The Devil—"This was formerly the abode of souls. The good Pythagoras had even supplied it with birds and magnificent flowers."
Antony—"I see nothing there save desolate plains, with extinct craters, under a black sky.
"Come towards those stars with a softer radiance, so that we may gaze upon the angels who hold them with the ends of their arms, like torches!"
The Devil carries him into the midst of the stars.
"They attract one another at the same time that they repel one another. The action of each has an effect on the others, and helps to produce their movements—and all this without the medium of an auxiliary, by the force of a law, by the virtue simply of order."
Antony—"Yes ... yes! my intelligence grasps it! It is a joy greater than the sweetness of affection! I pant with stupefaction before the immensity of God!"
The Devil—"Like the firmament, which rises in proportion as you ascend, He will become greater according as your imagination mounts higher; and you will feel your joy increase in proportion to the unfolding of the universe, in this enlargement of the Infinite."
Antony—"Ah! higher! ever higher!"
The stars multiply and shed around their scintillations. The Milky Way at the zenith spreads out like an immense belt, with gaps here and there; in these clefts, amid its brightness, dark tracts reveal themselves. There are showers of stars, trains of golden dust, luminous vapours which float and then dissolve.
Sometimes a comet sweeps by suddenly; then the tranquillity of the countless lights is renewed.