the planets. Theblue sun increased perceptibly in size; but--another phenomenon assingular as the first--the light it threw upon this planet seemed to betinged on one side with green. I looked into the sky again, and saw asecond sun,--this one a beautiful emerald green. I could not believe myeyes!

  Urania said: "We are crossing the solar system of Gamma Andromedae, ofwhich you see but one part as yet; for it is made up, not of these twosuns, but in reality of three,--one blue, one green, and one orangeyellow. The blue sun, which is the smallest, turns around the green sun;and the latter gravitates with its companion around the great orangesun, which you will perceive in an instant."

  Sure enough! A second later I saw a third sun, colored with a glowingradiancy, whose contrast with its two companions produced a mostdazzling illumination. I knew about this interesting sidereal systemfrom having observed it more than once through the telescope; butI had never suspected its real splendor. What fiery depths! whatscintillations! what brilliancy of color in that strange source of bluelight in the second sun's green illumination and the tawny, goldeneffulgence of the third!

  But, as I have said, we were approaching one of the worlds belonging tothe system of the sapphire sun. Everything was blue,--landscapes, water,plants, rocks,--slightly greenish on the side lighted by the secondsun, and hardly touched by the rays of the orange sun, which was risingon the distant horizon. As we floated into the atmosphere of this worlda soft, delicious music was wafted into the air like a perfume, a dream.Never had I heard anything like it. The sweet, deep, distant melodyseemed to come from a choir of harps and violins, strengthened by anaccompaniment of organs. It was an exquisite anthem, which charmed atonce; it needed no analyzing to be understood; it filled the soul withecstasy. It seemed to me that I could have lingered there listening foran eternity. I was so fearful of losing a single note that I dared notspeak to my guide. Urania noticed it; stretching out her hand toward alake, she pointed to a group of winged beings who were hovering over theblue waters.

  They had not the earthly human form. They were beings who had evidentlybeen created to live in air. They seemed woven out of light. At adistance I thought they were dragon-flies; they had their slender,graceful shape, the same wide wings, quickness, and lightness. But onexamining them more closely I noticed their height, which was notinferior to our own, and realized from the expression of their eyes thatthey were not animals. Their heads were very like that of thedragon-fly, and like those aerial creatures they had no legs. Thedelicious music to which I had been listening was but the noise of theirflight. They were very numerous,--perhaps many thousands.

  From the mountain-tops could be seen plants which were neither treesnor flowers, whose slender stalks rose to an enormous height; thebranched stems bearing, as though with outstretched arms, greattulip-shaped cups. These plants were alive, or as much so as oursensitive growths, perhaps more, and like the _desmodium_, with itsmoving leaves, showed their internal impressions by their motions. Thesegroves formed actual vegetable cities. The inhabitants of this world hadno other dwellings, but reposed among the fragrant sensitive-plants whennot floating in the air.

  "This seems a very strange world to you," said Urania; "you arewondering what kinds of ideas, habits, or history these people couldhave,--what kinds of arts, literature, and sciences. It would take along time to answer all the questions you might ask. Know only thattheir eyes are superior to your finest telescopes; that their nervoussystem vibrates at the passing of a comet, and discovers by an electricsense facts which you on the Earth will never know. The organs which yousee under their wings s
erve as hands, more skilful than yours. Insteadof printing, they take the direct photography of events and the phoneticimpression of words. They care very little for anything but scientificresearch; that is to say, the study of Nature. The three passions whichabsorb the greater part of earthly life--eager greed for fortune,political ambition, and love--are unknown to them, because they requirenothing to live on, there are no international divisions nor government,except a council of administration, and because they are androgynous."

  "Androgynous!" I repeated; and ventured to add, "Is that best?"

  "It is _different_. It is a great deal of trouble saved to a humanity."

