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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 rapidly fading away. Although feeling as if I were motionless, I had the same sensation which one experiences on rising in a balloon and seeing the earth descend. I went up, up, in a magic flight toward the inaccessible zenith. Urania was with me, a little higher up, looking at me kindly and pointing out the kingdoms below. Day had come again. I recognized France, the Rhine, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, the Channel, England. But all this liliputian geography soon shrank away. Speedily the terrestrial globe was reduced to the dimensions of the moon in its last quarter; then to a little full moon.

"There," said she, "is the famous terrestrial globe on which so many passions stir, within whose narrow limits the thought of so many millions of human beings is confined, whose sight cannot extend beyond it. See how its apparent size diminishes as our horizon develops. We can no longer distinguish Europe from Asia; and there is North America. How very small it all is!"

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

We were still ascending. The Earth grew smaller and smaller as we receded from it, until it looked like a simple star shining from solar illumination on the bosom of dark and empty space. We turned toward the Sun, which shone in space, but without filling it with light, so that we could see stars and planets at the same time, no longer obscured by its rays, because it could not illumine empty space. The angelic goddess showed me Mercury, in close neighborhood to the Sun, Venus, shining on the other side, the Earth, equalling Venus in appearance and brilliancy, Mars, whose inland seas and canals I recognized, Jupiter, with its four enormous moons, Saturn, Uranus. "All these worlds," said she, "are upheld in vacancy by the attraction of the Sun, around which they revolve with great speed. It is an harmonious choir gravitating about its centre. The Earth is but a floating island, a little hamlet of this great solar country; and the solar empire itself is but a little province on the breast of sidereal vastness."

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

As we soared aloft, our Sun decreased in grandeur. Soon it had descended to the rank of a planet, then lost all majesty, all superiority over the sidereal population, and was nothing more than a star, scarcely more brilliant than the others. I looked about me at all this vast extent, on whose spangled bosom we were still going upward, and tried to recognize the constellations; but their forms were beginning to change perceptibly, from the lengthening perspective caused by my journey. I thought I could see that our Sun had insensibly dwindled to a tiny star and joined the constellation of the Centaur; while a new light, pale, bluish, and very strange, seemed to greet me from the direction toward which Urania was bearing me. This new brightness had nothing terrestrial about it, and reminded me of no effect that I had ever seen on the Earth among the changing tints of the sunset after a storm, or in the undefined mists of morning, or during the calm and silent moonlight hours on the mirror of the sea. This last effect is nearer its appearance; but the strange light was, and became more and more, of a real blue,—blue, not like a reflection of celestial azure, nor like a contrast analogous to that produced by an electric light compared with gas, but blue, as if the Sun itself were blue.

Imagine my amazement when I discovered that we were approaching the influence of an absolutely blue sun, like a shining disk, which might have been cut from one of our most beautiful terrestrial skies, standing out luminously upon a perfectly black background all thickly studded with stars. This sapphire sun was the centre of a planetary system lighted by its rays. We were to pass quite near one of the planets. The blue sun increased perceptibly in size; but—another phenomenon as singular as the first—the light it threw upon this planet seemed to be tinged on one side with green. I looked into the sky again, and saw a second sun,—this one a beautiful emerald green. I could not believe my eyes!

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

Sure enough! A second later I saw a third sun, colored with a glowing radiancy, whose contrast with its two companions produced a most dazzling illumination. I knew about this interesting sidereal system from having observed it more than once through the telescope; but I had never suspected its real splendor. What fiery depths! what scintillations! what brilliancy of color in that strange source of blue light in the second sun's green illumination and the tawny, golden effulgence of the third!

But, as I have said, we were approaching one of the worlds belonging to the system of the sapphire sun. Everything was blue,—landscapes, water, plants, rocks,—slightly greenish on the side lighted by the second sun, and hardly touched by the rays of the orange sun, which was rising on the distant horizon. As we floated into the atmosphere of this world a soft, delicious music was wafted into the air like a perfume, a dream. Never had I heard anything like it. The sweet, deep, distant melody seemed to come from a choir of harps and violins, strengthened by an accompaniment of organs. It was an exquisite anthem, which charmed at once; it needed no analyzing to be understood; it filled the soul with ecstasy. It seemed to me that I could have lingered there listening for an eternity. I was so fearful of losing a single note that I dared not speak to my guide. Urania noticed it;