I listened to the translated soul's story almost without interrupting him, for it seemed to me all the time as if he would disappear as he had come. However, remembering my dream, of which I had been reminded by the coincidence of preceding descriptions with what I had seen, I could not keep from telling my celestial friend of that surprising vision, and expressing my surprise at not having seen him on my trip to Mars,—a fact which made me doubt the reality of the journey.
"But," he answered, "I saw you perfectly well, and you both saw and spoke to me, for it was I."
The tones of his voice were so odd at these last words that I suddenly recognized in them the melodious voice of the beautiful Martial girl who had so enchanted me.
"Yes," he answered, "it was I. I was trying to make you know me; but you were so bewildered by a sight which captivated your mind that you did not throw off your terrestrial sensations,—you remained sensual and earthly, you could not rise high enough for pure perception. Yes, it was I who held out my arms to you in the aerial car to take you down to our dwelling, when you suddenly awoke."
"But then," I cried, "if you are that Martial maiden, how can you appear to me in Spero's form, when he no longer exists?"
"I do not act upon your retina or your optic nerve," he replied, "but on your mental being and your brain. I am in communication with you now; I influence directly the cerebral seat of your sensation. My mental being is really formless, like yours and that of all other souls. But when I put myself in direct relation with your thought, as at this moment, you can see me only as you knew me. It is the same during your dreams; that is to say, during more than a quarter of your terrestrial life,—for twenty years out of seventy,—you see, you hear, you speak, you feel, with the same impression, the same clearness, the same certainty as during your normal life; and yet your eyes are closed, your tympanum is insensible, your mouth is mute, your arms are stretched out motionless. It is the same, too, in cases of suggestion, in conditions of hypnotic somnambulism. You see me and hear me, you feel me, too, by your brain, which is under influence; but I am no more in the form which you see than the rainbow exists in the presence of the eyes that look at it."
"Could you also appear to me in your Martial form?"
"No,—at least not unless you were really transported in spirit to that planet. There would then be quite a different mode of communication. In our conversation here, everything is subjective to you. The elements of my Martial form do not exist in the terrestrial atmosphere, and your brain could not imagine them. You can see me to-day only through the medium of your dream; but as soon as you try to analyze its details it will vanish away. You did not see us exactly as we are, because your mind can judge only by your earthly eyes, which are not sensitive to all our radiations, and because you do not possess all our senses."
"I must confess," I answered, "that I cannot understand your Martial beings as having six limbs."