Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg - "The Marvelous Voyage of Mr. Nic-Nac" (1875-76)

 TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION

Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg was born in 1852 and died in 1937 and was the most prolific author of 19th century Argentine science fiction. His primary occupation was not as a writer, but a biologist, and he extensively surveyed Argentina's ecoregions and describing its biodiversity in depth. In 1878, he co-founded The Argentine Naturalist, a biological magazine, and was appointed the director of the Buenos Aires zoo in 1888, where he served until 1904. He wrote several stories in the 1870s and 1880s, which are discussed in Rachel Haywood Ferreira's "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction".

"The Marvelous Voyage of Mr. Nic-Nac, in Which the Prodigious Adventures of This Gentlemen Are Related, and the Institutions, Customs and Concerns of an Unknown World Are Made Known" was published in serial form from November 29th 1875 to February 25th 1876 in the Argentinean publication "The National", and published on its own in book format in March 1876. It is one of the earliest works of science-fiction from Argentina which can be called a novel, and some sources describe it as the first. Like many works of 19th century science fiction, it is a traveler narrative that contains a great deal of social commentary, specifically pertaining to recent political events in Argentina. The spiritualist themes throughout the novel make it stand out from many of its contemporaries.

The work has been republished several times in Spanish, and has a loose comic book adaptation from 2012, written by Leonardo Kuntscher and illustrated by Santiago Miret. The edition most easily available commercially at the time of this writing is the 2019 La Casa de las Palabras edition, with a written introduction by Daniel Marcelo Sierra. This edition modernizes the spelling and punctuation, as well as contains several notes. Some of these notes were expanded upon in this translation. The original work is available to freely read on Wikisource, without spelling correction.

As the spelling and punctuation of the original is somewhat antiquated, where possible I opted for a more literal translation, but have attempted to preserve the original punctuation. A few notes on translation choice, the character Seele is frequently referred to by Nic-Nac as "maestro", this has been translated as "master", and Holmberg uses the word "Martial" for "Martian", as opposed to the modern word "Marciano", and while the title has been translated many different ways, I opted for "Marvelous Voyage" instead of something like "Wonderful Trip" as the original Spanish is "Viaje Maravilloso".

- Chrononauts translation office, December 29, 2020

THE MARVELOUS VOYAGE OF MR. NIC-NAC, IN WHICH THE PRODIGIOUS ADVENTURES OF THIS GENTLEMAN ARE RELATED, AND THE INSTITUTIONS, CUSTOMS AND CONCERNS OF AN UNKNOWN WORLD ARE MADE KNOWN

INTRODUCTION

- "Some claim that this voyage is impractical, and are supported by the failures of other similar attempts."

- "But this is new! Completely new! No one had ever thought that such a formidable distance could be overcome, even less claim to verify it."

- "Possible or not, it matters little to me."

- "The fact is that the voyage has been taken, and Nic-Nac, the daring Livingstone of space, today is in San Buenaventura, where Dr. Uriarte lavishes all imaginable care on him." [Translators note: Livingstone refers to David Livingstone, Scottish physician and missionary, instrumental in ending the East African Arab-Swahili slave trade. San Buenaventura was a psychiatric hospital founded on November 11th, 1865, renamed Hospicio de las Mercedes in 1888 and is currently the José T. Borda Psychiatric Hospital. The hospital's first director was José María Uriarte.]

- "I hope that your enthusiasm for Mr. Nic-Nac will not lead you to imitate him on his crazy and fantastic excursion, otherwise, you already know that the asylum is quite vast, in which there are some unoccupied cells, and that Mr. Uriarte handles the showers with extraordinary skill. "

- "Never has my spirit prompted me to verify such a glorious undertaking, but I assure you that if one day...."

- "We would have the displeasure of putting you in the hands of Uriarte, and within two hours of your arrival at the temple of sanity, his spraying would oblige you, at least, to refrain from respecting the probability of the voyage...."

So speaking in a group, on the night of November 19th, 1875, were some youths who were walking through the Plaza de la Victoria.

- "It is a great calamity" said an old man in another group somewhat separate from the first, "if the Commune explodes in Buenos Aires..."

- "Who remembers the Commune anymore?" interrupted another man, with a white beard and green glasses. [Translators note: The 1871 Paris Commune]

- "But the conspiracy has only been discovered three days ago."

- "What does it matter? There has been enough time during those three days to weigh the incidents. Meanwhile a new curiosity comes to vehemently awaken public attention."

- "The newspapers have not been busy until now but for the conspiracy!"

- "It is true; -but it is no less so that tomorrow they will have forgotten Bookart, to think only of Nic-Nac." [Translators note: Juan G. Bookart, who conspired to support former president of Argentina Bartolomé Mitre who was ousted from power following the 1874 election of Nicolás Avellaneda. Mitre took up arms against Avellaneda and was nearly executed. Bookart's conspiracy was widely denounced in Argentine newspapers.]

- "Nic-Nac! But that's the name of the cookies that Bagley makes!" exclaimed an even older man, scratching...... the scars on his teeth. [Translators note: American born Melville Sewell Bagley, founder of a popular Argentine cookies factory and developer of Hesperidina, the Argentine national liquer.]

- "Cookies and cakes, the fact is that tomorrow, Mr. Nic-Nac will seriously worry the spirit of  enlightened people."

- "And the unenlightened people?"

- "They will also worry about impersonation."

And in this way, some denying the fact, others pitying its author, some accepting each and every one of the circumstances of the voyage, the truth is that twelve or fourteen groups who commented on the novelty within their ability, had not paid attention to the boys who ran through the streets in all directions, selling newsletters and mortifying passersby with their stentorian yelling.

Preoccupied was Buenos Aires society with a dangerous predicament if they were seen to have been involved with the failed plans of this new Catiline, which were devouring half a dozen newsletters daily, many of which were but new editions of the first, only with a uplifting appendix that said "Later, more details", and nothing more. [Translators note: Catiline (108 - 62 BC), the Roman conspirator exposed by Cicero]

For this reason, when the boys crossed the streets offering new newsletters, the readers multiplied, -in which they did nothing but imitate the pockets of the editor, -because of the eagerness to know new complications of the matter, they flowed to the center of city, not only certain peaceful inhabitants of the suburbs, but also many inhabitants from the surrounding towns.

If the surprise of the people was great when they saw that in the last newsletter the communal question had been completely forgotten, their surprise was not less when they read:

"Great news! Extraordinary voyage! Nic-Nac has just arrived from the planet Mars and the authorities have sent him to San Buena Ventura.- Uriarte in great trouble, because Nic-Nac does not submit to the blast of cold water. Later, more news. "

A half an hour later, the same boys were selling the same newsletter, to which had been added:

"Public excitement is gradually increasing; - the National Government has telegraphed Mr. Gould, director of the Cordoba astronomical observatory, asking if such a voyage is possible, and Mr. Gould has answered that he is very fond of frites - Later, more news." [Translators note: American born Benjamin Apthorp Gould, founder of the Argentine National Observatory and the Argentine National Weather Service.]

Moments later, a new edition adds:

"Grave error!!! It is not true that Mr. Gould is fond of frites, at least he does not say so in his telegram. The clerk who received the report here, wishing to go to dinner, was reminded of this fact, and stated it here in writing, instead of what Mr. Gould had said: The President has confined the person who claimed such a thing in a straitjacket. With this we have corrected our error.- Nic-Nac offers to publish his adventures within three days - Later, etc.

Two days later, no one remembered the commune, nor Nic-Nac, which proves once again how fleeting human greatness is.

But the press in our capital worked inversely proportional to the activity of the peoples' memory, and in direct proportion to the impatience of Nic-Nac,...... which proves once again that Newton's law is applicable in all possible and impossible circumstances.

The newspapers of November 22nd, 1874 announce a book entitled "Marvelous Voyage of Mr. Nic-Nac etc" for sale in all bookstores.

In our times, serious ideas do not fulfill their destiny except wrapped in the cloak of fantasy; -so said a great thinker; -Let's go and read the book of Mr. Nic-Nac, - and maybe resolve some matter of import.

CHAPTER I

AUTHOR'S CONCERNS

Nothing is more admirable than the perfect mechanism of heaven.

Nothing is more pitiful than human ignorance.

Endowed with weak senses, if compared to those of other animals, we claim to have solved the most important questions which can stimulate the spirit on the path of research. We can compare ourselves to a traveler who, having to follow a fixed course, finds himself suddenly in a labyrinth of passages; only chance can get you out of this difficult predicament; a sailor who loses his instruments in the ocean, lets his ship float like a leaf that the wind blows away.

Thus, philosophers, completely lacking the latest elements of research, concentrate their spirit and appear to explain the phenomena of the universe by whatever whim of their imagination, as if it were to solve an abstract question, the only case in which such concentration is allowed. No different than closing and squeezing both of one's eyes trying to examine a faint organism in a microscope, an instrument that perhaps they did not even know by name.

But it is necessary to break with such an antiquated system, free the spirit from the weight of the material and substantially elevate it to those regions that can perhaps serve to solve the most difficult points of the Universe.

A black cat presents itself to my eyes and I observe it.

This cat is real from the viewpoint of the initial research, but this cat is not of substance, as it lacks many of the essential conditions.

This cat appears virtually; -it is neither a reflection nor a shadow, but a cat. I see it and although I can not feel it, I can be assured that its nature is comprehensible.

Who can deny that by virtue of forces, unknown, it could be possible to undertake extraordinary voyages, as would be the case of this cat, whose body and spirit, finding itself perhaps two hundred leagues in the distance, comes to impress upon me its real image, yes, real, although it is not material?

This is surely not a simple phenomenon of the spirit. It is enough to imitate this cat and all doubts are overcome.

The image is not material, and yet it is perceptible. A mirror reflects a figure, returns it with all its elements..... and that image is not spirit either. Could it perhaps be given the name of spiritual matter?

When the spirit boldly sets out to interpret certain mysteries, it recoils from the immensity of the attempt, due to the exiguity of the elements at its disposal; subject to the domain of the senses, they do not go beyond their limited power.

But if the spirit accompanies the image; if in it the sensual force is conserved, somewhat free from matter, is it not possible to penetrate the world of the unknown and interpret the Universe?

Millions of millions of luminaries twinkle in space. Science baptizes them, calculates their distances, observes their rays, deconstructs the elements of their light and, numbers them, archives them in their libraries. And life? Are they splendid deserts thrown into space for man to contemplate?

No, life beats in each one of those bright grains of sand in the heavens, and the wonders that only the spirit does not understand, will be resolved by the spirit and the image.

CHAPTER II

THE AUTHOR CONSULTS A SPIRITUALIST

My youth has been a storm.

My spirit had all the vagueness of infinity, and despite this, my name is Nic-Nac.

In 1856 - I was just twenty years old - all my worries had formed, without, however, having a link that bound them, a link with which the years have strengthened today, all the more so since I have solved serious problems, unknown not only by mindless philosophers, but also by romantic intellectuals.

A spiritualist had just arrived from Europe.

No one knew him.

Only one person consulted him - and the person who discovered the ideal of his aspirations in the words of that man, that person was me.

Soon there was the communion of the soul between us; however, if his ideas were vast as they related to the command of spirits, mine were even more vast, because they referred to spirits and to matter as a whole, to the Kosmos of the pantheist, the supreme dreamer of the dreamers.

How beautiful is the life of dreams!

Sleep is the link that binds the human spirit with the great mysteries of Nature.

That spiritualist was called Friedrich Seele, or if you want his name in Castillan, Federico Alma.[Translator note: "Soul"]

No one has ever carried a more apt name.

There are many who have the surname of Torres, and yet they are shorter than average height; others flaunt Leon, and I've met some who ran away from a cat. [Translator note: "Torres" being tower and "Leon" being lion.]

But Seele, or rather Alma, was like a supreme concession of truth to reality. Here there was no contrast, that shocking contrast of the Torres and the Leons, because if ever a corporeal and tangible soul has existed on the world, it has been in the personification of Friedrich Seele.

Material life had sublimated itself in him, so to speak, transforming his manifestations into a series of psychic phenomena, analogous to the one that would present a perceptible and intangible vision at the same time, like that of that black cat that has been pursuing its immaterial form for some hours in the power of my senses.

Seele, and this name already indicates it, was German, and in his noble spirit all the thinking force of his nation was concentrated, all the dreams, all the mists, all the sylphs, all the beauties, all the lights that are born, shining, flying, roaming and coloring the spirit of Germany.

Versed in all the physical and moral sciences, he was equally familiar with the interpretation of cosmic phenomena as he was with the explanation of psychic phenomenon, and if all this is combined with his powerful force as a medium, we will have to admit that Seele could have notable imitators, but never rivals.

Seele was not one of those spiritualists or, to speak more accurately, of those mediums who know how to call spirits well versed in the life of Dr. Agüero, but who do not know how many letters the word sun has in Quichua.[Translators note: Juan Manuel Fernández de Agüero (1772 - 1840), philosophy professor at the University of Buenos Aires]

Seele was a sage, moreover, he was a spirit, moreover, he was a medium.

