“No!” cried J. T. Maston, more energetically than the others; “distance does not exist!”
And, carried away by the violence of his movements and emotions he could hardly contain, he nearly fell from the top of the platform to the ground. But he succeeded in recovering his equilibrium, and thus avoided a fall that would have brutally proved distance not to be a vain word. Then the speech of the distinguished orator resumed its course.
“My friends,” said he, “I think that this question is now solved. If I have not convinced you all it is because I have been timid in my demonstrations, feeble in my arguments, and you must set it down to my theoretic ignorance. However that may be, I repeat, the distance from the earth to her satellite is really very unimportant and unworthy to occupy a serious mind. I do not think I am advancing too much in saying that soon a service of trains will be established by projectiles, in which the journey from the earth to the moon will be comfortably accomplished. There will be no shocks nor running off the lines to fear, and the goal will be reached rapidly, without fatigue, in a straight line, ‘as the crow flies.’ Before twenty years are over, half the earth will have visited the moon!”
“Three cheers for Michel Ardan!” cried the assistants, even those least convinced.
“Three cheers for Barbicane!” modestly answered the orator.
This act of gratitude towards the promoter of the enterprise was greeted with unanimous applause.
“Now, my friends,” resumed Michel Ardan, “if you have any questions to ask me you will evidently embarrass me, but still I will endeavour to answer you.”
Until now the president of the Gun Club had reason to be very satisfied with the discussion. It had rolled upon speculative theories, upon which Michel Ardan, carried away by his lively imagination, had shown himself very brilliant. He must, therefore, be prevented from deviating towards practical questions, which he would doubtless not come out of so well. Barbicane made haste to speak, and asked his new friend if he thought that the moon or the planets were inhabited.
“That is a great problem, my worthy president,” answered the orator, smiling; “still, if I am not mistaken, men of great intelligence—Plutarch, Swedenborg, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and many others—answered in the affirmative. If I answered from a natural philosophy point of view I should do the same—I should say to myself that nothing useless exists in this world, and, answering your question by another, friend Barbicane, I should affirm that if the planets are inhabitable, either they are inhabited, they have been, or they will be.”
“Very well,” cried the first ranks of spectators, whose opinion had the force of law for the others.
“It is impossible to answer with more logic and justice,” said the president of the Gun Club. “The question, therefore, comes to this: ‘Are the planets inhabitable?’ I think so, for my part.”
“And I—I am certain of it,” answered Michel Ardan.
“Still,” replied one of the assistants, “there are arguments against the inhabitability of the worlds. In most of them it is evident that the principles of life must be modified. Thus, only to speak of the planets, the people must be burnt up in some and frozen in others according as they are a long or short distance from the sun.”
“I regret,” answered Michel Ardan, “not to know my honourable opponent personally. His objection has its value, but I think it may be combated with some success, like all those of which the habitability of worlds has been the object. If I were a physician I should say that if there were less caloric put in motion in the planets nearest to the sun, and more, on the contrary, in the distant planets, this simple phenomenon would suffice to equalise the heat and render the temperature of these worlds bearable to beings organised like we are. If I were a naturalist I should tell him, after many illustrious savants, that Nature furnishes us on earth with examples of animals living in very different conditions of habitability; that fish breathe in a medium mortal to the other animals; that amphibians have a double existence difficult to explain; that certain inhabitants of the sea live in the greatest depths, and support there, without being crushed, pressures of fifty or sixty atmospheres; that some aquatic insects, insensible to the temperature, are met with at the same time in springs of boiling water and in the frozen plains of the Polar Ocean—in short, there are in nature many means of action, often incomprehensible, but no less real. If I were a chemist I should say that aërolites—bodies evidently formed away from our terrestrial globe—have when analysed, revealed indisputable traces of carbon, a substance that owes its origin solely to organised beings, and which, according to Reichenbach’s experiments, must necessarily have been ‘animalised.’ Lastly, if I were a theologian I should say that Divine Redemption, according to St. Paul, seems applicable not only to the earth but to all the celestial bodies. But I am neither a theologian, chemist, naturalist, nor natural philosopher. So, in my perfect ignorance of the great laws that rule the universe, I can only answer, ‘I do not know if the heavenly bodies are inhabited, and, as I do not know, I am going to see!’ ”
Did the adversary of Michel Ardan’s theories hazard any further arguments? It is impossible to say, for the frantic cries of the crowd would have prevented any opinion from being promulgated. When silence was again restored, even in the most distant groups, the triumphant orator contented himself with adding the following considerations:—
“You will think, gentlemen, that I have hardly touched upon this grave question. I am not here to give you an instructive lecture upon this vast subject. There is another series of arguments in favour of the heavenly
