"'Tis enough to make one crazy!" said Bouvard.
He lamented his ignorance, and even regretted that he had not been in his youth at the Polytechnic School.
Then Pécuchet, turning him in the direction of the Great Bear, showed him the polar star; then Cassiopeia, whose constellation forms a Y; Vega, of the Lyra constellation—all scintillating; and at the lower part of the horizon, the red Aldebaran.
Bouvard, with his head thrown back, followed with difficulty the angles, quadrilaterals, and pentagons, which it is necessary to imagine in order to make yourself at home in the sky.
Pécuchet went on:
"The swiftness of light is eighty thousand leagues a second; one ray of the Milky Way takes six centuries to reach us; so that a star at the moment we observe it may have disappeared. Several are intermittent; others never come back; and they change positions. Every one of them is in motion; every one of them is passing on."
"However, the sun is motionless."
"It was believed to be so formerly. But to-day men of science declare that it rushes towards the constellation of Hercules!"
This put Bouvard's ideas out of order—and, after a minute's reflection:
"Science is constructed according to the data furnished by a corner of space. Perhaps it does not agree with all the rest that we are ignorant of, which is much vaster, and which we cannot discover."