A little light fell upon the white ball; far off, the sun, as a day-star, gave a grayness to the darkness.
The winds were dead. They did not move the smoke above the craters. Asleep with the stars, asleep was Regan!
On, on came that burning planet, which has yet to cool from lava seas to the crust of continents, yet to jar and burst, and flame with deluges of the first ocean’s fall, yet to pass through all the cataclysms of universal epoch, before there shall be upon its surface one pulpy, spongy thing that has the lowest form of life!
As one leaf among ten million has Nature’s time to fall, so in Nature shall come the time for a globe to bloom, among myriads, as unnoticeable in the multitude sweeping before the vision of the Lord as is the one leaf on the tree!
Time shall come when it shall add a world’s souls to the kingdom of the Redeemer!
When the small sun and red Jupiter shone at once upon the star it made strange daylight. The great planet sent red, burning beams ahead. Brilliant scarlet was his day.
What spirit would fall across space from such a fiery mass of convulsion as Jupiter? Nothing quieting, nothing holy, nothing merciful! A red light—only a red light!
Upon one spot in the star the cold touched not, the snow did not fall. The Sun Island, as the bird men named it, was as calm as Paradise through all these years!
Like a piece of the sun it slept in snow. What was beyond its blazing walls no one knew.
From this white brilliancy, when Jupiter had brought daylight, came forth Father Renaudin. Across the waste of snow he walked serenely, an unearthly rapture upon his face. Storms could not ruffle his crimson robe, nor was he touched by the chill breath of the wind which had wakened for Jupiter.