Spiritualists, in general, are treated like charlatans, but Seele was not, because Seele demonstrated in a exciting manner, everything about him or his genius familiars had ascertained.[Translators note: "Genius" as in the Roman "Genius", meaning the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing. This concept and phrase is used constantly throughout the work. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(mythology) for more information.]

An example: - one day an intellectual asked him: "How many letters does the word 'carbonada' have in Chinese?", consulting one of the geniuses, who answered "it has nine letters, as well as 'sombrero' in English, has eight."

- "Not true" replied the consultant, "'sombrero', in English, is 'hat': -it has three letters and not eight."

- "Foolish!" replied the genius, "in English, 'hat' has three letters, but 'sombrero' has eight letters in the same or any other language".........

If the genius had been reduced to carbon, the consultant would have been satisfied, and would have asked for the wisdom of Seele, who had such learned geniuses at his service; but when he remembered positivism by filiation of ideas, the consultant and the assistants withdrew, treating Seele as a charlatan and the genius as a fraud.

That was the opinion of the town much later, but I knew well that the town does not have, nor can, nor should have an opinion.

I consulted the spiritualist and was convinced, after the first conference, that it was impossible to find a man comparable to that man.

- "The spirit," he told me, "and particularly the spirit of each man, is but a minimal part of a universal spirit, single and unique, of which it is a direct emanation. Just as matter is made up of atoms, the universal spirit is made up of atomic spirits, in which all the forces that characterize human life in its spiritual form exist. In it the sensations are manifested in all their purity, and enclose the image, that is, the perceptible. They lack in weight, resistance and impenetrability, but are visible by enclosing the image."

- "So in this fashion is it possible to contemplate one of those images without any help other than that of our senses?" I asked him.

- "Yes, because the senses of man are part of a spirit, and as this is of the same nature as the other, both being members of the universal spirit, the image perceives him through the means of the sense's proper functions."

- "And how do you explain that the simple spirit, since you have called it atomic, or better yet, a spiritual atom, that can consist of parts with its own force, since an essential condition of the atom is to have no parts."

- "That is the atom of science; but the spiritual atom, although it really does has parts, if you want to call them that, they are nothing but qualities that are manifested by vibrations called senses."

- "So that after death, the spirit separates from matter, preserving the senses and the image?"

- "Yes, and even before death. Have you not observed that during dreams, all bodily functions retain their intensity in the spirit? Have you not contemplated your image floating in space in the manner of a bird or a celestial body, and that this image perceived all sensible phenomena? And although yet the material was dead, the unconscious phenomena continued."

- "But that spirit of mine that I saw floating was nothing but an emanation of the organ that secretes it."

- "Secrete? Is the spirit a secretion?"

- "Yes, and it is proven that when the organ produces less spirit, when the secretion decreases, the spiritual force also decreases."

- "Force, which on the other hand, preserves all its action during the dream, right?"

- "You are correct, Mr. Seele. So according to your doctrine, the spirit is an emanation of the universal soul, and this emanation is susceptible to receiving impressions, independently of the matter in which it vibrates?"

- "Yes, and it also possesses the image."

- "Can the spirit linked to matter detach itself from it at certain determined moments?"

- "Yes, and not only does it detach, but it also carries the image, an essential condition of its existence. This phenomenon, whose most common form is the dream, presents something very distinctive. In a dream, the closer we get to the universal soul, the less we remember, upon awakening, of the wonders that we have witnessed. And it is because the weight of the material suffocates, so to speak, the force of memory, which preserves only a vague idea, lost, to what it has contemplated. "

- "And what needs be done to break the material yoke?"

- "Decrease your action, deprive yourself of all nourishment."

- "And is there any way of recognizing when matter has been completely spiritualized?"

- "When hunger has made us idiotic."

- "That's for the dream; and what if I had the idea of launching my spirit-image to visit the planets?"

- "You would have to submit yourself to the same privations, and when you felt that your frailty was annihilating you, you would observe that as the spirit moves away, its course becomes more fixed, and your desire will be of greater intensity."

- "According to that, my spirit-image can visit other celestial bodies, and find in them phenomena still unknown now by man?"

- "Without a doubt, and what's more, you will be able to directly communicate with the rest of the free spirits or slaves that populate the other stars, or those that inhabit the ether."

I withdrew with some appetite. However, from that moment I was going to start to deprive myself of everything that strengthened matter at the expense of spirit. As a test of my energy, I spent the rest of the day reading the description of Camacho's wedding. [Translators note: From Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Part 2, Chapters 19-21.]

CHAPTER III

FIRST CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXPERIMENT

It's been eight days since I've had a bite to eat, nor have I drank a drop of water.

The forces of my body are leaving me, and I can hardly contain the weak pen with which I stroke these lines.

The pains of hunger, terrible at first, subsided on the fourth day, and I think my internal organs are shrinking, like a speck of camphor which gradually evaporates.

The material dies; but the spirit creates wings, and I feel the moment of departure is near.

The face becomes depressed at the temples and cheeks, the eyes pop out of their sockets, the twitching of the muscles has also disappeared.

I look at myself in a mirror and I am horrified at myself. If this is the image with which I am going to present myself to the other spirits, I have no doubt that they will flee in terror......

I feel tetanic shaking... it does not matter... perhaps it is the spirit that produces them by detaching the image from the material......

My family is disconsolate... they want to call a doctor.... fools! They don't know that I am going to enter into direct communication with the universal soul! The seizures increase.... I feel a particular heat.... fever......

The earthly images are losing their intensity... I only perceive shapes... Ah! the family... galley, boots, pulse, watch... doctor!

A shape, a doctor, takes my hand... his hand is made of ice... it shakes me! Will his heart be like his hand?... unhappy... why hasn't Seele been consulted?

He looks at me...... I can barely make him out.

- "He's dying!" he says in a low voice, and I smiled upon hearing it, because my spirit, which is now recovering its freedom, at the contact of the doctor, increases the intensity of its senses.

Upon examining my smile he exclaims "Insane! He's dying insane!"

I smile again; the doctor backs up.

- "How good would it be to give him some food!" he says. He takes my pulse again. "He has died! How good it would have been to have fed him in his last days! He has died!"

Dead! ha! ha! unhappy, do you not know that just now I am alive, and that the spirit and the image, already floating in the ether of souls, enjoys all the activity of the universal spirit? Dead! Do you call the supreme moment of glory death? Can't you see my spirit rising? Can't you see it? Don't you recognize the image?

There on earth my body is surrounded by what was once my family.

Next to the table where I was writing, the doctor who helped to liberate my spirit, gazes in amazement at a sheet of paper on which these lines appear spontaneously.

It is my subordinate genius who draws them. But the doctor does not perceive the genius, why?.........

Ah! the horror!

That doctor has no image.

That doctor has no physiognomy.

He is lying on the ground.

He's just breathed out in horror.

His spirit, his image, is also floating in the ether of free souls.

CHAPTER IV

THE WHIRLWIND

Free! Free!

I feel it and I understand it, but I understand it and feel it with the senses of the soul, whose strength develops as I move away from the center of my former mortal action.

The night turns around the Earth like the spoke of a wheel, and the continents and seas are for a moment wrapped in shadow, to later reappear, palpitating with life and light.

From life! - from light!

What is life on Earth compared to the life of the spirit in the ether?

What is the light on the seas, next to these luminous atoms that sparkle on my turn, and that are but so many other spirits that are members of the universal soul?

Its immense whirlwind drags me away from the world in which I have lived; but although already I almost have the gift of omniscience, I am completely ignorant of where the cloud of spirits is flying, among whose lights mine floats.

Dizzying torrent, its strength can only be calculated by the whole.

My freedom is not complete yet, because I have not yet found myself essentially detached from earthly ties - affections are vaguely preserved, although as I move away they lose their primitive strength and the moment will come when, absolutely deprived of them, I will feel all the glory of the supreme freedom of souls.

Where are you going my spirit, carried away by the ethereal whirlwind?

I'm going away... I'm endlessly going away.

The whirlwind spins, undulates, overflows, fluctuates and moves away, and with it the spirits move away, fluctuate, overflow, undulate and spin, like a mist of light drawn by a divine breath.

We have crossed the confines of the world, where the air that mortals breathe ends, and the ether, the limitless space, opens up to my senses, to my spirit-image, already free from earthly affections.

And the whirlwind spins, undulates, overflows, fluctuates and moves away, and with it the spirits move away, fluctuate, overflow, undulate and spin, like a luminous and animated dust impelled to infinity by the voice of eternity.

CHAPTER V

SEELE

The earth merges with the rest of the spheres, and space, without radiance, does not reverberate from the light of the sparkling stars.

And the spirits shine with rays of a greater intensity and whiteness, as they are condensed in the universal soul.

In the center of the immense cloud a reddish disk glitters.

My spirit-image, forming extensive spirals, flies in the direction of that disk.

Suddenly it stops, and in union with one of the spirits, and concentrating its spirals, increases the speed of approach.

What spirit-image is that? And what is your destiny, rushing with mine, immortal souls, towards the red disk?

Seele! It is the spirit of Friedrich Seele, that, with my spirit, forms the fusion of two souls!

The red disk increases its proportions, and by our spirals vertiginously approaching, we feel its inevitable attraction.

We begin to fall,... its action is irresistible,.... the spirals have generated a straight fall... our spirit-image reconnoiters an astral body.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE OTHER WORLD

- "So, master, are we walking on solid ground again? So the whirlwind, the spirits, the ether, all this has been pure fantasy, a dream?"

- "Dream! Perhaps you doubt your transmigration?"

- "Transmigration, you say, Mr. Seele?"

- "As you wish, Mr. Nic-Nac; you can call it transplanetation; - that's just as well."

- "But, are we not stepping on the same planet Mars on which we have always lived?"

- "No, Mr. Nic-Nac, we have just arrived from the Earth that you see shining like a star in that group."

- "The Earth? What does that mean?"

- "It means that your spirit has not extracted the image from the material, except by the intervention of a doctor."

- "Doctor? And what is a doctor?"

- "A doctor is an unfortunate being, whose destiny forces him to erase all mortal things from the memory of the spirits that fly to Mars."

- "I don't understand you, master."

- "It is not uncommon. Your spirit is still subject to the action of the doctor, and until he too has detached himself from the terrestrial pull, you will not be able to enjoy the absolute freedom of the spirit-image."

- "So if that doctor hadn't intervened, I would remember an imaginary past?"

- "Imaginary? Why do you call it imaginary?"

- "Because it only exists in your imagination. I enjoy all my senses, I feel all the thinking integrity of my spirit, and yet I don't remember anything you're talking about."

- "But I observe," said Seele, "that a luminous dot, forming open spirals, is directed towards us, and that the reddish glows of Mars absorb its white intensity."

- "And what is that luminous dot, Mr. Seele?"

- "It's... what! Have you forgotten your ethereal peregrination?"

- "No, master, but your recollection is vague."

- "Well.... it is the influence of the spirit-image of the approaching doctor that confuses you."

Some moments later, - which mortals call years, and which for us spirits are but rapid vibrations of our eternity, - a white dot, luminous, tenuously pink from the influence of the Martian radiance, came to join us.

My spirit-image experienced a psychic shock upon contact with that dot.

He was the doctor whose presence on Earth completely separated my spirit from the material and my memory from the memories.

But when I felt my radiance merged with the radiance of the doctor, my spirit recovered the memory of things past, and a black cat, a spirit-image of a black cat, came to confirm all the mysteries of the forgotten earthly existence.

From that moment I recognized that I had transmigrated, - that the spirit that had floated in the reddish atmosphere of the planet Mars, had animated a body on the planet Earth, and affection, hatred, worry and knowledge could be preserved, mastered, but only by a great force of justice and impartiality.

From that moment, a soul without a body, a spirit-image without matter, I could penetrate the secrets of my new world.

CHAPTER VII

MARS

Between the orbital zones through which the planetary fragments called Asteroids traverse, and the elliptical path in which Earth circulates, at an average distance of 58,000,000 leagues from the Sun, Mars draws its circle of fire, after having approached the great nucleus as far as 52, and then moving away, up to 63 million.

Its diameter is somewhat greater than the radius of the Earth and its volume reaches barely one seventh of that planet, while its surface area is equivalent to only one fourth.

Around its sphere, night revolves with no other glimpse than that of the stars and that of some spirit-images lost in the shadows; - and during the beautiful days of reddish radiance, a sun shines whose disk almost reaches half of what you contemplate, oh! mortals.

Those of you who study the sky from the Earth know all this, and you are not ignorant of that my new mansion in space often approaches up to 14 million leagues, after having moved 106 million away from you; - you have found out that it has white brilliant spots on the surface, red and green, but you are completely ignorant of how many wonders these spots contain, where life and light gravitate ceaselessly around you; - but as in a short time you must also fly, spirit-images, towards this red disk, I am going to initiate you in its strange mysteries, I am going to guide you through the vast plains and rough mountains of Protobia and Melania; I am going to introduce you to the great cities of Seélia, and you are going to accompany me in the splendid forests of Nic-Naquia.

The planet Mars, like the planet Earth, has a spheroidal shape, flattened at the poles covered with perpetual snow, and the rest of its surface presents continents and seas.

