The moon flew toward the west like a frightened dove, while the stars changed their places in the sky, like a dispersing army.
“Where are we?” asked Tito.
“In France,” responded Death. “We have already crossed the greater part of the two bellicose nations which fought so furiously at the beginning of this century; we have seen the whole theatre of the War of Succession. Conquerors and conquered rest at this moment. My apprentice, Sleep, reigns over those heroes who did not die in battle, nor afterwards of sickness or old age.
“I cannot see why all men are not friends below. The identity of your weaknesses and misfortunes, the need that you have one for another, the shortness of your lives, the spectacle of the infinite greatness of the spheres, and the comparison of these with your own littleness, all ought to unite you fraternally, as voyagers threatened with shipwreck. There—there is no love, hate, ambition; no one is creditor or debtor; no one great or small; no one happy or unhappy. The same danger surrounds you, and my presence levels you all. Therefore what is the earth, seen from this altitude, but a boat that is about to sink, a city threatened with a pest or conflagration.”
“What fatuous lights are those I see shining in some parts of the earthly globe, since the moon has gone down?” asked the youth.
“They are cemeteries. We are over Paris. At the side of every living city, town, or hamlet, there is always a dead city or town, as the shadow is always beside the body. Geography, therefore, is always double, although you speak only of that which appears most agreeable. To make a map of all the cemeteries upon earth would suffice to explain the political geography of thy world: nevertheless it would be an equivocation, for the dead cities are much more populous than the living. In the latter, there are hardly three generations, while in the former, one finds at times hundreds, accumulated. With regard to those lights which thou seest shining, they are phosphorescences of corpses, or, more clearly, the last sparks of a thousand vanished existences. They are twilights of love, ambition, anger, genius, charity. They are, in fact, the last flashes of the light of the individuality which disappears—of a being, which returns its substance to Mother-earth. They are, (and now I find the true phrase) the froth which the river forms on meeting the ocean.” Death paused.
At that moment Tito heard a fearful clamor beneath his feet, like the rolling of a thousand carriages over a long wooden bridge. He looked toward the earth but did not see it. In its place he saw a species of movable sky which seemed to surround them.
“What is this?” he asked, terrified.
“It is the ocean,” said Death. “We have just crossed Germany and are entering the North Sea.”