Chapter II: Part 2

Part Second.

GEORGE SPERO.

I.

LIFE.

An intense evening glow floated in the atmosphere like a wondrous golden radiance. From the heights of Passy the view extended over the whole of the great city, which at that time, more than ever before, was not a city, but a world. The Universal Exhibition of 1867 had lavished all the attractions and delights of the century on imperial Paris. The flowers of civilization were blooming in their most brilliant tints, wasting themselves away by the very ardor of their perfume,--fading, dying in the full fever of youth. The crowned heads of Europe had just heard a deafening trumpet-blast there, which was the last of the monarchy; science, arts, industry had sowed their newest creations broadcast, with an inexhaustible prodigality. It was a general delirium of men and things. Regiments were marching, with music at their heads; swift-rolling vehicles crossed each other from all directions; thousands of people were moving about in the dust on the avenues, _quais_, and boulevards: but the very dust, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, crowned the splendid city like an aureole. The tall buildings, towers, and steeples were ablaze with reflections from the fiery orb; tones from a distant orchestra, mingled with a confused murmur of voices and other sounds,--the brilliant, fit ending of a dazzling summer day,--poured into the soul an undefined feeling of contentment, happiness, and satisfaction. There was a kind of symbolical summing-up about it of the evidences of the vitality of a great people in the zenith of its life and fortune.

From the heights of Passy, where we are, on a terrace in a garden overhanging the careless current of the stream, as in the old days at Babylon, two persons, leaning on the stone balustrade, watch the noisy scene, looking down on the restless surface of the human sea, happier in their sweet solitude than all the atoms of that seething whirlpool; they do not belong to the every-day world, but soar above all that restless activity in the limpid atmosphere of their own joy. Their spirits feel, their hearts love; or to express the same fact more completely, their souls live.

In the maidenly beauty of her eighteenth spring, the young girl's glance wanders dreamily over the apotheosis of the setting sun. Happy to be alive, happier still to love, she gives no thought to the thousands of people moving about at her feet; she looks with unseeing eyes at the sun's ardent disk sinking below the purple western clouds; she breathes the perfumed air from garlands of roses in the garden, and feels through her whole being the peace of perfect happiness, singing a hymn of unutterable love in her heart. The blond hair waves about her brow like a misty aureole, and falls in thick tresses over her slender form; her blue eyes, fringed by long dark lashes, are like a reflection of the azure sky; her neck and arms give glimpses of the snowy whiteness of her skin; her cheeks, her ears, are softly colored; her whole person recalls somewhat the dainty marchionesses whom the painters of the eighteenth century loved to depict, who were born to an unknown life which they were not long destined to enjoy. She is standing. Her companion, whose arm a moment ago encircled her waist as they were looking at the picture of Paris and listening to the strains of melody flooding the air from the Imperial Guard, had seated himself by her side. His eyes had forgotten Paris and the setting sun; now they see nothing but the beautiful girl. He looks at her unconsciously with a strange, fixed gaze, as though he saw her now for the first time, and could not keep his eyes from her exquisite profile, enveloping her in a long look like a magnetic caress.

The young student was absorbed in his contemplation. Was he still a student at twenty-five? Is one ever anything more? And our own master then, M. de Chevreul, does he not call himself now, in his one hundred and third year, the senior of the students of France? George Spero had finished his lyceum studies at a very early age; but they teach nothing, unless it be how to work, and he continued to investigate the great problems of natural science with indefatigable ardor. Astronomy especially had at first attracted his interest. I had known him (as the reader of the first part of this book may remember) at the Paris Observatory, which he had entered at the age of sixteen, and where he had somewhat distinguished himself by a rather strange peculiarity,--that of having no ambition and no desire whatever for advancement.