Let us take this spheroid, imitating what you have always done, mortals of Earth, and segment it so that we can study it.

Primarily, a particular character is presented, the seas are mediterranean, and the uninterrupted continent encloses its green-blue waters.[Translators note: Mediterranean, as in landlocked, interior, etc]

Signalling the equator of Mars and, forming two hemispheres, the Boreal and the Austral, first take a look at the digited sea, whose deep inlets, directed towards the Northeast, imitate a gigantic hand, whose largest finger barely reaches to the sea of the pole, where it it separates a strip of land that, running westward, expands into a vast plain.

This hand, this sea, has only four fingers, four inlets, three of which run to the pole, while the last, separating towards the Southeast like a prolonged thumb, penetrates the southern hemisphere, in whose temperate zone it forms a circular inlet that serves as a bud.

If, from the North Pole, we draw a meridian that skims the end of the index finger of the Digited Sea, it will be to the west of the meridian, and if we now consider the western hemisphere of the planet divided into four fractions, or quarter discs, one to the NW, another to the SW, the third to the NE and the last to the SE, we will see that the sea is in the NW quadrant. Towards the east of the meridian, and to the North of the equator, the land extends until it merges with that of the other hemisphere, that is, the eastern.

What we can call the thumb of the Digited Sea, runs from the NW quadrant to the SE, and with its northern foams bathes the strip of land's coasts that, extending parallel to it, surrounds, thinning, the bud or cove, but then running westward, expands over a vast surface, whose upper edges caress the perpendicular rays of the Sun.

This last portion is called Southern Nic-Naquia, and the lands of the north, Northern Nic-Naquia.

The eastern hemisphere is more united, and the seas better circumscribed. To the North, the Boreal Ocean bathes the coasts of a transverse stretch of land, which joins with the western continent at both ends, and to the south of this strip, the Mediterranean Sea rising in the NW quadrant runs towards the east and in the NE quadrant, goes down to the SE, touching the equator with its lower limit. Towards the east of the hemisphere, a vast sea that separates Nic-Naquia from the eastern limit of the continent, runs North to South.

Towards the south of the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, the waters of a small sea determine the northern limit of Melania, and in the center of this vast territory, also the center of the SW quadrant of the hemisphere, another sea extends its bluish surface.

Almost parallel to the central meridian of this hemisphere runs an arm of the Southern Sea, but its waters do not reach the planet's equator.

Such is roughly the distribution of land and water in our new world, adding, however, the two great polar discs, white, brilliant, are nothing but the eternal snows that determine the irregular extremes of the Martian axis.

By this description, it is easy to understand the analogy that exists between the planet Earth and the planet Mars, an analogy that more than once should be able to serve to explain to you, mortals of the Earth, some of the essential characteristics of Martography [Nic-Nac's note: I would have liked to use the word geography, but since I refer to the planet Mars, of course it would be inappropriate, since, as you know, mortals, geography means a description of the Earth; Martography will be, then, a description of Mars. - Excuse me, terrestrial philologists.] compared to your Geography.

From the first moment one fact stands out, and that is that in the western hemisphere the two Nic-Nacquias resemble the two Americas, and in the eastern hemisphere, in the same positions as Europe, Asia and Africa, are Seélia, Protobia and Melania.

CHAPTER VIII

MYSTERIES

- "Do you know, master, that I observed something very curious?"

- "Tell me."

- "When my spirit-image floated in the ether, I believed that I was endowed with the attribute of omniscience, and now, in this desert, I consider myself more ignorant than on Earth."

- "It is because you are not yet used to the body that imprisons your spirit; - maybe in a short time you will find it to the contrary."

- "Why, Mr. Seele?"

- "Because one of the essential characteristics of the inhabitants of Mars is intellectual arrogance, which, on the other hand is perfectly justified, since their advances, superior to those of Earth, have conquered, by force, numerous sacrifices which today place them at the heights of the greatest planetary civilization. "

- "Are there inhabitants on Mars?"

- "Do you doubt it, Mr. Nic-Nac? We ourselves are here at this moment. Well, you see that you are not a simple spirit-image, but a spirit enclosed in a material form. Do you not observe a curious phenomenon regarding the weight of your body?"

- "Absolutely none."

- "And yet you weigh less than half on Earth...."

- "Yes, I remember that on Earth I crossed distances in twice the time it takes me now, but I haven't observed a decrease in the weight of my body."

- "Well, precisely at the speed of your current movement, you can recognize the weight has decreased by half, and it is because on the planet Mars the pull is less than half than that on Earth. But I can already distinguish the snowy summit of Mount...... do you want us to give it a name equal to that of one of those on Earth? In its entrails it hides very rich mines of gold."

- "Can I baptize it with that of Nevado de Famatina?" [Translators note: The former name for the highest peak in the Sierra de Famatina mountain range in Argentina, featured in the coat of arms of La Rioja Province]

- "Excellent. Well, there on the northern horizon I can distinguish the white summit of Nevado de Famatina, do you see it?"

- "Yes, Mr. Seele, and I observe with surprise that it is very similar to that of the Argentine Republic"

- "You are correct; but your surprise will be greater when you know that we have touched the surface of Mars on the western continent."

- "Really?"

- "And in South Nic-Naquia."

- "What a coincidence!"

- "In the southern hemisphere."

- "Greater still!"

- "On a plain sloping from Northwest to Southeast, on the western limit of which rises a chain of magnificent mountains."

- "You jest, master."

- "And behind that chain...."

- "What is it?"

- "A country that looks like the blade of a sword, which its inhabitants call the Transmontana Nation."

- "And what is the name of this country that we are currently crossing?"

- "Ha ha! You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac."

Truly Seele was no longer a spirit-image dressed in those characters that had adorned him on Earth when he was Federico Alma, or Friedrich Seele....... when he was a medium.

- "Do you not observe another character in the Flora of this region, Mr. Nic-Nac?"

- "Gramineas! Gramineas! Herbaceous legumes!"

- "And in the Fauna?"

- "In the name of the Supreme Being! Explain these mysteries to me, Mr. Seele; here I see the..... but no, - I don't want to see anything but the dazzling summit of Famatina."

We arrived at the foot of the Nevado which boldly raises its white top, shaking off the hurricanes and the snowstorms that cover it with an icy shroud.

And looking to the West, we perceived the immense chain that confines a valley in that part, splendid for its appearance and for its aromas, a valley that receives its abundant waters from the snow melted in contact with the stone, and these waters, when overflowing, impetuous torrents flood the valley, without quenching life in the forests of orange trees, myrtle, laurels and lemon trees, which perfume the atmosphere of that enchanted Martian Eden.

A powerful vegetation, daughter of heat, light and humidity, surges everywhere, and even in the rocks sprout flowers of the air, precious Mosses and capricious Lichens, as if an excess of life were challenging the gigantic ice that confines the East of that valley.

And while the storms shake the colossus, pulling out its white mane thread by thread, dragging them to the bottom of the valley, the softest and warmest breezes caress the lemon tree forests that sprout upon it, as much later, waves of aromas, climbing the steep slopes of the Nevado, taking to it a paradisiacal tribute.

CHAPTER IX

CONSECRATION

We've started to ascend the slopes of the Nevado.

We look out into the valley. Gradually spread over it was a lugubrious cloak.

An indecisive vapor covered the Lemon Trees; - the orange blossoms had fallen leafless, and the Flowers of the air, withered and wrinkled, had their color obscured amongst the color of the Mosses.

A strange noise fluttered in the woods and the plains; - the birds gathered in the branches of the thick Laurels, and insects of a bright hue muted the reverberation of their enameled wings.

The gold and silver, the copper and lead, disaggregated in the veins of the Nevado, seemed to turn into impalpable dust, under the impulse of a strange mystery, I know not what.

The noises were amplifying in the valley, and the stunned birds were searching for a thicker foliage.

- "Where are we going, Mr. Seele? What noises are these?"

- "Our presence is the cause of this agitation, and it will not cease until the genius of this mountain consecrates our existence on the planet. Our black garb, devastated, causes aversion to all the beings of this astral body, which is why you see the vegetation sad, the animals bewildered, and even the air, an insensitive substance, adjusting in confused and dark whirlwinds."

- "And the genius of the mountain?"

- "He inhabits the deep caverns of the colossus, the caves inaccessible to those who have already been consecrated."

The ascent continued, and on reaching the perpetual snow, Seele said:

- "This way, Mr. Nic-Nac, this way."

And entering a dark tunnel, I followed Seele, or rather I followed a vague glow, an indecisive faint luminescence that surrounded his body like a phosphorescent mist.

He was transfigured.

I observed that he descended, that he always descended.

A whiter luminescence, less greenish than Seele's aura, suddenly stood out from the black darkness.

- "We have arrived," said Seele, entering a vast cavern, illuminated by an intense glow. "This is where the spirit-images of the Earth are Martianized. Silence!"

I raised myself up and looked...... and I saw I don't know what thing, strange and luminous.

A particular noise, like the roar of a collapsing mountain, shook the foundations of the colossus.

- "Seele!" I exclaimed involuntarily, merging my voice with the voices of the mountain.

And internally agitated by I don't know what particular force, I recognized in the elements of my spirit and in the elements of my body something like a cessation of terrestrial life, something like an exaltation of Martian life.

It was more than a modern-day soldier not having another way. The spirits of Mars demand it.[Translators note: Literally "not having another school".]

CHAPTER X

MARTIAN NIC-NAC

- "What are you looking for on Mars? What are you coming to do on Mars?"

- "It's very strange, Mr. Seele, that you ask me that question. Who has introduced me to the mysteries of spiritualism? Seele; - who has made me starve on Earth? Seele; - which spirit has joined with mine, when I floated, an imperceptible atom, in the ethereal whirlwind? That of Seele. And you still ask me what I am looking for on Mars and what I have come to do on Mars?

- "Mr. Nic-Nac, I am the genius of this mountain; you are linked to it by ties too powerful for you to break, and I'm hoping....."

- "I'm hoping, Mr. Seele......"

- "I hope you answer the questions that I have asked you."

- "I want to know, first of all, for what reason, you, Seele, a German, are the genius of the Nevado de Famatina."

- "You yourself have given it this name; the fault will then be yours. If you don't like it, I can't help it."

- "Very well; and since you have so suddenly transformed into the genius of the mountain, I wish that you present me with the formula of the answers that I must give."

- "The formula is truth; you have to bear it above of all."

- "I'm searching Mars for the inhabitants of the Earth."

- "You are the only one."

- "Me?!"

- "You."

- "And the doctor?"

- "Him also."

- "And the spirit-image of the black cat?"

- "It belongs to Mars."

- "And you, Mr. Seele."

- "I also belong to Mars."

- "You should have told me on Earth."

- "You didn't ask me there."

Seele! Here is how Seele, the delicate medium, had been nothing less than the companion of the black cat, of the cat! Of the image of perfidy!

- "You can think, as I'm reading your thoughts, everything that best pleases you, but I assure you that my Martian haughtiness is far above your conjectures."

- "The genius of the mountain is quite familiar...."

And although Seele had also read this thought, it did not cease in pleasing him, because that complacency with which those who believe themselves superior to their presumed inferiors on Earth, manifests itself on Mars in the same way: by a smile.

Seele smiled, and the phosphorescent mist that was enveloping him with even stranger glows, shone with a brighter intensity.

A portion of that mist surrounded my body as well, and a new bellow from the mountain announced that the time had come to depart... yes, to depart, because my radiance, visible only to me and Seele at that moment, were like an assignment of power, like a transmission of force.

I saluted Mr. Seele and withdrew through the same tunnel through which I had entered, and when I had reached the perpetual snows, that is, when I had already exited, I felt cold.

I looked at the valley, and I contemplated the luxurious and splendid vegetation that sprouted from each one of the pores of Mars; I admired that magnificence, and leaping from rock to rock, I approached the level ground, the vast plain, whose horizon, perfectly horizontal, was obscured by some clouds that were floating in the pinkish space.

The transformation had been complete; external influences were working on my new being in a much more energetic way and although I was just beginning to understand what Seele had previously told me about the decrease in the weight of bodies on the planet Mars, it did not stop me from experiencing stabbing pains when I carelessly collided with some rock from the Nevado.

The birds, on the other hand, left the thick branches of the Laurels, and instead of moving away as they had done before when contemplating our black dress, they approached me and invited me to accompany them in their trills; but although I made several attempts to imitate them, it was not possible for me; some Ostriches, - because they are also on Mars - laughed as they examined my imitative gestures. But no!... spirit-image...

"Come, come, - this is not so bad," I said to myself, when I noticed that my spirit was becoming familiar with that Nature; because you should know that it is somewhat annoying to become an ethereal bird of prey and go around tracing spirals, as if there was nothing else to do in this world - I mean, in the other.

Some flowers also were smiling with their painted corollas, and were embalming the environment with the waves of their soft aromas - they no longer feared me. The orange blossoms were once again displaying all the pomp of their love, and the Myrtle was spilling fertility around its humble leaves; the Laurel was spreading the glory of its cloak, and the Mosses were stretching out their shadow as a tribute to the consecrated inhabitant of the Earth.

