"What do you mean by the void?" asked Michel; "is it absolute void?"
"It is absolutely void of air."
"Is there nothing in its place?"
"Yes, ether," answered Barbicane.
"Ah! and what is ether?"
"Ether, my friend, is an agglomeration of imponderable particles, which, relatively to their dimensions, are as far removed from each other as the celestial bodies are in space, so say works on molecular physics. It is these atoms that by their vibrating movement produce light and heat by making four hundred and thirty billions of oscillations a second."
"Millions of millions!" exclaimed Michel Ardan; "then savants have measured and counted these oscillations! All these figures, friend Barbicane, are savants' figures, which reach the ear but say nothing to the mind."
"But they are obliged to have recourse to figures."
"No. It would be much better to compare. A billion signifies nothing. An object of comparison explains everything. Example—When you tell me that Uranus is 76 times larger than the earth, Saturn 900 times larger, Jupiter 1,300 times larger, the sun 1,300,000 times larger, I am not much wiser. So I much prefer the old comparisons of the Double Liégoise that simply tells you, 'The sun is a pumpkin two feet in diameter, Jupiter an orange, Saturn a Blenheim apple, Neptune a large cherry, Uranus a smaller cherry, the earth a pea, Venus a green pea, Mars the head of a large pin, Mercury a grain of mustard, and Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas fine grains of sand!' Then I know what it means!"
After this tirade of Michel Ardan's against savants and their billions, which he delivered without stopping to take breath, they set about burying Satellite. He was to be thrown into space like sailors throw a corpse into the sea.