Part 6

The disturbances of the magnetic needle had announced the aurora's presence even before the sun went down, and the inflation of the balloon with pure hydrogen gas was begun while the sky showed in the magnetic North that coloring of golden green which is always the sure indication of an aurora borealis. The preparations were ended in a couple of hours. The atmosphere, entirely free from all clouds, was perfectly limpid, the stars twinkled in the bosom of a sky profoundly dark and without a moon; but towards the North a soft light shone in an arc above a black segment, throwing into the upper atmosphere slight flushes of a pale greenish rose color, symbolizing the palpitations of an unknown life. Icléa's father, who was watching the inflation of the balloon, had no suspicion that his daughter was going; but at the last moment she stepped into the car as if to inspect it. Spero gave the signal, and the balloon rose slowly, majestically, over the city of Christiania, which, lighted by thousands of lamps, appeared under the eyes of the travellers rising through the air, to diminish in size as it disappeared in the darkness.

Soon the balloon, taking an oblique ascent, hovered over the darkened landscape, and the paling lights also disappeared. The noises of the city died away at the same time into profound silence: it was the silence of the upper heights which enveloped the air-ship now. Icléa was impressed by this extraordinary stillness, perhaps, above all, by the novelty of the situation, and clung to her rash lover's side. They mounted rapidly. The aurora borealis appeared to descend, and spread itself out under the stars, like an undulating drapery of fleecy gold and purple, overrun with electric flashes. Spero watched his instruments, and by the help of a little crystal globe filled with glow-worms, wrote down the indications corresponding to the heights attained. The balloon went up steadily. What a delight to the investigator! In a few moments he would soar to the crest of the aurora borealis; he would find an answer to the question about the aurora's height which had been asked in vain by so many philosophers, and especially by his beloved masters, the two great "psychologists and philosophers," Oersted and Ampère!

Icléa's emotion had calmed itself. "Were you afraid?" asked her lover. "The balloon is safe; you need fear no accident,--everything has been provided for. We will go down in an hour; there is not a breath of wind stirring on the earth."

"No," she said, while the celestial light threw over her a roseate and transparent illumination; "but it is so strange, so beautiful, so divine. It is grand for little me! I shuddered for a moment. It seems to me that I love you more than ever!" and throwing her arms about his neck, she kissed him in a long, passionate, clinging embrace.

The solitary balloon was moving silently through the aerial heights, a spheroid of transparent gas enclosed in its silken envelope, whose vertical gores, joining each other at the valve on the top, could be seen from the car; the lower part of the balloon being open for the dilation of the gas.

The dusky brightness that falls from the stars, of which Corneille speaks, would have been sufficient without the gleams from the aurora borealis to enable them to distinguish the whole of the aerial skiff. The car was hung to the net which enveloped the silken vessel by strong ropes tied to the basket-work and interlaced under the feet of the aeronauts. The silence was impressively solemn; the beating of their hearts could have been heard. They were sailing at a height of five thousand metres, with an unaccustomed gravity; the upper wind was carrying them along without the faintest breath being felt in the car, for the balloon floated in the moving air like a simple bubble,--motionless, except as the current carried it along. Our travellers--sole inhabitants of these lofty regions, in full enjoyment of the exquisite elation which aeronauts know when once they have breathed that rare and sublimated atmosphere--looked down upon the realms below, forgetful of all earthly cares and associations, in the silence of their vast isolation. But they appreciated and enjoyed their unique situation more than any of those who had preceded them, for they added to the pleasures of an aerial voyage the rapture of their own happiness. They spoke in low tones, as if afraid of being overheard by the angels, and of seeing the magic charm dissolved which held them so near to heaven.... Sometimes sudden flashes came to them,--gleams from the aurora borealis; then darkness, deeper and more unfathomable than before, reigned again.

They were floating thus in their starry dream when a quick, shrill noise, like that of a new whistle, sounded in their ears. They listened, leaned far out over the car, and listened again. The noise did not come from the earth. Was it an electrical blast from the aurora borealis? Was it the hiss of some magnetic storm in the upper air? Lightning coming from the depths of space flashed about them and disappeared. They listened breathlessly again. The sound was quite close to them.... It was the gas escaping from the balloon!

Either the valve had partly opened of itself, or they had pressed upon the connecting rope while incautiously moving about in the car; at all events, the gas was escaping.