I was feeling a strong desire to speak, but to speak with an individual who understood me, or whom I could understand, because although it is true that Seele had given me a phosphorescence that had transmitted strength to me, he had not said a single word about the language that was spoken by the inhabitants of Mars.

I could very well suppose that the phosphorescence would act as a language, but what if... permit me a terrestrial reminiscence: - "I don't understand a word of English, do you speak Spanish?" - "No, but I understand it very well"[Translator note: This sentence is English in the original] - By way of something similar happening to me with an inhabitant of Mars, who could very well recite me certain odes, certain poems, certain rhymes, and no matter how much they could recite, I would not understand them. And what if for them, sign language did not exist? I would have to make use of the phosphorescence;...... a very efficient medium, surely to gain free entry to the houses on Mars.

These ideas tormented me; but the plain was so fertile, the fruits so varied, the streams so crystalline, the Laurels so thick... that I barely hesitated to shelter myself, in this moment of trouble, among the leafy shoots of this tree of glory; it would be a usurpation, that is good, but that is so common, it would almost ensure that there is more than one Nic-Nac in this world, - I mean, in the other.

The descent from the Nevado had not only whetted my appetite, but had also made me tired. The feast was prepared, for a tablecloth was the soft Mosses, for a canopy was the cup of an Orange tree, for delicacies were the fragrant fruit, for liquor was the waters of a Martian fountain which caressed the bronze trunk of the Orange tree.

What an exquisite fruit! and how good it feels after jumping between rocks! and how marvelously it is assimilated when breathing an atmosphere like that of that planet, where cholera and enteritis are not floating around like the spirit-images.

But as I arrived at my seventh Hesperidina, I felt a touch on my right shoulder.[Translators note: Hesperidina, the national liquer of Argentina, developed by Bagley, made from bitter and sweet orange peels.]

-"Hello!" I exclaimed - "Are you my companion? I think now I'll be able to take the food you gave me on Earth after dying?"

- "There is no doubt; but let me rest, as consecration has been painful."

- "Have you also been consecrated as an inhabitant of Mars?"

- "I also have."

- "And how did the ceremony end?"

- "With a few words from the genius of the mountain..."

- "Seele, eh?"

- "I think so."

- "And what did he tell you when he finished?"

- "'Take the phosphorescence; now you're going to pay for everything together.'"

- "And what did you do then?"

- "Started paying for it by tearing myself to pieces on the rocks of the Nevado."

- "Splendid mountain, eh? But what! Not taking any more oranges?"

- "I'm afraid they might hurt me."

- "He! he! he! Forget those superstitions, Doctor; - you already see it despite the fact that you have signed my passport, I admire you, and I regret that you have not imitated my conduct. But lastly, we are going to live on Mars, is that not it?"

- "Yes."

- "So why worry about Earthly hygiene?"

A black cat, but not in spirit-image, rather in a real and tangible body, came to interrupt our conversation.

- "Cursed cat; now that I find a partner in ostracization..."

- "Meow!"

- "Come on, you don't want me to say ostracization, eh, mister spirit-cat?"

- "Meow!"

- "Doctor, excuse me, but I think this cat is asking for an orange. Would it be hygienic to give it to the cat?"

- "Meow!"

- "And it moves towards the southeast, at least I think that is the South-east, does it seem that way to you, Doctor?"

- "Meow!"

- "Well! He wanted to save you the trouble of answering. And he calls us, don't you see?

- "And he makes a repeated antero-posterior movement with his head, as if to say yes."

- "It's a pretty original cat."

- "Indubitably. Don't you think, Mr. Nic-Nac, that we should follow that animal?"

- "I'm of the same mind as you, Doctor."

We stood up, and throwing the orange peels into the fountain, we moved away from the leafy orange tree, in whose shade we had found relief from our fatigue.

- "Doctor, we can say that we have eaten the first fruit."

- "The first! Well, if Adam had done what you just did, eating twenty-three oranges, he would surely not recover from such a formidable enterocolitis."

- "But Eve has been absent. What will the Eve of Mars be like?"

- "I suppose she'll be like all of them. She'll have a head, arms, legs, body, and something that the Spanish Academy lacks."

- "I think, Doctor, that your Marsification has not been complete."

- "But yes, to my mortification; I assure you that this Mr. Seele is a rather impertinent man. You'll figure out......"

- "Meow! Meow!"

- "The cat is running. I'm figuring out, Doctor, everything that has happened to you; but let's not lose sight of that little animal, who may come to our aid."

- "You'll figure out..."

- "Meow!"

- "Doctor! Doctor! We are saved! A city!"

- "A city! On Mars! Mr. Nic-Nac, we are saved."

- "Perhaps you were afraid......"

- "Not at all, but I intend to practice my profession. Where there is a city, it must be assumed that there have been laborers who built it, people who inhabit it, institutions that govern it......"

- "That is very natural. And what if they are cannibals?"

- "We have the phosphorescence, so they won't devour us."

- "But you are a doctor!"

- "Quite true! In that case I will devour them."

CHAPTER XI

THE MARTIAN CITY

The black cat had been our compass.

At the moment when the sun was throwing its most oblique rays on the vast plain, and a subtle vapor was rising from the flowery countryside, the Doctor and I, preceded by the black cat, entered a great city, whose innumerable towers were gilded by the distant flash of the dwindling star.

Up to that moment we had not seen a single inhabitant of Mars, but when we arrived in the city, we distinguished many of them rushing across the streets, or leaning out from the balconies asking something of a passersby, and when they had answered, they closed their blinds, to appear a moment later at the front door of their house, and swinging around, set about on their way to various points throughout the city.

Disregarding the greater mystery, we still could not hear what they were talking about, but having pointed this out to the Doctor, he told me that "it was not strange", an answer that could be very scientific, but did not satisfy my curiosity (I believe that the doctor spoke to hear himself talk, as many do in this world, - I mean, in the other.).

- "The best we can do," I said to the Doctor, "is to examine this city, then its inhabitants, its customs later, and undertake a series of investigations, which will be more or less useful, for the day when we are deprived of our phosphorescence."

- "Meow!"

- "Aha! Our cicerone changes direction, don't you see, Mr. Nic-Nac?"

- "You are right."

- "Let's follow him then."

- "Let's follow him."

Within two hours we had seen enough to be able to describe the first city which appeared to us on Mars.

In the center there was a large plaza, in which we saw a high cylindrical column that supported a gigantic parallelepiped, and in each one of the lateral faces of this cube, it read:

THEOSOPHOPOLIS

- "What is your opinion, Doctor?"

- "I think this must be the name of the city. It's curious: - in characters like those used on Earth."

- "Well?"

- "Moreover, its in Greek."

- "It's quite curious. And how would you deconstruct that word?"

- "Very simply: God, Wisdom, City; in this fashion it must mean: City of God and the Wise."

- "Hello! Is that what we have then? Well, in that case we'll know what to expect."

We had directed ourselves to the foot of the column, and observed that it was located at the point of intersection between two great streets, which, running from North to South and East to West, divide the city into four neighborhoods, which in turn meet in two districts, the Rising and the Setting. The first one is extremely sad, the doors of the houses are hardly ever open; a profound silence reigns during the day, interrupted only by the creaking, or rather by the lamentations of instruments that inhabitants of the Earth would call bells, - but that differ from these by their singular and capricious form - and by the sacred choirs that nobody understands, as if understood, they would lose their eminently mystical character.

- "Doctor, what do you think of giving the Rising district the name Theopolis?"

- "I don't think a better one can be applied to it."

- "In the same fashion, the neighborhoods of the Setting district will be Sophopolis."

- "If the city has a mixed name, it is beyond question that we should accept a natural division of the urban population."

Sophopolis presents an appearance that is not at all like Theopolis.

In the latter district the buildings are sad, dark, silent; in the former a continuous uproar reigns; light is resting in a whitish or pinkish element, and at the same time a smiling and rigid majesty seems to have outlined the buildings.

Something even more curious is that the inhabitants of Theopolis very rarely enter Sophopolis; they are generally inexperienced youths, but once they have entered, it is in vain for the elements at the disposal of their respective families to make them desist in dwelling in those two noisy neighborhoods.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion, since we still do not know the customs of the Martians, but judging by the movements that we have witnessed, I believe that it should not be given another interpretation.

Some ordinal rivers water the walls of the city, rivers in which the entire population bathes in the hot hours of Martian Summer, (which also might be a controversial opinion; but as on Earth, this is one of the purposes of the rivers in the areas where there is Summer, and hot hours, I think that I do not go very far, purporting that people bathe).

With respect to the inhabitants, their character is in harmony with the two types of the city.

Those who inhabit Theopolis are taciturn, very moderate in all their movements, pale, mute, and as heavy in body as they should be in spirit. As for their forms or physical constitution, we have not found that they differ much from the inhabitants of the Earth. It seems, however, that their height is somewhat smaller.

In Sophopolis, the character is diametrically opposite. The inhabitants are communicative, their movements are perpetual, their skin is pink and their face is full of life. We have not yet been able to hear them speak, but it seems that verbosity is a very characteristic feature of their existence. The words, judging by the continuous movement of their lips, lose their character there as an indispensable element of relationship, to become a chronic flow, according to an expression of the Doctor.

- "Meow! meow!"

The night of Mars is spreading its sad darkness over the nearby mountains, the vapors rise from the plain with an increased intensity, and the silhouettes of the towers and buildings, after having lengthened, obeying the descent of the sun, have been obscured in the shadows of the Nascent.

Our hearing already perceives sounds with a greater clarity, while our sight reveals a marvelous phenomenon to our spirit.

In Theosophopolis, artificial lighting is not known, and although in fact this light has been the greatest of human conquests over the mysteries of latent progress on Earth, on Mars, it has not been necessary to discover this great element of civilization, do you know why? for a very simple reason: every person carries within himself all the light they need for their necessities and for their peers - it is like an aura, magnificent and pink. It becomes more intense when the darkness of the night is greater, so that when two Martians meet in the street, they combine their lights in splendid reverberation.

- "Observe, Mr. Nic-Nac," the Doctor told me, "that your body is disseminating a pink light, very different from the one that Seele gave to us at the moment of consecration, because that one was blue-greenish, pale, phosphorescent, and had a radiance that vivifies. "

- "Yours is the same, Doctor, and identical to that of the inhabitants of this city. Do you not think that we should remain here for some time to contemplate this neorama without equal?"

- "Yes, and it is very possible that we'll be witness to some nocturnal scene; although in truth, I don't know if I dare to say that the night surrounds us, because the glow of the Sophopolitans is so vivid [Author note: The inhabitants of the city of the wise.] that if this is not a splendid aurora of happiness, I am ignorant of what name we could give it. "

At that moment we directed our sight at one of the two neighborhoods of Sophopolis and saw something like a procession. I was going to stand up, to go towards it, but the Doctor deterred me.

- "Where are you going?"

- "To see that."

- "And what if they ask you something in the language they use here."

- "I will answer them in mine. It seems, however, that Greek is not unknown, because of the name of the city........."

- "And if they speak to you in Greek?"

- "I'll do the same. But, come, Doctor! And the phosphorescence?"

- "Even that resource has failed us; you see, the radiance is now a pink color."

- "Meow! meow!"

- "You can meow, Seele cat; - but I assure you, that while you're not making me understand what is being said here........."

- "Meow! meow! meow!"

The black cat started toward the procession, and as we had done several times, we followed him.

- "Gentlemen, be you welcome, when have you arrived?" one of the processionaries asked us.

I looked at the Doctor.

The Doctor looked at me.

But we were so used to such wonders that we hardly stopped looking at one another.

- "Just now, thank you," I replied a moment later.

- "Have it been long since you've arrived at the plaza of Theosophopolis?"

- "Moments before sunset. Would you kindly tell me what this procession signifies?"

- "It's a simple near-daily ceremony. Our great city is made up of two classes of inhabitants; those of Theopolis and those of Sophopolis."

- "I had guessed."

- "Well then; when an inhabitant of Sophopolis reaches old age, and the hour of the transmigration approaches, he asks his closest relatives to take him to die in Theopolis, that is, to the city of God."

I looked at the Doctor.

But the Doctor heard nothing. In the dark space floated a white dot, alive, and soft; soft as the light of a planet, alive as the glow of a star, white as the souls of angels.

- "And is it very frequent, this transition from one city to the other?"

- "Yes," replied the processionary, "you could say every day."

- "So in this fashion, in the spirit of every Sophopolitan, the elements of a Voltaire are present?"

- "Even worse, the conversion is instantaneous."

A phenomenon that until then had not attracted my attention had marveled me in the extreme. The radiance of the old man, of the Martian Voltaire, was so pale and so faint that it was imperceptible; but on the other hand, the reverberation, the condensation of light that had been determined by the numerous processionaries, reached such an extent, that it seemed like a cloud of illusions which was going to resolve itself into a torrent of illusions, just as the clouds of the Earth rush into crystalline drops.

I looked at the Doctor; I called to him.

But the Doctor didn't hear me.

In that cloud of condensed light, the white dot was floating, alive, soft and pure: - pure as the celestial glory, soft as the halo of a spirit, alive as the aroma of an orange blossom, white as the light of the day; -...

