Assuredly it was the most singular of military episodes, and the moral aspect of it far surpassed the physical, when I found that this battle resulted not in the defeat of Napoleon, but in placing him upon the throne. Instead of losing the battle, it was the Emperor who gained it; instead of a prisoner, he became a sovereign. Waterloo was an 18th Brumaire! . . .
Quærens. Dear Lumen, I do not half understand this new effect of the laws of light. If you have discovered it, I shall be grateful to you if you will give me an explanation of it.
Lumen. I have helped you to divine it by telling you that I removed from the Earth with a greater velocity than that of light.
Quærens. But tell me, I pray you, how does this retrogression in space enable you to see events in an order inverse to that in which they took place?
Lumen. The theory is very simple. Suppose you set out from the Earth with the velocity exactly equal to that of light, you would always have with you the aspect that the Earth assumed at the moment you set out, since you would be receding from the globe with a swiftness precisely equal to that which bore this very aspect into space. Thus, even if you voyaged for a thousand years or a hundred thousand years, this aspect would accompany you always like a photograph which did not grow old; whilst the original is made old by the years that elapse.
Quærens. I understood this fact already in our first conversation.
Retrogressive light pictures.
Lumen. Well, suppose now that you remove from the Earth with a velocity superior to that of light, what will happen? You will find again, as fast as you advance into space, the rays that set out before you, that is to say the successive photographs which, from second to second, from instant to instant, project their rays into space. If, for example, you set out in 1867 with the velocity equal to that of light, you would retain for ever the year 1867 in sight. If you went more quickly, you would find before you the rays that had set out in former years, and which bore upon them the photographs of those years. In order further to illustrate this fact, reflect, I pray you, on the many luminous rays that have set out from the Earth in different epochs. Let us suppose the first to be at some instant of the 1st January 1867. At the rate of 300,000 kilometres a second, it has, at the moment in which I am speaking to you, already passed a portion of space from the instant of its departure till it reached a certain distance which I shall express by the letter A. Let us now suppose that a second ray sets out from the Earth a hundred years before, on the 1st January 1767; it is a hundred years in advance of the first, and is found at a still greater distance—a distance that I shall express by the letter B. A third ray which I shall in like manner suppose on the 1st January 1667, is still further off by a length equal to the distance that the light would travel in a hundred years. I call the place where this third ray reaches, C. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, on respectively the 1st January 1567, 1467, 1367, &c., are posted at equal distances D, E, F, penetrating more and more into the infinite.
Here, then, we have a series of photographs, taken on the same line, from post to post in space. Now, the mind which travels on in passing successively by the points A, B, C, D, E, F, can retrace successively the secular history of the Earth in those epochs.
Quærens. Master, at what distance are these photographs from one another?