Spero at once detected the cause of the disquieting noise, and it terrified him, for it was impossible to close the valve again. He examined the barometer, which had begun slowly to rise, while the balloon was beginning to descend. The fall, slow at first, but inevitable, would increase in mathematical proportion. Trying to fathom the abyss below them, he saw the flames of the aurora borealis reflected in the water of an immense lake. The balloon was now descending with great rapidity, and was not more than three thousand metres from the ground. Outwardly calm, but fully conscious of the certain and impending peril, the unfortunate aeronaut threw out one after the other the two sacks left for ballast, then the maps, the instruments, the anchor, and emptied the car; but this lightening of the weight was not enough, and served only to slacken momentarily their accelerated speed. The balloon was now descending, or rather falling, at a tremendous rate, and was but a few hundred metres above the lake. Strong wind-currents blew up and down and whistled in their ears.

The balloon twisted about itself, as if whirled by a waterspout. George Spero felt a sudden and passionate embrace, followed by a long kiss upon his lips. "My master, my god, my all! I love you," she cried; and thrusting aside two of the ropes, she leaped into the empty air. The unballasted balloon shot up again like an arrow. Spero was saved.

Icléa's body made a dull, strange, and frightful sound in the midnight stillness as it fell into the deep waters of the lake. Wild with grief and despair, Spero felt his hair bristling with horror. He opened his eyes wide, but saw nothing. Carried up by the balloon to a height of more than a thousand metres, he clung to the valve-rope, hoping to fall again towards the scene of Icléa's catastrophe; but the rope would not work. He fumbled and hunted, but without avail. In the midst of all he felt under his hand his loved one's veil, where it had caught on one of the ropes,--a thin little veil, still fresh with perfume, and filled with the memories of his lovely companion. He stared at the ropes, thinking he could find the imprint of her little clinging hands, and putting his own where Icléa's had been an instant before, he threw himself out of the car. His foot caught in a rope for a second, but he had strength enough to disengage it, and fell whirling into space.

The crew of a fishing-boat that had witnessed the closing scenes of the drama crowded all sail towards the spot in the lake into which the young girl had fallen, and succeeded in finding and rescuing her. She was not dead; but all the care lavished upon her could not prevent a fever from setting in and making her its prey.

In the morning the fishermen reached a little harbor on the borders of the lake, and carried her to their humble cot; but she did not regain consciousness. "George!" she cried, opening her eyes, "George!" and that was all. The next day she heard the village bell tolling a funeral knell. "George!" she repeated, "George!" His body was found in a terribly mangled condition a short distance from the shore. His fall was more than a thousand metres. It had begun over the lake; but the body, retaining the horizontal impetus given by the moving balloon, had not fallen vertically, it had descended obliquely, as if slipping down a rope following the course of the balloon; and like a mass thrown from the sky, had fallen into a meadow near the shore of the lake, making a deep indentation in the soil, and rebounding more than a metre from the place where it fell. His very bones were crushed into powder, and the brain protruded through the forehead. His grave had hardly been closed before they were obliged to dig another beside it for Icléa, who died murmuring in a feeble voice, "George! George!"

A single stone covers both graves, and the same willow-tree shades their sleep. To this day the dwellers on the shores of beautiful Lake Tyrifiorden remember the melancholy episode, which has become almost legendary; and when the gravestone of the lovers is shown to the tourist, their memory is always associated with a happy, happy dream that has vanished.

VI.

ETERNAL PROGRESS.

Days, weeks, months, seasons, years, pass quickly on this planet,--and doubtless also on the others. The Earth has already run its yearly course around the Sun twenty times since destiny so tragically closed the book that my young friends had been reading for less than a year. Their happiness was short-lived; their morning faded away like the dawn.

I had forgotten,[1] or at least lost sight of them, when quite recently, at a hypnotic séance in Nancy, where I had stopped for a few days on my way to the Vosges, I was induced to question a "subject" by whose assistance the experimental savants of the Académie Stanislas had obtained some of those really startling results with which the scientific Press has surprised us for a few years past. I do not remember how, but it happened that my conversation with him turned on the planet Mars. After describing to me a country situated on the shores of a sea known to astronomers under the name of Kepler's Ocean, and a solitary island lying in the bosom of this sea; after telling me about the picturesque landscapes and reddish vegetation which adorned the shores, the wave-washed cliffs, and the sandy beaches where the billows break and die away,--the subject, who was very sensitive, suddenly grew pale, and raised his hand to his head; his eyes closed, his eyebrows contracted; he seemed desirous of grasping some fugitive idea which obstinately eluded him. "_See!_" said Dr. B., standing before him with irresistible command; "see! I wish it."

"You have friends there," he said to me.

"I am not surprised at that," I said, laughing; "I have done enough to deserve them."

"Two friends," he went on, "who are talking about you now, this very minute."

"Ah, ha! Persons who know me?"

"Yes."

"How is that?"

"They have known you here."

"Here?"

"Here,--on the earth!"

"How long ago was it?"

"I do not know."