And getting closer to the Doctor.

- "What is that?" I asked him.

- "Soul of the soul, how you swim in a heaven of joys, come to me!" he exclaimed without answering my question.

CHAPTER XII

THE PROCESSION

What was that white dot and what was its attractive force on the Doctor's soul?

Was this also subject to some spirit-image, represented by that white dot which was floating in the high regions of the Martian night?

Would the Doctor's atonement immediately begin, as Seele has prognosticated, the genius of the mountain, the terrestrial medium, the black cat's companion, the perfidious Seele?

Nobody knew at that moment; but the Doctor continued to contemplate the ethereal vision, the disembodied soul that illuminated the shadows with its white flashes.

- "Doctor! Doctor! I'm very afraid that this white dot is a poorly magnetized compass!"

- "Soul of the soul, how you swim in a heaven of joys, come to me!" he muttered under his breath. "You who love honey because honey is sweet; you who worship God because you fear him; you who have not torn off the mortal veil from your forehead, be quiet! Don't you see that the spirals of white souls should not be interrupted?" he continued in strange monologue.

- "The fact is that your neck can have the rigidity of marble; I am not saying that you're not looking at the Zenit, but remember that it's necessary for the head to conserve all the looseness of its movements."

- "Soul of the soul... come to me!"

And as if that call exerted a strange power over the ethereal lumen, it concentrated its curves and shone with a greater force of rays.

- "Please, my friend! Let's take things as they appear, don't you see, doctor, that we are already inhabitants of Mars, and that we must obey our destiny, after being subject, as we are, to all the vicissitudes of a new terrestrial life? Do you think that we are going to remedy our Martian needs by contemplating spirit-images? "

- "Meow! meow!"

The Doctor came to himself: - the Doctor, for whom my arguments had been useless, could not resist the call of the cat, whose power, unknown to us, must be greater than that of the white dot, alive, soft and pure; and after drawing a sigh from the depths of his soul, he traced a quarter circle on his nose and looked at the processionaries, who, after having made a stop, had started to march again.

- "Come! Come!" He told me, "We need to be part of that procession."

- "Why?"

- "For a very simple reason. What we have seen, what we have heard, is enough to tell us that there is a great relationship between the inhabitants of Mars and the inhabitants of Earth, don't you hear? Don't you see? Already the bells...... "

- "But if they are not bells..."

- "It doesn't matter; let us give them that name...... already the bells throw their plaintive notes to the wind, and the inhabitants of Theopolis, warned by this means, abandon their retreat and their silence, to attend the ceremony."

- "Where are we going?" I asked the processionary with whom we had spoken earlier.

- "To the temple of regeneration."

- "Are the elderly regenerated? By any chance are they rejuvenated, feeling a new life beating in their hearts?"

- "No, but they transmigrate."

- "And where are they going?"

- "To another planet."

- "So that when we grow old and want to be transported to Theopolis, can we be regenerated?"

- "Undoubtedly."

- "And to which planet will we go to be reborn?"

- "I don't know."

What a disgrace! I don't know...... here is the great oracle of humanity! what is life? I don't know; What is death? I don't know; What is ether? what is electricity? I don't know, I don't know. But even if we ignore all this, we should even know what we are, where we come from and where we are going... but no, I don't know, like an ever more colossal giant, stands between humanity and the absolute truth.

It doesn't matter... let's follow the procession.

The inhabitants of Theopolis, in black robes, fell out, came out of their silent dwellings, and joining the group of Sophopolitans, swelled in their ranks. But from their lips, not a single word emerged about the relationship between man and man: their lips, which had paled without modulating more voices than those of prayer, were moving in that moment, as if this instance had always drawn out the mystic word.

But what sadness! The lights that surrounded their bodies were mortuary lights, and together with the brilliance of those of the Sophopolitans, they seemed to have been created by the genius of the tombs, to illuminate the beauty and magnificence of the creation of the genius of life.

By one of those natural evolutions of great human masses in movement, when it is not determined by a regulatory law, we found ourselves involved with the same group as the Martian Voltaire. No one spoke aside from prayer, except for the old man, who from time to time said:

- "I am going to die, no, I am going to regenerate; but don't you understand that if I am to distance myself forever from you, this regeneration is a death, moreover, it is a separation? Your ceremony is terrifying. You say that you help me to die well; but this is horrible; I must die very well, perfectly, I assure you in good faith...."

"Come around us,
Come shadows, come
Because a Sophopolite
In grace he will die."

interrupted the numerous choir of Theopolitans, which revealed to us that these gentlemen were not very strong in the matter of verse and music, but that they had instead a great quantity of folly, enclosed in each one of their spiritual elements.

And the procession marched, sometimes in a straight column, sometimes in an undulating column, bearing a similarity to a serpent.

And at each step, at each undulation, the ranks increased with the Theopolitans who joined him.

The Martian Voltaire continued:

- "What is life? A passing combination between an atom of the universal soul and a bit of matter. Don't you see that this combination is wasting away due to the destructive action of the affections and the years? Don't you see that a moment arrives when the spirit is so tied to matter that its separation is pain? Do you not understand that the more alive the image of death is, the more attachment it takes to life? What does it matter that you represent the supreme hour of life? regeneration by a pale virgin who calls us with her celestial voice?"

- "Come around us,
Come, shadows, come....."

the chorus repeated, ignoring the old man's lamentations.

The procession stopped; - it had reached the temple.

CHAPTER XIII

MARTIAN JESUS CHRIST

On Mars, it is the same as on Earth, as there are inhabitants on both planets, moreover, there are men, or if you want, humanity exists, and this humanity, - if not identical in both worlds, it is at least very similar,- it has elements of a relationship, counting the spoken word among the most essential, on Mars, it is said, there are also proverbs.

This will not surprise you, surely, because we have reached such a point that I do not doubt it will all seem very natural; but what should vividly call your attention, I assure you, is that many proverbs used on Earth are also used on Mars, and the main one is: "He who puts himself in with the Redeemer, leaves crucified." [Translators note: This phrase is often translated figuratively as 'no good deed goes unpunished']

If we are to accept that celebrated theory, according to which the planets were formed, once a part of the Sun, from which they have detached themselves, in the form of cosmic, gaseous matter, by centrifugal force, we must recognize that Mars detached itself from the Sun long before the Earth, or in other words, that Mars is the older planet of the two.

And effectively it has been like that.

Less voluminous than the Earth, its mass cooled sooner, and therefore life appeared on its surface much earlier than on Earth, in this manner when the first rudiments of organization had been recently presented, the first intentions of life had already been pulsing in each of the organized forms of Mars for a long time.

First mineral fought with mineral, and from this fight the vegetable appeared, rudimentary and mobile, and when the latter, after having struggled, felt the supreme hour of the appearance of the animal approaching, he humbled himself before the conscious movement and fixed himself on the mineral through the root.

The three kingdoms fought, but they fought harmoniously, subordinating each other, by a strange relationship of existence, and when at last human beings appeared on Mars, they subjected the kingdoms to the empire of their intellectual life.

What a beautiful spectacle the Earth must have presented to the first man who stamped the wet beaches of Mars with his foot! An immense balloon of fire floating rapidly in space, a great phenomenon, whose contemplation must have struck the first Martian with terror.

But Martian humanity was slower in its development than Terrestrial humanity has been, and it is because from the first moment of its life, it possessed a force that the Earth lacked: its own light.

If each Martian, from his cradle, carried within himself the light that was necessary for him during his life, it is unquestionable that civilization could not develop rapidly, because civilization is the daughter of the struggles that are established between the human being and the surrounding elements, and the more energetic these struggles are, the more powerful civilization will be.

And it is because the education of intelligence is in harmony with the sum of the needs of beings and artificial light, or at least the means of obtaining it, being one of the problems that has most agitated or stimulated the intelligence of primitive humanity, and this research had been one of the main elements of intellectual advancement on Earth, it did not happen on Mars.

There came a time when Martian humanity had stopped the march of its progress, and remained stationary, as if waiting for the hour of transformation to arrive.

The hour finally came, but it came from Earth.

Mars and Earth, children of the Sun, sparks from a planetary fire, waited together for the supreme hour.

The hour finally struck, but it struck on Earth.

Terrestrial humanity had also stopped on the path of progress.

A man like all men, raised his voice among men, and his word, pulsating from century to century, has reached us, and will reach the last generation, and will reach the last moment of the centuries.

He sowed an idea in humanity, and humanity, the fertile soil where everything germinates, has multiplied it indefinitely, preserving its immutable and unfading nature.

This was Jesus Christ, and such was the character of his doctrine.

But that humanity that had received the supreme gifts, deemed it necessary to crucify that man who had told him "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and they crucified him.

The earth kept his mortal dispossession, but the earth could not enclose his spirit.

From the top of the mountain he also flew, spirit-image, to the ethereal regions, and dragged by the whirlwind of the other spirit-images, he went to sow on Mars the sublime germ that he had sown on Earth.

The same vicissitudes, the same torments, the same humiliations, the Martians made him suffer everything, but they preserved his doctrine, and happier than terrestrial humanity, they have felt it spread throughout the surface of their world.

That is why the same proverb is used on both planets.

Will the same thing happen to the Martian Voltaire?

CHAPTER XIV

THE TEMPLE

Immense.

Its shape is circular, and the three naves into which it is divided correspond to three triangles, the outer side of which is an arch, one third of a circle, because the great central dome rests on a horizontal roof, supported by three rows of columns that radiate from the center, in which a triangular prism rises, each one of whose lateral faces corresponds to each of the naves.

The procession entered the temple.

The Theopolitans occupied one of the naves.

The Sophopolitans, after placing the Martian Voltaire in the center prism, occupied the other.

The third was reserved for priests.

At the bottom of this, on an altar full of silver figurines, stood a statue.

- "What does this represent?" I asked the Doctor.

- "What! You don't know what it represents?"

- "No."

- "It is singular."

- "I think, Doctor, it's not even plural."

- "Do you not recognize Jesus Christ?"

- "Jesus Christ!"

- "Yes; on Mars, the same as on Earth, it seems, they call him Our Lord of the Column."

The doctor was a man of truth (a terrestrial concern) and therefore I had to believe him.

But how to recognize that figure?

A life-size statue, representing a man dressed in a mordoré velvet robe-de-chambre (French is also spoken on Mars) embroidered with gold, a chain of the same metal is suspended from the rich silk belt-rope, and a watch of gilt silver, adorned with stained glass with pretenses of fine stones; an abundance of curly hair and a fine lens of rock crystal, is suspended from the neck by a gold cord. [Author note: This should not cause you panic, mortals of the Earth, because you have seen a similar jeer more than once.]

- "Doctor! You have to admit that I have had very acceptable reasons for not recognizing Christ."

- "You are mistaken, Mr. Nic-Nac, you should have recognized him."

I don't know why, but the Doctor thought so.

Faced with that anachronism, the ignorant people could be marveled, that is to say, an inhabitant of Theopolis.... those who occupied the other nave smiled.

The ceremony began, by a choir of Theopolitans, the only occupation that distinguishes them somewhat, but their voices lacked soul, which, it seems, is in intimate harmony with them. Some voices were good, in terms of the simple sound, but their producers' own reflections were contained in their movement, very problematic for others.

The lights that surrounded all of the bodies was shining with a greater intensity, sad, pale, sepulchral, that of some - alive, pink, intense, that of others; - but their radiance merged in such a way, the pale ones with the pink ones, that they seemed to amalgamate in a single flash, just as the inks of twilight are a fusion of those of day and night.

The more I examined this phenomenon, the stranger it seemed to me.

I approached, accompanied by the Doctor, the prism on which the Martian Voltaire was lying, and we observed that it had diminished in volume; its light, once pink, had faded, with the aura of all the characters of the Theopolitans participating.

The supreme hour was coming.

The High Priest (like those everywhere) also approached, and extending his hand over the pale mummy, asked him:

- "Have you loved your neighbor as yourself?

- "Yes, I have always lived in Sophopolis."

Deep in the heart of Theopolis, this answer struck like a poisoned dart, and causing all the blood to flow back into their faces, it was seen in the depths of their pallor, the palest of blushes appeared.

- "Have you been hypocritical, false, perjured and traitorous?" asked the priest.

- "No, I have always lived in Sophopolis."

And there at the bottom of the palest of blushes, a black cloud was seen, as if it were the gangrene of the soul.

- "If that is so," continued the High Priest, "you can volatilize yourself."

- "What an original way to mark the end of life!"

- "They just told me that in this city there is no cemetery."

- "And the corpses?"

- "We'll see what happens with this one."

Have you ever seen a drop of water fall on a red hot metal plate, and after taking the shape of a sphere, rotates rapidly, and loses its mass little by little?

The Martian Voltaire began to turn, his light diminishing the same as his body.

A moment later, he had been reduced more than half, because it seemed that the rotation evaporated him. All the inhabitants of Theosophopolis who had attended the ceremony began to trace their rosy or pale orbits around the old man, a faithful image of the ethereal whirlwind into which the Martian Voltaire was going to penetrate moments later.

The light, the rotating movement, the song, the scene in short, all contributed to further accentuate the character of the ceremony.

