The New Moon, page 20
“Where shall we commence with my instruction?” she asked.
“With the planetary system,” I replied. “But I shall precede that with the knowledge of God, who is the author of nature—which is to say, of all created things. God alone is uncreated. God exists by virtue of himself. God is a pure spirit, a divine essence that extends in everything and penetrates everywhere. That is why God is the immensity—which is to say that he is present everywhere, that he sees everything and can do anything. God is eternal wisdom. God is all of eternity. God is prescience. God alone is infinite—which is to say that his power is limitless.”
VI
Irisa stared at me with an indescribable astonishment.
“Oh, my friend,” she said. “What emotions, what hitherto unknown sentiments your instruction causes me to experience! Continue, I beg you.”
“When God created the world, chaos existed—which is to say that everything was in confusion. At his omnipotent voice, light succeeded darkness; chaos disappeared. In six days God, created the universe—which is to say, the entire world, al the celestial bodies, the Earth and its inhabitants. Now I will give you an idea of the position of the celestial bodies, comprising the sun and all the planets that God has placed in the firmament, in the zodiac, which is divided into two equal parts by a line known as the ecliptic, which the sun seems to travel.
“Now, Madame, with this planetary system, which I have drawn as best I can, you will understand with greater facility all that I have told you about the celestial bodies, and these planets, which are all the works of God.”
“So, my friend, the sun is not a God?”
“No, Madame, it is only a creature of God, which has been formed in order to fecundate the Earth by the heat of its rays and to ripen the fruits that produce the vegetables that serve as our nourishment and that of animals. But let us leave that subject and go back, if you are agreeable, to our conversation about the things you desire to know.”
“You could not give me a greater pleasure, my friend, for since you have talked to me about God and creation my mind has been working hard, and it seems to me that the subject is not exhausted, and that you have many interesting things to teach me.”
“You have thought correctly, my friend, because we have to talk about the celestial spirits.”
“What do you mean by celestial spirits? Are they other gods?”
“No, Madame, for there is only one God. The other celestial spirits are spiritual creatures, created by God to announce and carry out his orders; they inhabit heaven and surround the throne of God, all resplendent with glory, from which he dictates his laws to the entire universe.
“But what is heaven, my friend, and what are the names of these celestial spirits?”
“Heaven is the empyrean: that is the highest sky, in which God has placed paradise. Under the empyrean is the firmament, which appears to us to be a beautiful azure blue; that color is apparently produced by the ether, a very subtle fluid that is assumed to fill the space above the atmosphere, and which is not breathable. The ether is the firmament; it is what is known poetically as the azure vault; it is there that the stars circulate sand accomplish their rotation or revolution. The celestial spirits are called Angels. God created them entirely out of divine substance; each one is an entirely spiritual creation, a spirit with which the immortal soul that God has given them is united, whereas the immortal soul that God has given to humans is united with a material body—that is the only difference. The number of angels is several million.”
“Thank you, my friend. But tell me what Paradise is, and what an immortal soul is. I’ve never heard mention of either of those things.”
“Paradise is in heaven; it is the city of the blessed, where they enjoy an eternal felicity, if they have merited it. God formed humans out of clay. When humans had been formed from that material substance, God gave them an immortal soul, which is the divine breath; it is principally by means of the soul that God gave us that humans are created in the image of their Creator. It is thus that God, the Supreme Being, has rendered humans masters of the animals, and made them monarchs of the Earth. Our soul is spiritual, since it emanates from God; it is of the same nature as that of the angels, who are created like us, except that their soul is united, as I said, with a spiritual nature, while in humans the soul is united with a material nature. An angel is the noblest of creatures. Our soul possesses admirable faculties, at the head of which it is necessary to place thought, which is an operation of the intelligent substance and free will, which is the operation, or rather the faculty, that the soul possesses in making a decision.
“A human being contains one thing that is certainly not material, and that is a spirit, the soul, the image of God, as the matter that forms humans is the image of earth. Animals have a soul that is nothing but intellect, and at death it returns to oblivion, while ours, much more perfect, has a higher, eternal destiny. Humans are intermediate between animal and intellectual nature.”
The Queen seemed to be plunged in a profound reverie. She came round and said: “Everything that you have just told me has thrown my mind into a strange agitation. I need to meditate in order to conceive and analyze the elevated things that you have told me—too elevated for me, who had no idea of them. I hope that you will help me to draw my mind out of the obscurity in which it is still enveloped.”
“I am entirely at your discretion, my good friend. Tell me what the matters are that you would like clarified, and I will write you notes that will help you to interpret what you have found obscure in all that I have just told you.”
“That is an excellent idea, my friend, for I can study your notes in my hours of solitude and we can continue in your study my instruction on the celestial bodies, in accordance with the planetary system that you have drawn for me.”
VII
The next day, the Queen came to my study and I began my lessons in astronomy.
“Astronomy is the knowledge of the celestial bodies and the sky. Physical astronomy explains its phenomena.
“Uranography is the description of the sky.
“Uranometry is the art of measuring the heavenly bodies.
