“I don’t know why it soothes me so to see the sky so beautiful. Listen, Jesús. Do you believe that there are people in those worlds yonder?” asked Manuel.
“Perhaps. Why not?”
“And prisons, too, judges, gambling houses and police?... Hey? Do you?”
Jesús did not answer the question. Then, in a calm voice he spoke of a vision of an idyllic humanity,—a sweet, pious, noble and childishly simple vision.
In this dream, Man, guided by a new idea, attained to a superior state.
No more hatred, no more rancour. No more judges, nor policemen, nor soldiers, nor authority, nor fatherland. In the vast prairies of the world, free men laboured in the sunlight. The law of love has supplanted the law of duty, and the horizon of humanity becomes ever wider, ever a softer blue....
And Jesús continued speaking of a vague ideal of love and justice, of industry and piety. These words of his, chaotic, incoherent as they were, fell like a solacing balm upon Manuel’s lacerated heart.... Then the two lapsed into a long silence, immersed in their own thoughts, contemplating the night.
The heavens were aglow with an august beatitude, and the vague sensation of the immensity of space, the infinitude of these imponderable worlds, spread a delicious tranquillity over their hearts....
THE END