- "Doctor! Doctor! I can't turn anymore."

- "Nic-Nac! Nic-Nac! Me neither."

But at that moment the lights faded, and the rotation ceased, and approaching the prism, we looked for the shape of Voltaire.

Everything was useless: - he had evaporated; his body filled the temple in a state of gas and his spirit was already floating in the ether, along with the other spirit-images that populate it.

CHAPTER XV

A DOUBLE OBSERVATION

The time had come for us to withdraw.

First the Theopolitans, then the inhabitants of Sophopolis, and then finally the priests had left the temple, and when it was empty, the doors slammed shut, and the procession continued in the same order as before, but gradually diminishing, because each processioner took to the path to their dwelling as they came up to it.

Two things I had observed: one during the ceremony, and the other when leaving the temple.

When we were all turning vertiginously around the Martian Voltaire, I inadvertently had directed my eyes towards the image of the Christ dressed in velvet, and I noticed that behind him, was a hidden individual, whose expressive physiognomy revealed a Sophopolitan.

This individual had an open portfolio in his left hand, and while he was observing the ceremony, he would interrupt his examination from time to time to look at a watch that he carried in the same hand, while with his right, he would trace some lines in the portfolio, that seemed to be notes.

To his side, a large glass globe could be seen, with a long neck, and a graduated key.

Who was that individual and what was his objective in remaining hidden there? Was it some correspondent sent to Mars by the editors of the New York Herald? It seemed difficult to solve this problem, but what was left without doubt, of course, was the eminently Sophopolitan physiognomy of the mysterious character.

The rotation ceased, and the fatigue produced by vertigo made me forget the individual, his portfolio, his watch, his flask of glass, and the velvet of Christ, and then in imitation of the other Theosophopolitans, I left the temple.

But in the moment of setting foot on its threshold, when it seemed that all was quiet, a sharp, penetrating whistle was heard, like that produced from a bell in which a vacuum has been constructed, a mass of air suddenly penetrating inside it through a narrow opening.

When they heard the whistle, they all turned, but as they did not know where it originated from, and at the same time they recognized that the whistle was not a grave offense that should be purged in torment, all those who had looked stopped looking, because anyway...... nothing was visible.

A few steps away from the temple, the Doctor and I, accompanied by a cicerone, (who was none other than the processionary with whom we had spoken before) stopped for a moment, not only to see the entire procession go by, but also to find out what the hidden individual was doing; because our curiosity had developed in such a way that there was no question that we did not wish to discuss, nor a point that we did not desire to resolve, nor a conversation in which we did not try to interfere, obliging me under these circumstances to express my curiosity in the motives of the person incognito.

We had already concentrated our plan of attack on one of the temple's doors to extract the secret it guarded, when a secret door was opened and the personage appeared, tall, brooding, reading from his portfolio and emanating, like everyone else, a rosy radiance. From time to time he raised his eyes, not to look, but to bring himself out from his deep abstraction.

As we passed by, we heard these words:

"Given the amount of oxygen contained in a given volume of gas produced by the evaporation of a Sophopolitan, find out the means of burning the neighborhoods of Theopolis with all its inhabitants."

And he walked away, and turning in the direction of Sophopolis, we lost sight of him.

We looked at each other, and could not help feeling sorry for the daydreamer.

- "I remember something terrestrial," I told the Doctor.

- "What's that?" he asked.

- "An incident of one examiner who proposed the following problem to an examinee: 'Given the height of a tower, find out the name of the sacristan.' - 'One piece data is missing,' observed the examinee. - 'Which?' - 'The sacristan's baptismal faith.' "

- "But we have not even had the opportunity to observe a word from the mysterious personage."

- "It would have been useless," said the cicerone.

- "Why?"

- "Because that man is mad."

- "Mad?"

- "Yes, it's a long story, his."

- "Would you care to relay it to us?"

- "There is no inconvenience in doing so."

- "We can sit on the steps of the temple, doesn't it seem that way to you, Nic-Nac?"

- "As you wish, Doctor."

CHAPTER XVI

THE HISTORY OF THE MAD MARTIAN

- "The inhabitants of Mars" said the cicerone, "are all Christians, and in this fashion there exists a universal spirit here which has penetrated all hearts, harmonizing into a single beat, the heartbeats of all the races.

"But ah! what a disgrace!

"Born who knows when, emerged who knows where, exists an abject family who has crossed all of the mountains, who has tread through all the valleys, who has crossed all the seas, without being able to find propitious soil to perpetually sow the lethal germs developed in the background of their destiny.

"Cast out from all parts, cursed in all countries, always harassed, mocked and outraged, they have found a piece of land in a corner of the world where they can live temporarily.

"Like the other inhabitants of Mars, its members are also Christians, but transformed Christians, because the characteristic feature of their life is the exaltation of an abominable quality: hypocrisy; and this quality, converted by them into dogma, has strewn more evil on Mars than all the Martian wars and abuses.

"Here, in brief, are the features of the moral physiognomy of this family.

"After struggling for centuries, they reached the South Nic-Naquia, and having examined all the countries that make up this great portion of the continent, they settled on this plain, in this hospitable country......"

- "And what is this country called?"

- "Ha! Ha! Ha! You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac.- They settled, he said, in this country, and founded the city that today bears the name of Theopolis."

- "So this is about the Theopolitans?"

- "No more, no less. But because by I don't know what strange fate, the same perhaps of that of thistles and bad herbs, spread rapidly, and a short time later, the great city of Theopolis raised its harsh buildings, as if defying the world, or should I say, as if insulting the country that had consented to its installation. "

- "Was the plain deserted then?"

- "No, because Sophopolis already existed."

- "And how did the Sophopolitans consent to accept such neighbors?"

- "At the time of the founding of Theopolis, the Sophopolites had found themselves very worried due to certain studies they had recently undertaken."

- "What! Does everyone study in Sophopolis?"

- "Everyone, regardless of age or sex."

- "And the Theopolitans took advantage of this fact?"

- "You'll see. - One day, a group of them went to the gates of Sophopolis and requested permission to build some tents to the East. The Sophopolitans, who could not see that this would cause them great disturbances, consented. A short time later, the shops were replaced by regular buildings, and after thirty years Sophopolis and Theopolis formed but one great city: Theosophopolis.

"Pale, gaunt, humble, at first they aroused the compassion and benevolence of the Sophopolites;- affable, educated, helpful, they later attracted their sympathy.

"Their relations increased, and with them, mutual obligations.

"The Sophopolitans saw their equals in the inhabitants of Theopolis, and these, thither in the depths of their hopes, found an inferior in every Sophopolite.

"Always immersed in their profound research, they did not hindered a dam in the way of their progress, and when they least expected, they found that the powderkeg was going to explode and that there was no remedy. Have you seen the women of Sophopolis?"

- "No! How are they?"

- "Very beautiful. It seems that all possible beauty has been condensed in those bodies, in those faces, in those eyes, in those souls..."

- "Heh! stop there, friend cicerone, don't get so excited; leave something for us that we have not yet had occasion to observe, or absorb, or look at. What do you think, Doctor?"

- "Soul of the soul, how you swim in a heaven of joys, come to me!" exclaimed the Doctor meanwhile, who at that moment was contemplating the white dot, whose spirals were getting smaller and smaller.

- "Well, continue; but...... and the black cat?"

- "Meow! Meow!"

- "You were talking to me, Mr. Nic-Nac?" asked the Doctor.

- "Yes, but it would not be easy to repeat my words."

- "As you wish."

- "Continue."

- "One day," continued the cicerone, "a strange noise was heard in Theopolis, - something like a vibration, sonorous and incessant, had vividly interrrupted the attention of the Sophopolites, who at that moment were observing the passage of the Earth across the Sun with all the scruples of excellent astronomers. The disk of the Earth was already coming into tangency with the Sun when these strange noises were heard...... "

- "Bells?"

- "As you please. - Abandoning all of their instruments, they ran to Theopolis, and as the women and children were not to be left alone, they also had ran behind them. The conglomeration had gradually increased. After many hours, the noise had ceased, and each one then had returned to their neighborhood; - but, oh unfortunate! how much had been lost! The Earth had already crossed the disk of the Sun, and was gradually moving away from it. Do you think that here the troubles began and ended? Don't believe it; - They were just beginning, because many Sophopolites had searched for their wives, their sisters or their daughters.......... and they did not find them. "

- "Martian Sabines, eh? Nic-Nac?" [Translators note: Referring to the Sabine women, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women]

- "Yes, Doctor, but with bells."

- "The Sophopolitans, then, outraged more at the failures of the astronomical observations than by the loss of many of their women, made an irruption in Theopolis, and searched, and searched again, but nothing...... they protested, they were irritated, they threatened, but nothing........

"From time to time a Sophopolite would sneak into Theopolis, but the deception was discovered instantly, because as you have observed, the lights of the former are much more intense, more pink than those of the latter, which allows one to distinguish that of a Theopolitan from an inhabitant of Sophopolis.

"What was done with the women?

"Only they saw it in a positive light. - I have already indicated that they are beautiful like all the splendor of life, which allowed us to suppose, at least, that they had been kidnapped from us to feed the fish."

- "And how has this abduction been verified?"

- "That is what is has been ignored. - The founders of Theopolis had brought their women with them; but... what women! none were complete; squalid, yellowish, with sepulchral gleams, toothless, one missing an arm, another one leg, an ear from a third, and the most shocking thing about the situation is that none of them had movement in the joints of their hands, so that they seemed to have been made from a single piece of bone. You are not unaware that proverbs are widely used here;  - when the Sophopolitans asked their neighbors one day why they made such extraordinary women, they answered that in the absence of bread, good are the cakes." [Translators note: The phrase "in the absence of bread, good are the cakes" ("a falta de pan buenas son las tortas"), sometimes figuratively translated as "half a loaf is better than none", is a common Spanish expression, in the preceding sentence, the verb translated as "made" in "made such extraordinary women" is "confeccionar", the resulting pun in Spanish with bread and cakes does not translate literally into English.]

- "And then they ate the bread?"

- "Yes, Doctor; but much later. - In the meantime, several perfect generations had emerged, and as you can understand, this is nothing but the result of the mixture of races. In this case, the most energetic element was the Theopolite, in this way these generations have been refined Theopolites, in whom hypocrisy manifests itself in such an intense way, that I can assure you it is hypocrisy carried out to the sublime. "

- "But as for all this, what relationship does everything you have told us have to the madman with the flask?"

- "A relationship very well determined: the madman with the flask is the great-grandson of one of the women who had been abducted by the Theopolites."

- "Aah! And he intends to avenge the affront, is that it?"

- "Yes, because that was what his great-grandfather had ordered."

- "But unfortunately for the honor of the family, the poor man has gone mad."

- "And has he made no attempt to exact his vengeance?"

- "Yes, but all of these attempts have taken on a character so deprived of common sense that he is ignored. Several times he has entered Theopolis, with strange hats, full of fantastic figures, a belt of flasks and springs, a necklace of vials, a cane of Laurel, all of which have greatly contributed to the confirming of the general opinion "

- "And what does he do when he goes to Theopolis?"

- "Looks like an idiot at everything around him"

- "Is that all?"

- "Absolutely all."

- "My friend, that man is meditating on a great problem."

CHAPTER XVII

SOPHOPOLIS

Judging by the time that had passed after the sun had risen, it must have been midnight, and as oranges have always been a very light food, we felt a strong desire to strengthen our bodies.

We rose to our feet, and going to Sophopolis, we had occasion to observe that we had proceeded reasonably, because a Theopolite approached us, and warned us that it was time to withdraw; that if we wanted, we could go and spend the rest of the night at his house, to which our cicerone had noted to cordially thank, but that it was impossible for us to accept the offer because we had to attend the session at the Sophopolis Academy.

- "If that is so," said the Theopolite, "may the good spirit be with you." And he walked away.

But, oh disgrace! a sudden wind lifted his skirt, and we saw the glow of a species of a serpent of steel, perhaps a symbol of the good spirit that would have accompanied us if we had accepted his invitation.

And above all, what is a worse spirit than the presence of its horrible women, whose hands, as we have just been told, were cadaverous hands in animated arms? No, a thousand times no.

We entered Sophopolis.

Nothing was more beautiful, nothing was more graceful, nothing was more fantastic than the appearance of this city, with its firefly inhabitants, who awaken a dormant sympathy in the lethal  atmosphere of Theopolis.

Those lights, those radiances, which plot curves, which form straight lines, which generate waves and illuminate the Martian night with such brilliant auras, cannot but strengthen the noble spirit of such noble inhabitants, all of which, however, does not serve as nourishment when you haven't eaten enough sufficient for living.

- "Do you know, my friend," said the Doctor to the cicerone, "that our fast has been prolonged?"

- "One more moment, and we'll have arrived..."

- "Where?"

- "Wherever you like; - your radiance is special, and through it, you reveal that you have recently been consecrated. All the doors of Sophopolis are open to you."

- "Do we owe this to Seele?"

- "It was your destiny. For now, you must accept my house, and when you are satisfied, - in which I will try to imitate you - I suppose you will have no objection to attend the session at the Sophopolis Academy."

- "With the greatest pleasure."