“The Sun, the torch of the world, occupies the center of the universe, where it is motionless. Mercury rotates around the Sun, in such a way that the Sun is at the center of the circle described by Mercury. Above Mercury is Venus, which similarly rotates around the Sun. The Moon is sometimes close to the sun and sometimes further away, and it is the same with the other planets, which all rotate around the Sun. Only the Moon rotates around the Earth and illuminates it by night. After Venus come the Moon and the Earth, which, being higher than Mercury and Venus, describe a larger circle than those plants. Finally, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, describe even greater circles around the sun than all the others. That is why the other planets take longer to complete their revolution.
“The Sun is luminous by itself, by reason of the substance that composes it, and whose continual incandescence is the cause of the luminosity. English astronomers claim that the center of the Sun, which they call “the stone” and we call the nucleus, does not produce the heat. That opinion already existed among French astronomers, who have compared the heat of the nucleus with the most brilliant part of the solar disk, which they call the photosphere, and from which the sun’s rays depart. In addition to the five hundred planets discovered by Herschel in 1802,78 other planets exist around the sun: Iris and Flora, discovered in 1847; Metis in 1848. Hygiea in 1849, Parthenope and Victoria in 1850, Irene and Eunomia in 1851.79
“The Sun takes more than twenty-five days to rotate on its axis; the Earth takes twenty-four hours. The days of Mercury are twenty-four hours three minutes, the days of Venus twenty-three hours twenty-one minutes. On Mercury the heat is seven times more intense than in our hottest summers; it is so strong there that it even liquefies metals. On Saturn, by contrast, it is twenty-four times colder than in our most rigorous winters; everything there is frozen. Saturn is a very long way from the Sun, which seems very small there, only appearing as a small pale star of very feeble heat. The cold there is excessive, as I said, which renders the inhabitants unsociable by their phlegmatic humor and the absence of all gaiety. The distance of Saturn from the Sun is three hundred million leagues.
“The Sun is one million four hundred thousand nine hundred and twenty times larger than the Earth, from which it is thirty-eight million leagues distant—some say thirty-three, other thirty-five; once it was thirty-six million. On Mercury, the character is opposite to that of Saturn.
“The stars are, in general, celestial bodies that shine by night. The stars are fixed in relation to the Sun; wandering stars are planets; falling stars are luminous meteors.
“A constellation is an assemblage of neighboring stars designated by a single name; one says, for example, the constellation of Canis Major, Taurus or Virgo.
“Sirius is a star in the constellation Canis Major, the brightest in the firmament.
“The distance of the stars from the Earth is about two hundred and six thousand times the distance that separates the Sun from the Earth, about thirty billon leagues.
“Light travels seventy-seven thousand leagues per second. With the most powerful telescope one can discover more than forty million fixed stars of fourteen different magnitudes. Three thousand stars are visible to the naked eye in a single hemisphere.
“The light of the star nearest to the Earth, which arrives in the evening, departed three years ago from the start that sent it. The light of the most distant stars needs three or four thousand years to reach us, traveling, as I said at seventy-seven leagues a second, and beyond those stars one assumes that there are others more distant, which could only be seen with more powerful instruments than the ones we possess.
“A comet is a kind of planet that rotates around the Sun in a greatly elongated circle. As they get closer to the sun their tail extends further, and when they draw away, their tails gradually shorten, and end up disappearing. The tail of a comet is its atmosphere, which becomes luminous and visible in separating from the opaque body of the planet. Heat is produced by the interaction of solar rays with the atmosphere.
“The center of the Earth is the center of gravity of the objects on its surface. But as the Earth rotates around the Sun with all that it contains, it follows that the Earth’s center of gravity or point of support is in the Sun.
“Vortices are masses of matter whose parts, separate from one another, all move in the same direction. A whirlwind is an infinity of particles of air which spin around together and envelop those that they encounter.
“The planets are borne in the celestial matter, which is prodigiously subtle and agitated; that entire great mass of celestial matter, which extends from the Sun to the fixed stars, spins around, carrying the planets with it, causing them to rotate in the same direction around the Sun, which occupies the center. Our great vortex is composed of sixteen planets, of which we can only see seven. Uranus and Neptune are in the same category as Saturn with regard to cold; everything there is frozen.
“The Chariot is composed of the Sun, the Moon, and five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The planet Jupiter is situated between Mars and Saturn. Jupiter is a thousand times larger than the Earth; that planet is a hundred and sixty-five million leagues distant from the Sun; it is illuminated by four moons, little inhabited planets; seen from the closest of those little planets, Jupiter is six hundred times larger than our Moon appears to be to us. Saturn has five moons.
“The air that surrounds the Earth only extends to a certain height, about twenty leagues. That air follows the Earth and rotates with it, both in its rotation and its revolution.
“The Earth is sixty times larger than the Moon, which has neither dawn nor dusk, nor does it have rainbows.
“In addition to five hundred planets discovered by Herschel in 1802, Iris and Flora were discovered in 1847, Metis in 1848, Hygiea in 1849, Parthenope and Victoria in 1850 and Eunomia in 1851. These latter planets are all situated around the circle described by Mercury.