At the age of sixteen, as at twenty-five, he believed himself to be on the verge of the grave,--judging, perhaps, that life indeed passes quickly, and that it is useless to wish for anything beyond the happiness of studying and knowing. He was not very talkative, although at heart his disposition was that of a playful child. His small, well-shaped mouth seemed to smile if one carefully examined its corners; otherwise it looked somewhat pensive, and as though made for silence. His eyes, whose undecided color reminded one of the bluish-green on the sea's horizon, changed with the light and in accordance with his moods; they were usually gentle, but on occasion would flash like lightning, or grow as cold as steel; their glance was deep, sometimes unfathomable, even strange and enigmatical. His ear was small, gracefully curved, the lobe well detached and a little raised,--which to analysts is an indication of refinement. The brow was broad, although his head was rather small, but seemed larger from his glistening, thickly waving hair; his beard was brown, like his hair, and slightly curled. Of medium height, his whole effect was elegant, with a natural ease; he dressed carefully, but without pretence or affectation.

My friends and I never had any special companionship with him. Holidays and leisure hours he never spent with us. Always occupied with his books, he seemed to have given himself up without reserve to hunting for the philosopher's stone, the quadrature of the circle, or perpetual motion. I never knew him to have a friend, unless it were myself; and yet I am not sure that he gave me all his confidences,--though, for that matter, perhaps there was no special event in his life except the one of which I now make myself the historian, and which I knew all about as an eye-witness if not as confidant.

The problem of the soul was the perpetual torment of his thought. Sometimes he was so absorbed in his search for the unknown, with such intense cerebral action, that he felt a sensation of tingling in his head which seemed to exhaust all his thinking faculties. This was especially the case when, after having analyzed the conditions of immortality for a long time, he saw real ephemeral life suddenly disappear, and endless immortality open before his mental being. In the face of this aspect of the soul in full eternity he longed _to know_. The sight of his own body, pale and stiff, wrapped in grave-clothes and lying in its coffin, left deserted in its last mournful resting-place at the bottom of a narrow grave under the grass where the cricket chirps, did not appall his thought so much as the uncertainty about the future. "What will become of me; what will become of us?" he repeated, like the constant clashing of a fixed idea in his brain. "If we die utterly, what an absurd farce life is, with its hopes and struggles. If we are immortal, what do we do with ourselves through endless eternity? Where shall I be a hundred years from now? Where will all the present dwellers of the earth be? To die, for ever and ever; to have existed but for a moment! What a mockery! Would it not be better a hundred times over never to have been born? But if it be our fate to live eternally and never to be able to change anything of the fatality that carries us along,--having endless eternity always before us,--how can we bear the burden of such a destiny? Is that the doom awaiting us? If we should tire of existence, we should be forbidden to fly from it; it would be impossible to end it. In this conception there is far more implacable cruelty than in that of an ephemeral life vanishing away like an insect's flight in the fresh evening breeze. Why then were we born? To suffer uncertainty; to find after examination not a single one of our hopes left; to live like idiots if we do not think, like fools if we do? And yet they tell us of a 'good God!' There are religions, priests, rabbis, bonzes. Why, mankind is but a race of dupes and duped! Religion is the same as patriotism, and the priest is as good as the soldier. Men of all nations arm themselves to the teeth that they may kill one another like simpletons! Ah! it is the wisest thing they could do; the best return they could make to Nature for the foolish gift she bestowed in causing them to be born."

I tried to lessen his pain and anxiety, having a certain philosophy of my own which was relatively satisfactory to me. "The fear of death seems absolutely chimerical," said I. "There are but two hypotheses to make about it: every night it may be that we shall not wake again the next morning; and yet, when we think of it, this idea does not prevent our going to sleep. Now, then, first, either all being ended with life, we do not wake again anywhere,--and in that case it is a sleep that has not ended, but which will endure throughout eternity, so that we shall never know anything about it,--or else, secondly, the soul outliving the body, we shall wake up somewhere else and continue our activity. In that case there is nothing to fear in the awakening,--it should rather attract us. There is a reason for all things in Nature; and every creature, the meanest as well as the noblest, finds his happiness in the exercise of his faculties."

This reasoning seemed to calm him; but the restlessness of doubt soon returned, pricking like thorns. Sometimes he would wander off alone through the spacious cemeteries of Paris, seeking out the most deserted alleys between the graves, listening to the wind among the trees, and the rustle of the leaves in the paths. Sometimes he went away into the woods in the suburbs of the great city, and would walk about for hours at a time muttering to himself. At other times he would spend a whole day in his study in the Place du Panthéon, which he used as study, work and reception room at the same time; and there, until far into the night, he would dissect a brain brought back from the clinic, studying the small slices of gray substance through his microscope.

