The Kingdom of the Future
[To face p. 194
“It lies in a little circle, and the castle is a black dot. Chimera, where are you going so high? We have never been so high before. Chimera, what are those circles all round us, the splendour of which makes me giddy? Are those spheres? Do they get wider and wider? Oh, how wide they get, Chimera, how wide! How high it is here, how wide, how rarefied and how light is the air! I feel myself also so light, so ethereal! Am I dead...? Chimera, look! I have two new wings, and I shine pearl-white all over. Do I not shine like a light? It is true I have been very sinful. But I was what I had to be! Is it good to be what we have to be? I do not know, Chimera: I have thought of neither good nor bad; I was only what I was. But tell me, who am I now, and what am I? And where are you taking me to, Chimera? You carry me so quietly, so safely; up and down go your wings, up and down. The stars are twinkling round us; around us whirl the spheres, and wider and wider they become...! How light, how ethereal! What is that I see on the horizon? Or is it not the horizon? Opal islands, aerial oceans.... O Chimera!!!! I see purple sands wrinkling far, far away, and round them foams a golden sea.... We saw that once before, but not as it is now! For then it was delusion, and now...! The sands are growing more distinct; I see the ripple of the golden sea.... Chimera! What land is that? Is that the rainbow? Is that the land of happiness, and are you the king?”
“No, Psyche, I am not a king, and that Land....”
“—And that Land...?”
“Is ... the Kingdom of the Future!”
“The Future! the Future!! O Chimera, where are you taking me to? Will the Future not prove to be a delusion...?”
“No, here is the Future. Here is the Land. Look at it well ... well....”
“It is wider than the widest sphere, wider than anything I can think of. Where are the limits?”