  "To be in a condition to understand the infinite diversity displayed inthe different phases of creation," she continued, "it is necessary tocast aside all terrestrial feelings and ideas. Just as the species ofyour planet have changed in succeeding ages from the uncouth creaturesof the first geological periods to the appearance of man, and as evennow the animal and vegetable population of the Earth is still composedof the most widely varying forms, from man to the coral, from bird tofish, from an elephant to a butterfly, so on an incomparably vasterscale the forces of Nature have given birth to an infinite diversity ofbeings and things throughout the innumerable worlds of heaven. The formof its occupant is the result in each world of some element peculiar tothat globe,--substance, heat, light, electricity, density, weight.Shape, functions, the number of the senses,--you have but five, and theyare rather poor ones,--depend on the vital conditions of each sphere.Life is earthly on the Earth, Martial on Mars, Saturnian on Saturn,Neptunian on Neptune,--that is to say, appropriate to each habitation;or, to express it better, more strictly speaking, produced anddeveloped by each world according to its organic condition, andfollowing a primordial law which all Nature obeys,--the law ofprogress."

  While she was speaking I had watched the flight of the aerial creaturestoward the city of flowers, and saw with astonishment that the plantswere moving, raising or lowering themselves to receive them. The greensun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the yellow sun had risen in thesky; the landscape was suffused with a fairy-like tinge, over which hungan enormous half-green, half-orange moon. Then the infinite melody whichhad been filling the air died away, and amid a profound silence I hearda song arise from so pure a voice that no human tones could be comparedwith it.

  "What a marvellous system!" I cried,--"a world illumined by suchglowing lights! It is having a close view of double, triple, andmultiple stars."

  "Splendid suns those stars," she answered, "gracefully united in thebonds of a mutual attraction; from the Earth you see them cradled twoand two on the bosom of the sky, always beautiful, pure, and luminous.Hanging in the infinite, they lean to each other, but never touch, asthough their union, more moral than material, were ordered by aninvisible and superior power, and following harmonious curves, theygravitate in cadence around each other,--celestial couples whichblossomed at the spring-time of creation in the constellated meadows ofinfinity. While simple suns like yours shine in the deserts of spacesolitary, fixed, and undisturbed, double and multiple suns seem toenliven the silent regions of the eternal void by their motion, color,and life. These sidereal time-keepers mark the centuries and eras ofother worlds for you.

  "But," she added, "let us continue our journey; we are but a fewtrillion leagues from the Earth."

  "A few _trillion_?"

  "Yes. If we could hear the sounds of your planet from here,--itsvolcanoes, cannonadings, and thunders, or the wild vociferations of itscrowds in times of revolution, or the hymns which rise to heaven fromthe churches,--the distance is so great that, even admitting that thenoises could surmount it with the speed of sound in the air, it wouldrequire not less than fifteen million years to reach here. We couldhear to-day only what took place on Earth fifteen million years ago. Andyet, compared with the immensity of the universe, we are still very nearyour home.

  "You can still distinguish your Sun yonder,--that tiny little star. Wehave not been out of the universe to which it, with its system ofplanets, belongs. That universe is composed of several thousandmilliards of suns, separated from each other by trillions of leagues.Its extent is so vast that it would take a flash of lightning fifteenthousand years to cross it, travelling at the rate of three hundredthousand kilometres a second.

  "And suns everywhere, on all sides! In whatever direction we look, allabout us are sources of light, heat, and life in inexhaustiblevariety,--suns of every lustre, of all magnitudes, all ages, upheld inthe eternal void, in the luminous ether, by the mutual attraction of alland the motion of each. Your Sun moves and bears you away toward theconstellation of Hercules; that one, whose system we have just crossed,goes south toward the Pleiades; Sirius hurries away toward the Dove;Pollux whirls swiftly toward the Milky Way. All these millions, thesethousands of millions, of suns hasten through boundless space with aspeed which attains a velocity of two, three, and even four thousandmetres a second. Motion maintains the equilibrium of the universe, andconstitutes its organization, energy, and life."