The uncertainty of the sciences called positive, the sudden halt to his mind in the solution of these problems, threw him into fits of deepest despair; and I have found him many times in a state of utter prostration, his eyes set and shining, his hands burning with fever, his pulse agitated and intermittent. In one of these crises I was obliged to leave him for a few hours, and almost feared I should not find him alive on my return, at about five o'clock in the morning. He had near him a glass of cyanide of potassium, which he tried to hide as I came in; but recovering his calmness almost at once, he said, with great serenity and a slight smile, "What is the good? If we are immortal, it would be of no use, and I wanted to know about it sooner." That day he acknowledged he believed that he had been lifted painfully by his hair to the ceiling, and allowed to drop with all his weight upon the floor.

Public indifference with regard to the great problem of human destiny,--a question which in his eyes exceeded all others in importance, since it treated of our continued existence or destruction,--exasperated him to the last degree. All about him he saw people who were occupied solely by material interests, entirely absorbed by the foolish idea of "making money," for which they gave up all their years, their days, their hours, their minutes, disguised under various forms; and he found no free, independent mind living an intellectual life. It seemed to him that sentient beings could, _should_, while living the bodily life, since one cannot do otherwise, at least not remain the slaves of so coarse an organization, but devote the best moments to their intellectual life.

At the time this story begins, George Spero was already well known, and even famed, by the original scientific books which he had published, and also by several books of high literary merit, which had won praise for his name in all parts of the world.

Although he had not yet completed his twenty-fifth year, thousands of persons had read his books, which, however, were not written for the general public, but had been so successful as to be appreciated by the majority who desire to learn, as well as by the enlightened minority. He had been proclaimed master of a new school, and eminent critics, knowing neither his physical individuality nor his age, spoke of his "doctrines."

How did it happen that this philosopher of such rare ability, this stern student, should be at a young girl's feet at sunset on the terrace where we met them just now? The rest of the story will tell you.

II.

THE APPARITION.

Their first meeting had been a very strange one. The young naturalist was a passionate admirer of the beauties of Nature, and was always looking for grand effects. The year before, he had made a journey to Norway to visit the silent fiords, in which the sea was swallowed up; the mountains, whose snow-crowned summits lift their spotless brows far above the clouds; and to make a special study of the aurora borealis,--that most magnificent exhibition of our planet's life. I had accompanied him on the journey. The sunsets over the deep, calm fiords, the rise of the splendid orb on the mountains, charmed his poetic and artistic soul with an indescribable emotion. We remained there more than a month, going through the picturesque region of the Scandinavian Alps. Now, Norway was the home of that child of the North who was to exert so strong an influence over his unawakened heart. She was there, only a few steps away from him; and yet it was not until the very day we left that Chance, that god of the ancients, decided to bring them together.

The morning light was gilding the distant summits. The young Norwegian girl's father had brought her to one of the mountains much frequented by excursionists, like the Righi in Switzerland, to see the sunrise, which that day was of surpassing beauty. To better distinguish certain details of the landscape, Icléa had mounted a little hillock a few yards farther away, and was quite alone; when turning with her face from the sun to embrace the whole horizon, she saw her own image, her whole figure, not on the mountain nor the earth, but on the very sky itself. A luminous aureole framed her head and shoulders with a shining crown of glory, and a large aerial circle, faintly tinted with the colors of the rainbow, surrounded the mysterious apparition.

Astonished and touched by the singularity of the vision, and still under the influence of the gorgeous sunrise, she did not at first notice that another face, that of a man, was by the side of her own,--the motionless silhouette of a traveller in contemplation before her, recalling the statues of saints on their pedestals in churches. This masculine figure and her own were framed in by the same aerial circle. Suddenly she perceived the strange profile in the air, and thought herself the plaything of a fantastic vision; she started back in her amazement with a gesture of surprise, almost of fear. Her image in the air reproduced the same gesture, and she saw the traveller's wraith put his hand to his hat and take it off, as if he were bowing to the heavens, then lose the clearness of its outlines, and fade away at the same time as her own figure.

The transfiguration on Mount Tabor when the disciples of Jesus suddenly saw their Master's image on the sky, accompanied by those of Moses and Elias, could not have caused its witnesses any greater stupefaction than the innocent Norwegian girl felt before this _anthelion_, whose theory is well known to all meteorologists.

This apparition fixed itself upon her mental retina like a marvellous dream. She called her father, who had remained a few steps away from the little mound; but when he reached her it had all disappeared. She asked him to explain it; but he replied only by a doubt, almost a denial, of the truth of the phenomenon. The excellent man, formerly a field-officer, belonged to that category of distinguished sceptics who simply deny everything of which they are ignorant or which they cannot explain. It was all in vain that the lovely girl assured him that she had seen her reflection in the sky, and also that of a man whom she judged was young and good-looking; all in vain that she related the details of the apparition, and added that the figures were much larger than life-size, like enormous silhouettes,--he declared authoritatively and with considerable emphasis that it was what is called an optical illusion, produced by the imagination when one has not slept well, particularly in youth.

But on the evening of that day, as we were going on board the steamer, I noticed a young girl, with wind-tossed hair, who was looking at my friend in open astonishment. She had her father's arm, and was standing on the wharf as motionless as Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. I signed to my friend; but no sooner had he turned his head towards her than I saw her face crimson with a sudden flush: she at once turned away, and fixed her eyes on the paddle-wheel, which was just beginning to move. I do not know whether Spero noticed her confusion. As a fact, we had seen nothing of that morning's aerial phenomenon, at least not while the young girl was near us, and she had been hidden from us by a little clump of bushes; the magnificence of the sunrise had drawn us rather to the western side. However, he saluted Norway, which he regretted to leave, with the same gesture with which he had greeted the rising sun, and the pretty stranger had taken the bow for herself.

Two months later, the Comte de K---- gave a large reception in honor of the recent successes of his compatriot, Christine Nilsson. The young Norwegian girl and her father, who had come to Paris to pass a part of the winter, were among the guests, who had long known each other as fellow-countrymen, Norway and Sweden being sisters. We went there for the first time, our invitation being due to the appearance of Spero's latest book, which had already met with signal success. Icléa was a dreamy, thoughtful girl, well informed, thanks to the sound education given in Northern countries; she was eager to learn, and had read and re-read with curiosity the somewhat mystical book in which the new metaphysician, dissatisfied with Pascal's "Thoughts," had laid bare his soul's anxieties. Several months before, she had successfully passed the _brevet supérieur_ examination; and having abandoned the study of medicine, which had at first attracted her, was beginning to look with some curiosity into the recent investigations of psychological physiology.

When M. George Spero was announced, she felt that an unknown friend, almost a confidant, had arrived. She started as if from an electric shock. He was not much of a society man. Timid, ill at ease in mixed assemblies, he did not care to dance, play, or converse, but preferred to stay apart in one corner of the room with some friends; quite indifferent to the waltzes and quadrilles, but more attentive to several masterpieces of modern music feelingly played. The entire evening passed without his being near her, although he had noticed her, and in all that brilliant ball had seen but her. Their eyes met many times. At last, about two o'clock in the morning, when the company was less formal, he ventured to approach her, without speaking, however. It was she who first spoke to him, to express a doubt about the conclusion of his last book.

Flattered, but still more surprised to learn that those metaphysical pages had had so young a reader, and a lady too, the author replied rather awkwardly that those investigations were somewhat uninteresting for a woman. She answered that women, and even young girls, were not exclusively absorbed in frivolity; that she knew several who occasionally worked, thought, endeavored, and studied. She spoke with a good deal of spirit, defending women against the contempt of certain scientists of the other sex, and maintained their intellectual equality. She had no trouble in winning a cause to which her listener was by no means hostile.

