"But," continued Johnson, "besides this movement of rotation, doesn't the earth also move about the sun?"
"Yes, and this takes a year."
"Is it swifter than the other?"
"Infinitely so; and I ought to say that, although we are at the Pole, it takes us with it as well as all the people in the world. So our pretended immobility is a chimera: we are motionless with regard to the other points of the globe, but not so with regard to the sun."
"Good!" said Bell, with an accent of comic regret; "so I, who thought I was still, was mistaken! This illusion has to be given up! One can't have a moment's peace in this world."
"You are right, Bell," answered Johnson; "and will you tell us, Doctor, how fast this motion is?"
"It is very fast," answered the doctor; "the earth moves around the sun seventy-six times faster than a twenty-four-pound cannon-ball flies, which goes one hundred and ninety-five fathoms a second. It moves, then, seven leagues and six tenths per second; you see it is very different from the diurnal movement of the equator."
"The deuce!" said Bell; "that is incredible, Doctor! More than seven leagues a second, and that when it would have been so easy to be motionless, if God had wished it!"
"Good!" said Altamont; "do you think so, Bell? In that case no more night, nor spring, nor autumn, nor winter!"
"Without considering a still more terrible result," continued the doctor.