"Have they lived on Mars long?"

"I do not know."

"Are they young?"

"Yes; they are lovers, who adore each other."

Then the loved image of my lamented friends rose distinctly in my mind; but I had no sooner seen them than the subject exclaimed,--

"Yes! it is they!"

"How do you know?"

"I see,--they are the same souls, same colors."

"What do you mean by the 'same colors'?"

"Yes, the souls are suffused with light."

A few instants afterwards he added, "And yet there is a difference."

Then he was silent, his forehead frowning in his effort to find out. But his face regained all its calmness and serenity as he added,--

"He has become she, the woman; she is now the man,--and they love each other more than ever."

As if he did not quite understand what he had said himself, he seemed to be seeking for some explanation,--made painful efforts, judging from the contraction of the muscles in his face, and fell into a sort of cataleptic fit, from which Dr. B. speedily relieved him; but the lucid interval had fled, not to return.

In ending, I leave this last fact with the reader just as it happened, without comment. Had the subject, according to the hypothesis now admitted by many hypnotists, been under the influence of my own thought when the professor ordered him to answer me? Or, being independent, had he really "freed" himself, and had he _seen_ beyond our sphere? I cannot undertake to decide. Perhaps it will appear in the course of this story.

And yet I will acknowledge in all sincerity that the resurrection of my friend and his adored companion on the world of Mars,--a neighboring abode to ours, and so remarkably like this one we inhabit, only older, doubtless more advanced on the road of progress,--may appear to a thinker's eyes the logical and natural continuation of their earthly existence, so quickly broken off.

Doubtless Spero was right in declaring that matter is not what it seems to be, and that appearances are deceitful; that the real is the invisible; that animate force is indestructible; that in the absolute, the infinitely great is identical with the infinitely small; that celestial space is not impassable; and that souls are the seeds of planetary humanities. Who knows but that the philosophy of dynamism may one day reveal the religion of the future to the apostles of astronomy? Does not Urania bear the torch without which every problem is insoluble, without which all Nature would remain to us in impenetrable obscurity? Heaven must explain the earth, the infinite must explain the soul and its immaterial faculties.

The unknown of to-day is the truth of to-morrow.

The following pages will perhaps enable us to form something of an idea of the mysterious link which binds the transitory to the eternal, the visible to the invisible, earth to heaven.

Part Third.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

I.

TELEPATHY.

The magnetic séance at Nancy had left a strong impression on my mind. I often thought of my departed friend and his investigations in the unexplored domains of nature and life, of his sincere and original analytical researches on the mysterious problem of immortality; but I could not think of him now without associating him with the idea of a possible reincarnation in the planet Mars.

This idea seemed to me to be bold, rash, purely imaginary if you like, but not absurd. The distance from here to Mars is equal to zero for the transmission of attraction; it is almost insignificant for that of light, since a few minutes are enough for a luminous undulation to travel millions of leagues. I thought of the telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph; of the influence a hypnotizer's will has on his subject many kilometres distant; and I wondered if some marvellous advance in science might not suddenly throw a celestial bridge between our world and others of its kind in infinity.

For several evenings I could not observe Mars through the telescope without my attention being diverted by many strange fancies. Still, the planet was very beautiful, as it was during all the spring of 1888. Extensive inundations had taken place upon one of its continents, upon Libye, as astronomers had observed before in 1882, and under various circumstances. It was discovered that its meteorology and climatology are not the same as ours, and that the waters which cover about half of the planet's surface are subject to strange displacements and periodical variations, of which terrestrial geography can give no idea. The snow at the boreal pole had greatly diminished,--which proves that the summer on that hemisphere had been quite hot, although less elevated than that of the southern hemisphere. Besides, there had been very few clouds over Mars during the whole series of our observations. But it will be hardly credible that it was not these astronomical facts, however important they might be, and the base of all our conjectures, which most interested me,--it was what the hypnotized man had told me of George and Icléa; the fantastic ideas flitting through my brain prevented me from making a truly scientific observation. I persistently wondered if communication could not exist between two beings very far removed from each other, and even between the living and the dead; and each time I told myself that such a question was of itself unscientific, and showed a positive spirit.

Yet, after all, what is what we call "science"? What is not "scientific" in Nature? Where are the limits of positive study? Is the carcase of a bird really a more scientific thing than its lustrous, colored plumage and its song with its subtle tones? Is the skeleton of a pretty woman more worthy of admiration than her structure of flesh and her living form? Is not the analysis of the mind's emotions "scientific"? Is it not scientific to try to find out whether the mind can see to a distance, and in what manner? And then, how much reason is there in this strange vanity, that we imagine that science has told us all; that we know all there is to know; that our five senses are sufficient to appreciate the nature of the universe? From what we can make out among the forces acting about us,--attraction, heat, light, electricity,--does it follow that there may not be other forces which escape us, because we have no senses to perceive them? It is not this hypothesis which is absurd, it is the simplicity of pedants. We smile at the ideas of the astronomers, philosophers, physicians, and theologians of three centuries ago; three centuries hence, will not our successors laugh in their turn at the affirmations of those who pretend to know everything now?