The new book--whose success had been immediate and brilliant, notwithstanding the gravity of its subject--had surrounded George Spero's name with an actual halo of fame, and the brilliant writer was warmly welcomed in every drawing-room. The two young people had exchanged but a few words when they found themselves the general object of attention, and were forced to reply to different questions, which interrupted their interview. One of the most eminent critics of the day had recently devoted a long article to the new work, and the subject of the book became at once the topic of general conversation. Icléa took no part in it; but she felt--and women are not often mistaken--that the hero had noticed her, that her thought was already linked to his by an invisible thread, and that while he replied to the more or less common-place questions thrust upon him, his mind was not wholly on the conversation. This first little triumph was enough, she cared for no other; and moreover she had recognized in his profile both the mysterious silhouette in the aerial apparition and the young stranger on the steamer at Christiania.

In that first interview he had not hesitated to express his enthusiastic admiration for the marvellous scenery in Norway, and to tell her about his visit there. She was eager for a word, some sort of an allusion to the aerial phenomenon which had made so great an impression upon her, and could not understand his silence in regard to it. Not having observed the _anthelion_ when she was reflected upon it, he had not been particularly surprised at an occurrence which he had already studied before and under better conditions,--from the car of a balloon; and having seen nothing specially noticeable, had nothing to say about it. The occurrence at the steamboat landing too had entirely passed from his memory; so that although the fair beauty of the young girl did not seem entirely unfamiliar to him, yet he had no recollection of having met her before. As for me, I had recognized her at once. He talked about the lakes, rivers, fiords, and mountains of Norway; learned from her that her mother had died very young from heart-disease, that her father preferred living in Paris to anywhere else, and that it was probable she should not visit her native land except at rare intervals for the future.

A remarkable identity of ideas and tastes, a ready and mutual sympathy, a reciprocal respect, soon made them friends. Brought up and educated with English ideas, she enjoyed that independence of mind and freedom of action which Frenchwomen never know until after marriage; she felt hampered by none of the social conventionalities which with us are supposed to protect innocence and virtue. Two friends of her own age had even come to Paris to finish their musical education. They were living together in the very heart of Babylon in perfect safety, never even suspecting the dangers by which Paris is said to be beset. The young girl received George Spero's visits as her father would have received them himself; and in a few weeks the congeniality in their tastes and dispositions had united them in the same studies, the same researches, often in the very same thoughts. Almost every afternoon he went, drawn by a secret attraction, from the Latin quarter along the borders of the Seine as far as the Trocadéro, and passed several hours with Icléa either in the library, on the garden-terrace, or walking in the wood.

The first impression aroused by the apparition on the sky had remained in Icléa's mind. She looked up to the young savant, if not as a god or hero, at least as a man far superior to his contemporaries. The perusal of his works strengthened this feeling and increased it; she felt more than admiration, she had an actual veneration for him. When she knew him personally, the great man did not descend from his pedestal. She found him so high, so excellent in his works, his inquiries, his studies, and at the same time so simple, so sincere, so good-natured, so indulgent to all, and (seizing any pretext for hearing him talked about), she was sometimes forced to listen to such unjust criticisms upon him from rivals, that she began to have an almost maternal feeling for him. Does the sentiment of protecting affection exist in every young girl's heart? Perhaps. But assuredly she loved him thus at first. I have already said that the basis of this thinker's character was somewhat melancholy,--that melancholy of the soul of which Pascal speaks, and which is like homesickness for heaven. In fact, he was ever seeking to solve the eternal question, Hamlet's "To be, or not to be?" Sometimes he would be sad, downcast. But by a singular contrast, when his unhappy thoughts had worn themselves out, so to speak, in vain research, and his exhausted brain had lost the power of further vibration, a kind of repose came to him,--he recovered his ordinary quiet; the circulation of his red blood stimulated his organic life; philosophy disappeared, leaving him like a simple child, amused at trifles; and having almost feminine tastes, delighting in flowers, perfumes, music, revery, he appeared sometimes astonishingly light-hearted.

III.

"TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?"

It was 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 thirst for 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 errors and 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 the field 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 vibrations of 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 thousand millions 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 human _will_ is 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 identical with 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, immaterial _Force_. 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; and although 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 of our 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 piece of 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 be too 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 as well 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 are incapable 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 satellites seem 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 their search 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.

IV.

AMOR.

In their 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 in hand, 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, phoenixes, 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 the solution 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 the silhouettes 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, they would 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 the _quais_, 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.