DAYS, weeks, months, seasons, years pass swiftly on this planet, and doubtless also on the others. More than twenty times already had the Earth made its annual revolution around the sun, since the day when Fate so tragically1 closed the book which my young friends had been reading for not quite a year; their happiness had passed swiftly, their day had ended in its dawn. I had, if not forgotten, [*] at least ceased to think of them, when, quite recently, in a hypnotic séance, at Nancy, where I had stopped for a few days on my way to the Vosges, I was led to question a “subject” by whose aid in their investigations2, the savants of the Stanislas Academy had obtained some of those truly marvelous results with which the scientific press has been astonishing us for some years past. I do not remember how it happened that he and I entered into a conversation concerning the planet Mars.
After describing a country situated3 on the shores of a sea known to astronomers4 by the name of the Sea of Sathir, and a solitary5 island which rises from the bosom6 of this sea, after describing the picturesque7 scenery and the reddish vegetation of these shores, the cliffs against which the waves dash ceaselessly, the sandy beach, on which they die away, the subject, who was a sensitive of extraordinary power, suddenly grew pale, and carried his hand to his forehead. His eyes closed, he contracted his brows, he seemed trying to grasp an idea that fled from him. “See!” cried Doctor B—— raising his hand with a gesture of command —
“See! I will it.”
“You have friends there,” the sensitive said to me.
“That does not surprise me greatly,” I answered. “I have done a good deal for the inhabitants of that planet.”
“Two friends,” he added, “who are talking of you now.”
“Oh, persons who are acquainted with me?”
“Yes.”
“How can that be?”
“They have known you here.”
“Here?”
“Here on the Earth.”
“Ah! And is it long since?”
“I do not know.”
“Are they young?”
“Yes, they are two lovers who adore each other.”
Then the charming images of my regretted friends were brought vividly8 before my mind. But I had no sooner thought of them than the sensitive cried, in a more assured voice:
“It is they!”
“How do you know?”
“I see it. They are the same souls; they are of the same color.”
“How, of the same color?”
“Yes, souls are light.”
A few moments afterwards he added:
“There is a difference, however.”
He remained silent for a moment, his brow contracted as if lost in thought. But his face suddenly clearing, he added:
“They have changed places with each other. He has now become the woman, she the man. And they love each other more ardently9 than ever.”
As if he did not himself understand what he had just said, he seemed making painful efforts to find an explanation of it in his thought, the muscles of his countenance10 became violently contracted, and he fell into a sort of catalepsy from which Doctor B—— made no delay in delivering him. But the instant of lucidity11 had passed, and returned no more.
I give this last incident in conclusion, to the reader, as I witnessed it, and without comment. Had the subject, according to the hypothesis of not a few hypnotists, been influenced by the thoughts passing through my mind, when the doctor commanded him to answer my question? Or, more independent, had his spirit really freed itself for the time from the bonds of matter, and caught sight of things passing beyond our sphere? This is what I shall not take it upon myself to decide. Perhaps the conclusion of this narrative12 will tell.
I will admit, however, without hesitation13, that the resurrection of my friend and his adored companion on Mars, a planet near our own, and resembling it so closely as it does, although older and doubtless more advanced in progress, might seem to the thinker the logical and natural continuation of their terrestrial existence, so soon cut short.
No doubt Spero was right in saying that matter is not what it appears to be, that appearances are deceitful, that the real is the invisible, that spirit is indestructible, that in the eternal world the infinitely14 great is one with the infinitely little, that the celestial15 regions are not separated from us, and that souls are the seed of the planetary populations. Who can say that the science of dynamics16 will not one day reveal to the student of the heavens the religion of the future? May not Uranie hold in her hand the torch without whose light no problem can be solved, without which all nature would remain hidden from our gaze in impenetrable obscurity? The heavens should interpret the earth, the infinite should explain the soul and its spiritual faculties17.
The unknown of today is the reality of tomorrow. The following pages may perhaps throw some light on the mysterious bond that unites the transitory to the eternal, the visible to the invisible, the earth to the heavens.
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1
tragically
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| adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地 | |
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2
investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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3
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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astronomers
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| n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 ) | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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7
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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10
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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12
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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16
dynamics
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| n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态 | |
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17
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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