The physicians to whom fifteen years ago I communicated some magnetic phenomena observed by myself during some experiments, all confidently denied the reality of the facts. I met one of them recently at the Institute. "Oh!" said he, not without a certain wit, "then it was magnetism; now it is hypnotism, and we are studying it."

Moral. Do not deny anything as a foregone conclusion. Let us study and discover; the explanation will come later.

I was in this frame of mind, pacing up and down my library, when my eyes chanced to fall on a pretty copy of Cicero which I had not noticed for some time. I took up a volume of it, opened it mechanically at the first page I came to, and read the following:--

"Two friends arrive at Megara and take separate lodgings; one of them has hardly fallen asleep before he sees his travelling companion beside him, telling him sorrowfully that his host has formed a plan to assassinate him, and begging him to come to his assistance as quickly as possible. The other awakes; but satisfied that he has had a bad dream, loses no time in going to sleep again. His friend appears to him again, and conjures him to hasten, because the murderers are coming to his room. More puzzled, he is astonished at the persistency of this dream, and is on the point of going to his friend; but reason and fatigue triumph, and he goes to bed again. Then his friend comes to him for the third time, pale, bleeding, disfigured. 'Wretch,' said he to him, 'you did not come when I implored you; it is all over now. Avenge me. At sunrise you will meet a cart loaded with manure at the city gate: stop it, and order it to be unloaded; you will find my body hidden in the middle. Give me an honest burial, and pursue my murderers.' So great a tenacity, such minute details, admitted of no further delay or hesitation; the friend rises, hurries to the gate mentioned, finds the wagon there, stops the driver, who is frightened; and soon after the search begins, the body of his friend is found."

This story seemed to come expressly to strengthen my opinion in regard to the unknown quantities in the scientific problem. Doubtless hypotheses are not lacking in reply to the point in question. It may be said that perhaps the circumstance never happened as Cicero tells it, that it has been amplified and exaggerated; that two friends coming to a strange city may fear an accident, that fearing for a friend's life after the fatigue of a journey, in the middle of the quiet night, one might chance to dream that he is the victim of an assassin. As to the episode of the cart, the travellers may have seen one standing in their host's court-yard, and the principle of the association of ideas comes in to bring it into the dream. Yes, these explanatory hypotheses may be made; but they are only hypotheses. To admit that there had really been any communication between the dead man and the living one is also an hypothesis.

Are facts of this kind very rare? It seems not. I remember, among others, a story told me by an old friend of my boyish days, Jean Best, who, with my eminent friend Édouard Charton, founded the _Magasin Pittoresque_ in 1883, and died a few years ago. He was a grave, cold, methodical man, a skilful typographical engraver, and a careful business man. Every one who knew him knows how little nervous he was by temperament, and how foreign to his mind were things of the imagination. Well, the following incident happened to him when he was a child between five and six years old.

It was at Toul, his native place. He was lying in his little bed one beautiful evening, but was not asleep, when he saw his mother come into his chamber, cross it, and go into the adjoining drawing-room, whose door was open, and where his father was playing cards with a friend. Now, his mother was ill at Pau at that time. He at once rose from his bed and ran to the drawing-room after his mother, where he looked for her in vain. His father scolded him somewhat impatiently, and sent him back to bed again, assuring him that he had been dreaming.

Then the child, thinking that he must have been dreaming, tried to go to sleep again. But some time afterwards, lying with his eyes open, he distinctly saw his mother pass him for the second time; only now he hurried to her and kissed her, and she at once disappeared. He did not want to go to bed afterwards, and remained in the drawing-room, where his father continued to play cards. His mother died at Pau the same day at that very hour.

I have this circumstance from M. Best himself, who remembered it clearly. How explain it? It may be said that, knowing his mother was ill, the child often thought of her, and had an hallucination which happened to coincide with his mother's death. That is possible. But it may be thought, too, that there was some sympathetic link between the mother and child, and at that solemn moment the mother's soul may really have been in communication with her child. How? one may ask. We know nothing about it. But what we do not know, is to what we know in the proportion of the ocean to a drop of water.

_Hallucinations!_ That is easily said. How many medical works have been written upon this subject! Everybody knows that of Brierre de Boismont. Among the numberless incidents which it relates, let us cite the two following: