The years went by so fast! The clouds sank closer to the surface of the star. We began to be almost smothered in their noonday weight!
The growth of the verdure of the star had changed it from a black lava ball to one mass of green and gorgeousness. The tops of the peaks alone stood above the vines.
The trees were lost in their own green; moss clung to everything. The steaming sea, always boiling in spots above the lava of subterranean chasms and volcanoes, further moistened the noonday air, which, if it had been of Earth, had been utterly unendurable in its temperature.
We understood that the clouds cloaked our planet. The dense air was not like the world’s atmosphere. We were close to the orbit of Venus; we feared that we should go on and burn in the flames of the sun!
We appointed a day to gather with our chief friends that we might report our achievements and our successes.
We were to meet at the town built by Father Renaudin, where we arranged for a grand festival to take place in his cathedral, now nearly completed.
After a long day’s travel, I arrived, weary and dusty. Isabella and Father Renaudin came out to meet me. It was sunset; the last beam of sunlight had just left the scene. It was a still, sultry, purplish twilight.
As we walked beneath an avenue of bloom, we heard the most enchanting music.
Stepping through the bowers of green, we looked up into the sky. Above the surface, so far as to be still in the glow of the sun, which was below the horizon, we saw a multitude of white-robed people.
“Is it a stampede of angels?” asked Father Renaudin.