Suddenly we heard a horrible screaming, similar to that of a flock of wolves chasing... whatever thing.

- "What is that?" we asked the cicerone in amazement.

- "Nothing," he answered this smiling. "There are two wise men whose houses are located opposite each other. One of them is an astronomer and his telescope protrudes from one of the balconies facing the street; the other is a naturalist, a zoologist, who has devoted himself, especially lately, to the study of amphibians and at any moment he'll throw large quantities of water into the street... don't you hear?"

- "Eh! don't be impertinent and capricious," said the astronomer.

- "And you don't bother me with your telescope, which at every moment seems ready to launch itself into my collections," replied the zoologist.

- "The fact is that so much water, when evaporating, clouds my objective, and because of you I have lost two of the elements of Asteroid number 748."

- "Seven hundred forty-eight!" I exclaimed in amazement, "but only a hundred are known on earth!"

- "Yes, but note that from Mars, the distance to the orbits of the Asteroids is much closer," said the cicerone.

- "I don't care about the elements of those useless lost stones" continued the zoologist.

- "Ignorant! - Nor do I care about the bugs that you study."

- "It's just that I'll destroy the telescope."

- "And I'll make you eat the tadpoles...... Be quiet, the asteroid has already moved two degrees."

- "And you keep quiet because my little animals are scared."

And all this with voices so raucous and unbearable that they shattered one's eardrums.

The other Sophopolites, accustomed to their yelling, passed without stopping.

- "The poor wise men!" I exclaimed in a fit of compassion "they are the same everywhere; always cranky, and not infrequently impertinent!"

We continued on our way, and a moment later, the splendid table of the Sophopolitan was flaunted to our desires, which had already reached their summit.

Our kind cicerone introduced us to his numerous family, and I can assure you that he was correct when painting their portrait for us.

If anyone discovers women more beautiful than those of Sophopolis in any other point in the Universe, surely he deserves to eat the cakes, as is the proverb of the Theopolitans.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE HOUSE OF A MARTIAN

Mars does not have a satellite, that is, it does not have a Moon, so that its nights lack the splendor of Earth nights, when Endymion's beloved tranquilly shines in the depths of the sky.

But instead, the stars reverberate with dazzling rays and twinkle in the intense darkness of space like luminous flowers among the moss of the forests, swayed by the breezes of the shadows.

Do you think that the magnificence of those nights on Mars is solely due to the brightness of the stars? No, Mars has a more vivid sky, an ether of light, from which the spirit-images radiate their sweet pallor, and if you assemble these auras of the Martians, you will have to admit that the most beautiful nights are the nights of Mars.

And when thunder rumbles, convulsing the atmosphere with its waves, and the livid lightning illuminates the raindrops, and the thunderbolt whistles in the layers of the air...... all those lights, and all these noises, and all this Martian pomp, instills a mysterious respect for the great code which governs these worlds and disseminates them in space like simple vibrations of eternity.

Ah! what a disgrace! flying from world to world, from life to life, always carrying the soul as a nucleus...... reaching the pedestal of glory and joy on the rosiest of the planets, and returning to Earth to contemplate the same storms, the same valleys, the same faces...... what a disgrace! to climb so high to sink so low!

By what law of Nature do beings exist who don't reach the supreme satisfaction of their desire?... But ah! delirium...... the memory of the most beautiful of the storms of Mars has made me forget our social respect, and the regards that both the Doctor and I owe to the family of our complacent cicerone.

Do you want, reader, to continue? Well I understand - you wish that I'm not left repressed by such brilliance.

Under a canopy of Laurels and Jasmines, of Myrtos and Flowers of the air whose rigid leaves intertwine, - in a soft atmosphere impregnated with all the aromas, the table of the Sophopolite appears, on which not only the most delicate delicacies are displayed, but the most useful delicacies.

I think it is unnecessary to describe them, because you have enough insight to understand that my descriptions of such delicacies will neither increase nor diminish the good, or bad, opinion that you have formed of the wise men of those distant regions; but I will point out to you that the food consumed in Sophopolis is completely assimilated, so that later, all of it will form an integral part of one's body, without a single atom of useless and indigestible matter disturbing the functions which characterize the lives of their bodies.

This phenomenon will immediately lead you to formulate a thousand more or less acceptable conjectures, but I will give you all the parts which will answer you in such healthy elucubrations, since I have previously indicated to you that it is enough to step on the soil of Mars to feel, in the depths of the spirit, a greater impartiality and the strictest justice in the interpretation of facts.

I have also told you that the women who were part of the Sophopolite's family were as beautiful as all the splendor of life, as such are all those who live in Sophopolis, but I have not told you that among the daughters of our guest there was one, especially one, that not only caught all of my attention, but more, and very particularly, that of the Doctor's, who could not help but remain being absorbed in contemplating such a strange beauty.

She was slender and graceful, but with the grace of the stars that have a power like infinity, and the voluptuousness of her curves singularly contrasted with the serene majesty of her physiognomy.

Upon seeing her, you would have said, mortals of Earth, that you had dreamed sometime of a vaporous and ethereal image which had dragged you into an unknown world, and that this woman, tangible and accessible, serene and majestic, was the faithful image of your dream.

I doubt it not. Nature has adorned our spirit with the supreme gift of personifying illusions, creating a form, as vague as it is true, but in the end it is the form, to which we give life, movement and soul... a presentiment perhaps of future images.

The Doctor contemplated the beautiful apparition and was perhaps experiencing one of those nameless vertigos, which are born in the spirit, dominate it, seize it, and amalgamate it with the object of contemplation; but coming to himself, after that first ecstasy, he looked up at the sky...... and did not see the white dot which had attracted him before. The somber clouds had veiled the region of the spirits.

As the the Doctor was observing, he took part in the conversation, and from time to time he looked at the young woman, from whose noble face was flying a little cloud of strange radiance.

- "Will you attend the Academy, Mr. Nic-Nac?"

- "Yes, madam, and my friend the Doctor will accompany me, isn't that right, Doctor?"

- "Undoubtedly. Our kind guide has invited us, and......"

The Doctor couldn't help it; the beautiful Martian had seized his eloquence.

- "And... you prefer" said the lady, "that the session not be held today, is that correct?"

The Doctor's aura shone more intensely, so that some carmine reflections had augmented the cloud of strange radiance which flew around the face of the beautiful girl.

- "The interest in each of the Academy's sessions is relative, what do you think Doctor?" the Amphitryon asked with a malicious smile.[Translators note: The Spanish word for 'host' is 'anfitrión', capitalized in the original]

- "I think that you are right."

- "Yes," said one of the ladies, "because when Mr. Hacksf......

- "Who is that man? Pardon me."

- "The astronomer we were talking about on the way; the same one who threatened his neighbor, the zoologist," replied the master of the house.

- "Ah!"

- "When Mr. Hacksf delivers his endless memoirs about the new asteroids that he discovers, each logarithm and each tangent, cannot be compared through that which is ponderous and monotonous, but through their arcs, cosines and sines."

- "The Doctor is very affectionate towards Mathematics."

- "Was, Mr. Nic-Nac, but now....... I think I've lost my affection for it."

- "I don't doubt it," said the lady, "when one arrives in a completely new region, all marvels, and even past affections are forgotten by surrendering completely to the empire of novelty."

- "Now you will allow me to observe, madam, that this is also relative, and that although some affections go dormant, they can be awakened later," replied the Doctor.

- "Well? Going to sleep or dying, when it comes to passions, it's absolutely the same."

- "With a slight difference."

- "Such as?"

- "That if all the inhabitants of the Earth knew what is seen on Mars, and very particularly in Sophopolis, I don't doubt that they would rather die. It is so sad to wake up when one has dreamed, and forever annihilate the beautiful illusory reality of the moment! "

- "And who impedes you from dreaming perpetually?"

- "Madam, that's what I am looking for," replied the Doctor, looking at the young woman, "and as long as I have not succeeded, I will always believe that death is preferable to dreams."

The veils of the storm were suddenly torn, and the starry sky and the region of spirits, appeared in all their splendor.

The rain ceased for a moment, and a fragrant vapor began to rise toward the upper regions.

A strange rustle gently stirred in the layers of the air, and a sudden brilliance had distinguished itself in the heights.

We all contemplated that radiance.

- "Soul of the soul......." said the Doctor, and stirred by an internal fire, he made a supreme effort to elevate himself into the air.

A wish in vain; - gravitation held him down.

The white dot began to descend, gently and softly, as if supported by a cloud of propitious spirits.

And as it approached us, it emanated more vivid flashes. Its spirals had also formed a straight line.

We all contemplated the spirit-image, attracted by its magnificence.

The doctor was beside himself.

The beautiful Martian woman, like an inspired Sibyl, experienced vivid convulsions, as if dominated by an extra-natural force.

Was there some relationship between the beautiful young woman and the white dot, the spirit-image whose force of attraction on the doctor's soul had manifested itself with so much energy?

We could suppose so.

Was there some strange affection between the Doctor and the young woman, or between the young woman and the luminous dot?

The magnetic needle jumps under the action of the pole; the bird sings when the day appears; the flower is aromatic when the hour of its reproduction sounds, and all the affinities that bind beings in Nature are manifested by the supreme palpitations of their life.

That is why we were allowed to suppose that that relationship of spirits existed, as there is light in the stars, and the vibration asleep in the immobile strings of a lyre.

But how did it exist?

Did these souls come looking for each other from the first moment of the worlds, as an atom searches for another atom of a similar nature?

Maybe.

- "Doctor! Do you know that you are admirable? Mr. Hacksf, an astronomer without equal to scrutinize the Universe, was able to say that you would be priceless as his successor."

- "It is true, Mr. Nic-Nac; but I can assure you that I could never believe that the Universe exists outside of that white soul."

- "And what soul is that?" asked the lady.

- "Tears of life that transform themselves into angels, or if you want, angels that transform themselves into tears to later convert themselves into souls:"

- "But that's incomprehensible," observed one of the young ladies.

- "And above all, it must be an earthly reminiscence."

- "Not such. It is prior to my current life; and now that I find myself detached from earthly bonds, I understand that my spirit had forgotten its previous transmigrations."

- "Come on! Some loves from the time of the Plesiosaurs and Pterodactyls, eh, doctor?"

- "I'll ignore that."

- "Meow! Meow!"

The doctor shuddered - the cat's meow had vibrated in a strange manner in his ears.

- "What a docile cat, don't you see? It comes to perch on my lap," said the beautiful girl, caressing the little animal with her incomparable hands.

If at that moment the Doctor had not returned to his contemplations, there is no doubt that he would have expressed vehement desires to transform himself into the cat.

- "But let's get back to the tale," said the master of the house. "What do you expect from that spirit-image?"

- "Seele told me in secret."

- "In secret?"

- "Yes."

- "And what did he tell you?"

- "What a white dot... ah!... whose immense attraction..."

- "Oh you don't have anything, Doctor."

- "... whose immense attraction would dominate me... would be complementary to my soul."

- "What! then is your soul but a fragment?"

- "No, but it needs to merge into another soul; and I think that's precisely the aim of that whiteness whose gentle descent further agitates my spirit, it is what is lacked in mine."

- "Nevertheless, Seele has threatened you!"

- "Yes, Mr. Nic-Nac; but the fusion of the two souls will determine my emancipation."

- "And when are you destined to amalgamate your spirit with another?"

- "Seele didn't tell me."

Already the radiance of the spirit-image was merging with our auras.

Like a cloud of incense that sprouts from the altar, slow and beautiful, the vision got so close to us, that we had felt attracted to a particular force which obliged us to look at it.

What a sweet paleness! What a soft radiance! How beautiful the bodies must be in which these souls dwell!

The Doctor had reason to admire her so much.

The beautiful young woman experienced a new convulsion.

The white dot loomed over her forehead and was brighter than the aura that enveloped her.

The Doctor was stunned.

That soul, that white dot, was going to suffuse with the spirit of the young Martian woman.... Do you think that this was disagreeable to the Doctor?

At the moment when the ethereal lumen was about to settle on the face of the beautiful woman, a tremendous noise was heard, as if all the roses of Mars, its waterfalls, its volcanoes, and its storms had exploded out in mysterious consortium, and a terrible vision, appearing suddenly, enveloped us in its green-blue glows.

Where had it come from? What was it bringing her?

Poor Doctor!

- "Seele! Seele!" we exclaimed in horror.

A laugh from hell echoed under the canopy of the feast, and rushing toward us was the genius of the mountain, we sought to remove him from our circle.

Everything was useless. Seele had disappeared at our first move.

On his impious hand, the white dot had gleamed for an instant. Seele was the genius of evil. Seele had snatched away the first, the last, the only one of the Doctor's joys, down whose face two thick tears slid, glowing brightly under the reverberation of the auras.

Poor Doctor! Seele's threat was beginning to be carried out.

CHAPTER XIX

A CONVERSATION THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ENDLESS...
IF I HADN'T FINISHED IT

A moment later, our amiable cicerone accompanied me through the spacious streets of Sophopolis.

The Doctor had preferred to stay in the company of the ladies, who understood how great his misfortune was. He, for his part, tried to better it.

