This is what had taken place. The financial magnate, whose abrupt exit will be remembered by the reader of these pages, after rolling like a ball from the top to the bottom row of the hemicycle, had rushed in an aero-cab to his office on the boulevard St. Cloud, where he had telegraphed to his partner in Chicago that new computations had just been given out by the Institute of France, that the gravity of the situation had been exaggerated, and that the resumption of business was imminent; he urged, therefore, the opening of the central American exchange at any cost, and the purchase of every security offered, whatever its nature. When it is five o’clock at Paris it is eleven in the morning at Chicago. The financier received the despatch from his cousin while at breakfast. He found no difficulty in arranging for the reopening of the exchange and invested several millions in securities. The news of the resumption of business in Chicago had been at once made public, and although it was too late to repeat the same game in Paris, it was possible to prepare new plans for the morrow. The public had innocently believed in a spontaneous and genuine revival of business in America, and this fact, together with the satisfactory impression made by the session of the Institute, was sufficient to rekindle the fires of hope.
No less interest, however, was manifested in the evening session than in that of the afternoon, and but for the exertions of an extra detachment of the French guard it would have been impossible for those enjoying special privileges to gain admission. Night had come, and with it the flaming comet, larger, more brilliant, and more threatening than ever; and if, perhaps, one-half the assembled multitude appeared somewhat tranquillized, the remaining half was still anxious and fearful.
The audience was substantially the same, everyone being eager to know at first hand the issue of this general public discussion of the fate of the planet, conducted by accredited and eminent scientists, whether its destruction was to be the result of an extraordinary accident such as now threatened it, or of the natural process of decay. But it was noticed that the cardinal archbishop of Paris was absent, for he had been summoned suddenly to Rome by the Pope to attend an ecumenical council, and had left that very evening by the Paris-Rome-Palermo-Tunis tube.
“Gentlemen,” said the president, “the translation of the despatch received at the observatory of Gaurisankar from Mars has not arrived yet, but we shall open the session at once, in order to hear the important communication previously announced, which the president of the geological society, and the permanent secretary of the academy of meteorology, have to make to us.”
The former of these gentlemen was already at the desk. His remarks, stenographically reproduced by a young geologist of the new school, were as follows:
“The immense crowd gathered within these walls, the emotion I see depicted upon every face, the impatience with which you await the discussions yet to take place, all, gentlemen, would lead me to refrain from laying before you the opinion which I have formed from my own study of the problem which now excites the interest of the entire world, and to yield the platform to those gifted with an imagination or an audacity greater than mine. For, in my judgment, the end of the world is not at hand, and humanity will have to wait for it several million years—yes, gentlemen, I said millions, not thousands.
“You see that I am at this moment perfectly calm, and that, too, without laying any claim to the sangfroid of Archimedes, who was slain by a Roman soldier at the siege of Syracuse while calmly tracing geometric figures upon the sand. Archimedes knew the danger and forgot it; I do not believe in any danger whatever.
“You will not then be surprised if I quietly submit to you the theory of a natural end of the world, by the gradual levelling of the continents and their slow submergence beneath the invading waters; but I shall perhaps do better to postpone for a week this explanation, as I do not for an instant doubt that we may all, or nearly all, reassemble here to confer together upon the great epochs of the natural history of the world.”
The orator paused for a moment. The president had risen: “My dear and honorable colleague,” he said, “we are all here to listen to you. Happily, the panic of the last few days is partially allayed, and it is to be hoped that the night of July 13–14 will pass like its predecessors. Nevertheless, we are more than ever interested in all which has any bearing upon this great problem and we shall listen to no one with greater pleasure than to the illustrious author of the classic Treatise on Geology.”
“In that case, gentlemen,” resumed the president of the geological society of France, “I shall explain to you what, in my judgment, will be the natural end of the world, if, as is probable, nothing disturbs the present course of events; for accidents are rare in the cosmical order.
“Nature does not proceed by sudden leaps, and geologists do not believe in such revolutions or cataclysms; for they have learned that in the natural world everything is subject to a slow process of evolution. The geological agents now at work are permanent ones.
“The destruction of the globe by some great catastrophe is a dramatic conception; far more so, certainly, than that of the action of the forces now in operation, though they threaten our planet with a destruction equally certain. Does not the stability of our continent seem permanent? Except through the intervention of some new agency, how is it possible to doubt the durability of this earth which has supported so many generations before our own, and whose monuments, of the