“Thus you see, Madame, that the planet Iris, of which you are the Queen, has been known to us for twelve years.”80
“I can see that, my friend; but I would like to know by what means it was discovered at such a great distance from your Earth.”
“As I have told you, it was with the aid of our telescopes.”
“But I do not know what they are; will you explain them to me?”
“A telescope or long-view, is a tube fitted at each of its two extremities with a glass lens, which magnifies distant objects. There are also large reflecting telescopes, which enlarge objects and make them seem closer. An astrolabe is an instrument for calculating the height of stars. A heliometer is an instrument for measuring the diameter of the Sun and of planets. A helioscope in an instrument for looking at the Sun.”
“But tell me, I beg you, what glass is, for I have no idea.”
“Glass is a fragile transparent substance that is obtained by the fusion of a mixture of sand and an alkali salt, caustic soda, extracted from the ashes of ferns, a kind of plant that grows in the woods.”
“I understand that, but I don’t understand how it magnifies objects.”
“To magnify or make objects seem smaller on makes use of concave lenses—which is to say, hollowed out roundly, and it is by that means that the lenses placed in telescopes obtain the approach or distancing of objects.
“In order to measure the diameter of stars, astronomers employ a reticule, which consists of wire placed in the focal plane of the telescope in the form of a network or lattice, and it is by the distance between the wires that one can judge by calculation the distance of objects.”
“In truth, my friend, you augment from day to day not only my astonishment but also my admiration, by means of all the marvels that you relate to me. But tell me: this glass to which you attribute so many marvels; is it only used by astronomers for their telescopes?”
“It serves several other purposes. When the glass is molten, and can be blown, one makes it into vessels from which liquids are drunk, carafes and bottles to contain liquids, panes to garnish frames that are fitted into windows to provide protection from bad weather. Mirrors are made from it—looking glasses that reproduce the resemblance of objects presented to them, which appear behind the mirror. The ancients did not know glass, they used oiled paper, or obsidian stone—a translucent stone—to replace widow-panes. Oiled paper is translucent, but one cannot see through it.”
“But my friend, that discovery would be of great utility here. If the plant you mentioned exists on this planet we might, perhaps, with the precious information that you can give, succeed in making glass. If you are agreeable, we can go to explore my realm together and visit its woods, to try to discover fern there and other plants whose ashes we might use to make glass.”
“I consent to that willingly, my noble friend; you know that I’m entirely devoted to you. But do you have in our capital, or elsewhere, a man who has some knowledge of Phytology?”
“I don’t know that science.”
“It’s that of knowing and describing plants.”
“I don’t know, my friend, but I will have enquiries made, and if I discover a capable man, he will be brought here, and if he can give us satisfactory information, that will spare us a good deal of perhaps futile research.”
VIII
The next day, a man was brought who was said to know plants. The Queen summoned me, and I questioned the man in her presence. It was difficult for me to refer to ferns in his language, because I did not know the word; I therefore made the decision to draw one, and he told the Queen that he had seen them in a wood near the village of Baleno.
Furnished with that information we hoped that our journey would not be fruitless, and the Queen decided that we would leave when the heat was less intense, for we were close to Mercury and we know how hot that planet is.
In the meantime, I continued giving the Queen lessons, and sometimes went to walk in her gardens, which were vast and well planted with flowers; that was a great attraction for me, because I had the intention of drawing a flower.
One day, when I was very occupied in examining the flowers, I heard the cries of several women, shouting: “Elpo, Elpo!”—which is a cry of distress, appealing for help. The cries were coming from a nearby grove of trees. I ran in that direction—or, rather, flew, because the cries were getting louder—and launched myself into the little wood, and in a few seconds I reached the edge of a pool where I saw the Queen’s ladies, frightened and sobbing, only able to express the subject of their desperation to me by signs.
Finally, I understood that the Queen had disappeared in the middle of the pond. Throwing myself into the water and diving was the affair of an eye-blink, and I reappeared almost immediately on the surface, holding the Queen in my left arm while using the right and my feet to swim.
Cries of joy were uttered by the maids of honor, and when found my forting I hasted as much as possible to reach the bank, carrying my precious burden.
I laid the Queen down on the grass. She had lost consciousness, but her heard was beating quite regularly, and the cares that I lavished on her brought her round. She opened her eyes, and a sweet smile was my recompense.
I advised the ladies-in-waiting to change the Queen’s garments quickly, and when everything was ready for the change I left the grove, but I stayed nearby in case I was needed. I informed the maids of honor of that, and allowed my clothes to dry on my body. I was not in any danger; the heat dried them out rapidly.
I was fortunate, glad to have saved the lady’s life; I experienced all the happiness one feels on accomplishing a good deed.
I had asked the ladies-in-waiting to send me news of the Queen, and, indeed, they did so twice during the night. The Queen was feeling quite well, experiencing no distress except for a slight lassitude, and she was generous enough to ask for news of me.
