“You make the round earth, the car that bears us through celestial space, stand still; and you give motion to the sun, the giant star that makes our earth seem as nothing by comparison. At least, you say the sun rises, pursues its course, sets, and begins its course again the next day. The enormous star moves, the humble earth tranquilly watches its motion.”
“The sun does certainly seem to us,” said Jules, “to rise at one side of the sky and set at the other, to give us light by day. The moon does the same, and the stars too, to give us light at night.”
“Listen then to this. I have read, I don’t know where, of an eccentric person whose wrong-headedness could not reconcile him to simple methods. To attain the simplest result he would use means whose extravagance caused every one to laugh. One day, wishing to roast a lark, what do you think he took it into his head to do? I will give you ten, a hundred guesses. But, bah! you would never guess it. Just imagine! He constructed a complicated machine, with much wheelwork and many cords, pulleys, and counterpoises; and when it was started there was a variety of movement, back and forth, up and down. The noise of the springs and the grinding of the wheels biting on each other was enough to make one deaf. The house trembled with the fall of the counterpoises.”
“But what was the machine for?” asked Claire. “Was it to turn the lark in front of the fire?”
“No, indeed; that would have been too simple. It was to turn the fire before the lark. The lighted firebrands, the hearth and chimney, dragged heavily by the enormous machine, all turned around the lark.”
“Well, that beats all!” Jules ejaculated.
“You laugh, children, at this odd idea; and yet, like that eccentric man, you make the firebrands, hearth, the whole house turn around a little bird on the spit. The earth is the little bird; the house is the heavens, with their enormous, innumerable stars.”
“The sun isn’t very big—at most, as large as a grindstone,” said Jules. “The stars are only sparks. But the earth is so large and heavy!”
“What did you just say? the sun as large as a grindstone? the stars only little sparks? Ah, if you only knew! Let us begin with the earth.”