Urania :: V. THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.

V. THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.

THUS spoke my celestial guide. Her face was glorious as the day, her eyes shone with a starry lustre, her voice was like divine music. I looked at the worlds about us revolving in space, and felt that a mighty harmony controlled the course of Nature.

"Now let us return to the Earth," she said, pointing to the spot where our terrestrial Sun had disappeared. "But look again. You understand now that space is infinite; you will soon comprehend that time is eternal." We crossed other constellations and came back toward the solar system. I saw the Sun reappear, looking like a little star.

"For an instant," said she, "I am going to give you, if not divine, at least angelic sight. Your soul shall feel the ethereal vibrations which constitute light itself, and shall know that the history of each world is eternal with God. To see is to know: behold!"

Just as a microscope shows us an ant as large as an elephant, and penetrates the infinitely small, making the invisible visible, so at the Muse's command my sight suddenly acquired an unknown power of perception, and distinguished the Earth in space, very near the Sun, which was in eclipse, and from invisible it became visible.

I recognized it; and as I watched, its disk grew larger, looking like the Moon a few days before the full. After a while I could distinguish the principal geographical aspects in the growing disk,—the snowy patch at the North Pole, the outlines of Europe and Asia, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean. The more steadily I fixed my gaze, the better I could see. Details became more and more perceptible, as if I were gradually changing the lenses of a microscope. I recognized the geographical form of France; but our beautiful country appeared to be entirely green,—from the Rhine to the Ocean, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, as if it were covered with one immense forest. I succeeded, however, better and better in distinguishing the slightest details, for the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Loire, were easily found.

"Pay great attention," murmured my companion.

As she said this, she placed the tips of her slender fingers lightly on my brow, as though she had wished to magnetize my brain and endow my perceptive faculties with still greater power. Then I looked again more intently at the vision, and saw before my eyes Gaul in the time of Julius CÆsar. It was during the war of independence aroused by the patriotism of Vercingetorix.

"We are at such a distance from the Earth," said Urania, "that light requires all the time that separates us from Julius CÆsar to reach here. Only the rays of light that left the Earth at that time come to us; and yet light travels at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres a second. It is fast, very fast, but it is not instantaneous. Astronomers on the Earth, who are observing stars situated as far from them as we are now, do not see them as they really are, but as they were when the rays of light which they see to-day left them; that is to say, as they were more than eighteen centuries ago.

"One never sees the stars from the Earth, nor from any point in space, as they are, but as they have been," she continued; "the farther away from them one is, the more behind he is in their history.

"You observe most carefully through the telescope stars which no longer exist. Many of the stars visible to the naked eye are no longer in existence. Many of the nebulÆ whose substance you analyze through the spectroscope have become suns. Many of your most beautiful red stars are extinct and dead; you would not detect them if you should go to them.

"The light shed from all the suns which people immensity, the light reflected into space from all the worlds irradiated by these suns, carries away through the boundless skies photographs of all the centuries every day, every second. Looking at a star, you see it as it was at the time the impression that you receive left it,—just as when you hear a clock strike, you receive the sound after it has left it, and as long after as you are far from it.

"The result is, that the history of all these worlds actually travels through space, never entirely disappearing; that all past events are present and indestructible in the bosom of the infinite.

"The universe will endure forever. The Earth will come to an end, and some day will be nothing but a tomb. But there will be new suns and new earths, new springs and new smiles, and life will always bloom afresh in the limitless and endless universe.

"I wanted to show you," said she, after a pause, "how eternal time is! You have felt the infinity of space, you have understood the grandeur of the universe. Now your celestial journey is over. We must go back to the earth and your own home again.

"For yourself," she added, "know that study is the one source of any intellectual value; be neither rich nor poor; keep yourself from all ambition as well as from all servitude; be independent,—independence is the rarest gift and the first condition of happiness."

Urania was still speaking in her gentle voice; but my brain was so confused by the commotion aroused in it by so many extraordinary scenes that I was seized by a fit of trembling. A shiver ran over me from head to foot, which was probably the cause of my abrupt awakening in a state of great agitation. Alas! the delightful celestial journey had ended.

I looked about for Urania, but could not find her. A bright moonbeam shining through my bedroom window lightly touched the edge of a curtain and seemed vaguely to outline the aerial form of my heavenly guide; but it was only a moonbeam.

*****

When I went back to the observatory the next morning, my first impulse was to find some pretext for going to the director's study to see the charming Muse again who had rewarded me by such a dream....

The clock had disappeared!

In its place stood a white marble bust of the illustrious astronomer.

I looked through the other rooms, even the private apartments, under a thousand different excuses; but she was nowhere to be found.

I searched for days and weeks, but could neither find her nor learn what had become of her.

I had a friend and confidant, very near my own age, although appearing older, from his sprouting beard; he too was very fond of the ideal, and perhaps even more of a dreamer,—besides, he was the only person at the observatory with whom I was ever on intimate terms. He shared my joys and griefs. We had the same tastes, the same ideas, the same feelings. He understood my youthful admiration for the statue, the personality with which my imagination had invested her, and my unhappiness at having thus suddenly lost my dearest Urania just when I was most attached to her. He had more than once admired with me the effect of the light upon her celestial countenance, and smiled at my ecstasies like a big brother, even teasing me a little sharply about my affection for an idol, going so far as to call me "Camille Pygmalion." But at heart I knew that he too loved her.

This friend—who, alas! was to be torn from me a few years later, in the very flower of his youth, kind George Spero, exalted mind, noble heart, whose memory will be ever dear to me—was the director's private secretary; and his sincere affection for me was proved in this instance by an act of kindness as graceful as it was unexpected. When I went home one day I saw with a half-incredulous bewilderment the famous clock standing on my chimney-piece there, just in front of me!

It was really she! How did she come there? What brought her there? Where did she come from?

I learned that the celebrated discoverer of Neptune had sent it to one of the principal clock-makers in Paris to be repaired; that the latter had received a most interesting antique astronomical clock from China and had offered it in exchange, which had been accepted; and that George Spero, to whom the transaction had been intrusted, had re-purchased Pradier's work as a gift for me. His parents were glad of an opportunity to please me, in remembrance of some lessons in mathematics which I had given George for his special examination.

What joy it was to see my Urania again! How happy I was to feast my eyes on her once more! That charming personification of the Muse of heaven has never left me since. In my studious hours the beautiful statue always stood before me, seeming to remind me of the goddess's conversation,—to tell me the destinies of astronomy, to direct me in my youthful scientific aspirations. Since then more passionate emotions have beguiled me, captivated me, and troubled my senses; but I shall never forget the ideal sentiment with which the Muse of the stars had inspired me, the celestial journey on which she bore me away, the unexpected panoramas she unrolled before my eyes, the truths she revealed to me as to the extent of the universe, nor the happiness she gave me by definitively settling my mind on the calm contemplation of Nature and science as a career.

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