“The Twenty-Fifth Century! Death of the Pope and all the bishops! Fall of the comet at Rome! Paper, sir?”
Scarcely a half hour had passed before people began to issue from their cellars, feeling again the joy of living, and recovering gradually from their apathy. Even before one had really begun to take any account of the fires which were still raging, notwithstanding the deluge or rain, the scream of the newsboy was heard in the hardly awakened streets. Everywhere, at Paris, Marseilles, Brussels, London, Vienna, Turin and Madrid, the same news was being shouted, and before caring for the fires which were spreading on every side, everyone bought the popular one-cent sheet, with its sixteen illustrated pages fresh from the press.
“The Pope and the cardinals crushed to death! The sacred college destroyed by the comet! Extra! Extra!”
The newsboys drove a busy trade, for everyone was anxious to know the truth of these announcements, and eagerly bought the great popular socialistic paper.
This is what had taken place. The American Hebrew, to whom we have already referred, and who, on the preceding Tuesday, had managed to make several millions by the reopening of the Paris and Chicago exchanges, had not for a moment yielded to despair, and, as in other days, the monasteries had accepted bequests made in view of the end of the world, so our indefatigable speculator had thought best to remain at his telephone, which he had caused to be taken down for the nonce into a vast subterranean gallery, hermetically closed. Controlling special wires uniting Paris with the principal cities of the world, he was in constant communication with them. The nucleus of the comet had contained within its mass of incandescent gas a certain number of solid uranolites, some of which measured several kilometers in diameter. One of these masses had struck the Earth not far from Rome, and the Roman correspondent had sent the following news by phonogram:
“All the cardinals and prelates of the council were assembled in solemn fête under the dome of St. Peter. In this grandest temple of Christendom, splendidly illuminated at the solemn hour of midnight, amid the pious invocations of the chanting brotherhoods, the altars smoking with the perfumed incense, and the organs filling the recesses of the immense church with their tones of thunder, the Pope, seated upon his throne, saw prostrate at his feet his faithful people from every quarter of the world; but as he rose to pronounce the final benediction a mass of iron, half as large as the city itself, falling from the sky with the rapidity of lightning, crushed the assembled multitudes, precipitating them into an abyss of unknown depth, a veritable pit of hell. All Italy was shaken, and the roar of the thunder was heard at Marseilles.”
The bolide had been seen in every city throughout Italy, through the showers of meteorites and the burning atmosphere. It had illumined the Earth like a new sun with a brilliant red light, and a terrible rending had followed its fall, as if the sky had really been split from top to bottom. (This was the bolide which the young calculator of the observatory of Paris had observed when, in spite of her zeal, the suffocating fumes had driven her from the terrace.)
Seated at his telephone, our speculator received his despatches and gave his orders, dictating sensational news to his journal, which was printed simultaneously in all the principal cities of the world. A quarter of an hour later these despatches appeared on the first page of the Twenty-Fifth Century, in New York, St. Petersburg and Melbourne, as also in the capitals nearer Paris; an hour after the first edition a second was announced.
“Paris in flames! The cities of Europe destroyed! Rome in ashes! Here’s your Twenty-Fifth Century, second edition!”
And in this new edition there was a very closely written article, from the pen of an accomplished correspondent, dealing with the consequences of the destruction of the sacred college.
“Twenty-Fifth Century, fourth edition! New volcano in Italy! Revolution in Naples! Paper, sir?”
The second had been followed by the fourth edition without any regard to a third. It told how a bolide, weighing ten thousand tons, or perhaps more, had fallen with the velocity above stated upon the solfatara of Pozzuoli, penetrating and breaking in the light and hollow crust of the ancient crater. The flames below had burst forth in a new volcano, which, with Vesuvius, illuminated the Elysian fields.
“Twenty-Fifth Century, sixth edition! New island in the Mediterranean! Conquests of England!”
A fragment of the head of the comet had fallen into the Mediterranean to the west of Rome, forming an irregular island, fifteen hundred meters in length by seven hundred in width, with an altitude of about two hundred meters. The sea had boiled about it, and huge tidal waves had swept the shores. But there happened to be an Englishman nearby, whose first thought was to land in a creek of the newly formed island, and scaling a rock, to plant the British flag upon its highest peak.
Millions of copies of the journal of the famous speculator were distributed broadcast over the world during this night of July 14th, with accounts of the disaster, dictated by telephone from the office of its director, who had taken measures to monopolize every item of news. Everywhere these editions were eagerly read, even before the necessary precautions were taken to extinguish the conflagrations still raging. From the outset, the rain had afforded unexpected succor, yet the material losses were immense, notwithstanding the prevailing use of iron in building construction.
“Twenty-Fifth Century, tenth edition! Great miracle at Rome!”
What miracle, it was easy enough to explain. In this latest edition, the Twenty-Fifth Century announced that its correspondent at Rome had given circulation to a rumor which proved
