CHAPTER III.
THE STARS OF AUTUMN.
IN the "Fifth Evening" of that delightful, old, out-of-date book of Fontenelle's, on the "Plurality of Worlds," the Astronomer and the Marchioness, who have been making a wonderful pilgrimage through the heavens during their evening strolls in the park, come at last to the starry systems beyond the "solar vortex," and the Marchioness experiences a lively impatience to know what the fixed stars will turn out to be, for the Astronomer has sharpened her appetite for marvels.
"Tell me," says she, eagerly, "are they, too, inhabited like the planets, or are they not peopled? In short, what can we make of them?"
The Astronomer answers his charming questioner, as we should do to-day, that the fixed stars are so many suns. And he adds to this information a great deal of entertaining talk about the planets that may be supposed to circle around these distant suns, interspersing his conversation with explanations of "vortexes," and many quaint conceits, in which he is helped out by the ready wit of the Marchioness.
Finally, the impressionable mind of the lady is overwhelmed by the grandeur of the scenes that the Astronomer opens to her view, her head swims, infinity oppresses her, and she cries for mercy.
"You show me," she exclaims, "a perspective so interminably long that the eye can not see the end of it. I see plainly the inhabitants of the earth; then you cause me to perceive those of the moon and of the other planets belonging to our vortex (system), quite clearly, yet not so distinctly as those of the earth. After them come the inhabitants of planets in the other vortexes. I confess, they seem to me hidden deep in the background, and, however hard I try, I can barely glimpse them at all. In truth, are they not almost annihilated by the very expression which you are obliged to use in speaking of them? You have to call them inhabitants of one of the planets contained in one out of the infinity of vortexes. Surely we ourselves, to whom the same expression applies, are almost lost among so many millions of worlds. For my part, the earth begins to appear so frightfully little to me that henceforth I shall hardly consider any object worthy of eager pursuit. Assuredly, people who seek so earnestly their own aggrandizement, who lay schemes upon schemes, and give themselves so much trouble, know nothing of the vortexes! I am sure my increase of knowledge will redound to the credit of my idleness, and when people reproach me with indolence I shall reply: 'Ah! if you but knew the history of the fixed stars!'"
It is certainly true that a contemplation of the unthinkable vastness of the universe, in the midst of which we dwell upon a speck illuminated by a spark, is calculated to make all terrestrial affairs appear contemptibly insignificant. We can not wonder that men for ages regarded the earth as the center, and the heavens with their lights as tributary to it, for to have thought otherwise, in those times, would have been to see things from the point of view of a superior intelligence. It has taken a vast amount of experience and knowledge to convince men of the parvitude of themselves and their belongings. So, in all ages they have applied a terrestrial measure to the universe, and imagined they could behold human affairs reflected in the heavens and human interests setting the gods together by the ears.