- "The Academy" the cicerone told me, "provides extraordinary benefits throughout the entire population, of whatever nature they may be. Through its organization, this Academy is divided into two large sections: theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Those who investigate, scrutinize the physical and moral secrets, the laws that govern them, - these, their application to our society - and I can assure you that the benefits of that reported by this organization, are so great that it is not only enough for us, but also for other countries which have geographical or political relations that present a certain affinity with ours.

"The Government of our country, eager to maintain the political-social balance, protects such a beneficial institution, and it, on the other hand, is, as it were, the Superior Council of the Government. - Wisdom from all nations flock to it and contribute, each one in his own sphere, to interpret Nature. "

- "And who are its members?"

- "Anyone who has a sufficiently good desire to promote the contentment and well-being of man."

- "From what you have told me, it follows that the goals of this Academy are eminently practical, and that theory occupies a secondary space, eh?"

- "You are deceiving yourself, Mr. Nic-Nac; the theory, among us, is the basis of all progress; and we take our conviction to such an extreme, in that sense, that by our municipal laws, before carrying out any act of life, we must submit it for the approval of the subordinate departments."

- "And what to end do you propose that?"

- "Above all, to keep the feeling of sociability alive, and those Departments that would otherwise seem useless, become great meeting centers, where things are discussed, proposed, approved, laughed at....... in a word, where you learn to live. "

- "Are there analogous institutions in Theopolis?"

- "Latent yes, but useless, because all Theopolites prefer the strangest isolation. The government could subject them to a general law, but you understand well that no matter how unpleasant they may be, they should not be forced to completely modify their customs. They don't bother anyone (they only did this once), they don't try to propagandize their negative principles; that is why they are not obliged to be made so. Furthermore, there is one circumstance of serious import in the considerations of the authorities: the light that surrounds them is something similar to those fateful radiances that, from time to time, tend to surround the summit of the Nevado of the Consecration. "

- "The one I called Nevado de Famatina?"

- "Really?"

- "Yes; Seele asked me to name it, and I adopted that one."

- "Reminiscences?"

- "Inevitably. But tell me, what if one day the Theopolites tried to initiate propaganda?"

- "We will set their city on fire, as we will also set it on fire the day we have enough energy to avenge the affront on us from epochs past."

- "And that is the Christianity that you have learned? Isn't one of the fundamental bases of the great doctrine the forgiveness of injuries?"

- "There are some that are metaphysically abominable."

- "Agree with me that everything is relative, and that what for some may be an insult, for others is a jewel."

- "In the depths of our consciousness there are no relativities of that kind."

- "Well, let's leave it at that; I abide by your opinions, and if I have expressed surprise, it has only been to acknowledge your temper with respect to the Theopolites. I am a Christian, but in my own way. I don't accept everything that Christ has said as being in more of a metaphorical nature. 'But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also' said the great Apostle of Redemption; but I can assure you that in practice, this advice has the characteristics of impossibility, as there is no man, though Christian he may be, who receives one on the left and does not wish to apply two hundred to the aggressor's right."

- "Indeed, Mr. Nic-Nac. It is a fatal law of human dignity; however, it was a metaphor."

- "Well, in the last case I would know how to apply it metaphorically. But going back to the Academy, tell me: what about all those studies that apparently don't present any practical use, such as, for example, the research into whether Phosphorus or Palladium exists in one of the smallest asteroids?"

- "You yourself have said it: 'apparently' is the true expression. All the beings that populate the Universe contribute to its harmony by their own evolution, and a single atom is annihilated, it would be enough to break the balance. Should, man, then, be aware of these mysterious affinities of existence, and dedicate to his research all the efforts of the spirit? If man had no other needs, other aspirations than the gross satisfaction of the elements indispensable to his vegetative life, his great intelligence would be absolutely useless."

- "But remember, my friend, that man has formed his intelligence step by step, just as plants and animals have generated cell by cell, from the first isolated one that populated the seas, to the most beautiful of the trees of our forests, or to the brightest of birds that sing in them."

- "I accept evolution, Mr. Nic-Nac; but since man today has his current intelligence, it is because it existed latent in the majesty of infinity, a latency that one day had to be pliable. And it is because there is something beyond vegetative needs, an afterlife that opens up the doors of eternity and space. The intelligence of man is therefore only one of the forms of universal harmony. To realize this harmony, to study its elements, that is the mission of man; this is also why there is no useless study. From the simple note, an element of that harmony, to the perfect chord of the worlds, you can travel the vast scale of creations, and in each one of them you will find beauty, unity and sympathy. But here we have arrived at the Academy."

CHAPTER XX

IN THE ACADEMY

My friendly guide and I entered a vast room, splendidly illuminated by the auras of the sage Sophopolites, and by the magnificent splendor of their science.

There, science radiates light.

At one end of the room, the president's seat appeared, somewhat higher than those of the others, at his sides, the two secretaries, and forming like two wings, separated by an unoccupied distance, the two natural groups of the Academy, that is to say, that of the theoretical wise men and that of practical wise men.

Among the first, I observed three characters that immediately caught my attention because of something particular that distinguished them, and as such I asked my guide who those members were.

- "The astronomer Hacksf, the zoologist Biopos, his enemy, and the botanist Geot, the rival of both," he replied.

- "Here is a new aura," said the president pointing at me.

- "It is true," my guide responded, "but I don't doubt that before long, Mr. Nic-Nac, whom I have the honor to present to the Academy, will know how to prove to you that he is as Sophopolite as any of us."

- "The aura that surrounds you is terrestrial," said the secretary, "you can take a seat among the theoretical wise men."

- "No," I responded, "the aura that surrounds me is eminently Martian. In that enchanted region where all the aromas perfume the environment, where all the graces of the vegetation animate the landscape, a majestic chain of mountains rises, in which a metallic heart, inhabits the genius of those places: Seele..."

- "Very well," the president interrupted me, "you can occupy the section that the secretary has indicated. Never has a judgment been confirmed as eloquently as you have done by letting us hear your words. We have to cordially thank Mr. Nic-Nac for the favor he is giving us, but... we can't help it: - Mr. Nic-Nac will be fine where the theoretical practitioners are. "

I took a seat next to the astronomer.

There was a moment of silence in which my neighbor took the opportunity to ask me some questions such as: "What are the opinions of the inhabitants of the Earth about the planet Mars? Is it very hot there? What kind of telescopes do they use? Are zoologists abundant?" and others of a similar fashion, to which I tried to respond with the greatest laconism, however.

I involuntarily directed my gaze to the group of practical wise men, and it did not surprise me one bit to see that among them was the madman with the flask, flipping through his portfolio, making notes, and speaking to himself.

- "Gentlemen!" exclaimed the president, "in the previous conference a very important question was discussed, which is that of a critical review published not too long ago in one of this city's newspapers......"

- "What! Are there newspapers here too?" I asked Mr. Hacksf.

- "And very good ones; considering that they publish my observations daily."

- "This critical review is about a work accepted by the Academy."

- "What work is it?" asked one of the practical wise men.

- "The complete treatise on Martography," said one of the secretaries.

- "But it was not complete," observed the author who was present.

- "And so?"

- "And so, in it I have presented, in the most eloquent way possible, a physical and political description of what can be called the Oriental semi-planet. I have indicated the natural beauties that characterize Protobia and Melania, particularly pointing out the splendor and magnificence of the forests that cover these two portions of the continent with their green garments; the elevation of its mountains is the complete picture of its fauna; the character and origin of its inhabitants; I have insisted on the verisimilitude of the opinions expressed by one of the gentlemen scholars from which the human race has not appeared precisely in Protobia, an erroneous name that has been given to this portion, as indicating that the first life appeared there, but in the center of Melania, since all the observations of modern wise men, of whatever manner they opine, serve an impartial spirit to confirm the hypotheses which, first manifesting themselves in the embryonic state, gradually take on the character of inconclusive truths. I have admitted how Jesus Christ was born in Protobia and from there passed to Melania, and how, after many adventures, his doctrine spread to Seelia, from where it was transmitted to Nic-Naquia. After studying these two sources of primitive civilization, Protobia and Melania, I have penetrated into Seelia, and once the general characteristics have been laid out, I have made detailed descriptions and assessments of some of the various countries that constitute it, such as Tedecia, Ingelia, Gandalia, Spondia, Tarantelia and some others. It would not be surprising, Mr. President, that when stating that these countries that I have just named could meet in three different groups, after studying their analogues and differences, some of the natives of those would have wanted to break spears with the author of the book through the press."

- "That is precisely what has happened. In our last session, it was hardly possible for us to mention the vulnerable points of the book and the criticism of it; but today, in full possession of the arguments that will serve us, I think we can start the discussion."

- "There is no doubt, Mr. President," said another academic, "but it is essential, Mr. President, that we take into account the various circumstances that weigh, Mr. President, or that should weigh, Mr. President, like an iron hand on the heart of the critic; - there is no doubt, and I've already made myself clear that I'm an enthusiast of any of the decisions of the Academy in this sense. The critical article, Mr. President, must have been written, without doubt, by a Theopolite."

The Falcon is not faster when jumping on its prey, nor is the Swallow of the banks faster when forming, in winged exhalation, the capricious route of its flight, then a cry of "betrayal" and the sudden movement which was observed in the side of the Academy when the speaker left the floor.

- "What's there? What's there?" asked some, astonished.

- "Nothing!" replied the madman with the flask, "a Theopolite has violated the sanctuary of our science."

- "Silence!" Exclaimed the President. "The author of the complete treatise on Martography has the floor."

- "Thank you. My appreciations of the moral value of the natives of Spondia and Tarantelia, when comparing it with that of those of Tedecia and Ingalia, or of Gandalia, the chain that binds the other two groups, must have hurt the national self-esteem of some susceptible people. But I ask: does an individual have the right to use the press as a vile instrument of revenge? Can he insult the country in which he lives with impunity, discredit it, insult it, defame it, just by claiming its criticizing a book?"

- "No! no" the corpus contested en masse.

- "Well: that author whom I don't know, nor do I wish to know, will serve as a target, or as a point of support, for us to establish the bases of what provisionally can be called 'Aurelian Law.'"

- "Aurelian! And why this?" I asked the astronomer.

- "Ha! ha! ha! You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac."

But what is this destiny of mine? Why can't I know the name of this country? Would the law, not yet formulated, mean something relative to the problem which everyone solves for me with a laugh? Seele, the guide, and now Mr. Hacksf, they have given me the same reply "ha! ha! ha! you are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac!"

- "I think it would be good," said the president, "that in the next session, each one of the members of the Academy will present a project of the Aurelian Law, that is, of the Printing Law which should govern the Nation.... "

- "Say it, say it, Mr. President," I exclaimed in a supreme outburst.

- "Ha! ha! ha! You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac........."

- "I have prepared some notes," interrupted one of the academics.

- "Do you want to read them?"

- "It would be no inconvenience."

- "The secretaries will record it."

- "Here they are. All of them are reduced to three groups of crimes that must be punished: 1st: Defamation of the Nation. 2nd: Defamation of authority. 3rd: Defamation of the person."

- "Nothing more?"

- "For now I think it is sufficient, it will not prevent others from being added later. In the first case, proof of grievance will not be admitted because it is treason against the country, if I am allowed to express myself like this, and so a proportional punishment will be imposed; in the second case, two crimes can be distinguished: defamation of the magistrate for the sole pleasure of defamation, without the offense amounting to an accusation of responsibility, and defamation of the magistrate, accusing him of faults that have weighed on his position. In this second case, with its two subdivisions, I distance myself, it is easily understood, from the dignified accusation and high character, a noble prerogative of the opposition press. The magistrate is an august personality that must be respected, even when he commits a serious offense, since in him are contained two people: one who represents a large part of the rights of the people, and the other who is completely private, but the character of the magistrate absorbs the second person, a simple right, minimal, whose value relatively disappears before the unity of multiple rights. The offense, the insult to the magistrate, must be punished in any manner, in that which does not prevent the magistrate from responding to the accusation in case that the offense involves him. In the third case, defamation of the person, there are also two circumstances analogous to the previous ones: the defamation of the person in his private character, which will inevitably oblige the journalist to understand that person, without being permitted to withdraw from the responsibility that weighs on him, - and the defamation of the person, accusing him at the same time of faults that are related to the public right. In summary: an insult will always be punished, and reporting a crime will be a journalist's sacred right."

- "I propose that those bases be accepted without discussion," said the author of the complete treatise.

- "Yes! Yes! Yes!" the other members exclaimed.

- "I propose," he continued, "that they be sent to the National Government for approval."

- "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

- "I propose that all your severity be weighed on the head of the critic who has insulted me."

- "No! No! No! Laws are not made fait accompli, but rather to be proactive; that is to say, they have no retroactive ex post facto effect." [Translators note: The wordplay of this sentence is rather lost in English, which itself is a jumble of French, fait accompli, and Latin, ex post facto, for these legal concepts. In the original text, my rendition of 'fait accompli' is written as 'hechos consumados' and 'proactive' as 'los consumables']

- "It is true."

- "I ask for the floor!" vociferated the madman with the flask.

- "Granted!" replied the President in the same tone.

- "I am going to propose, gentlemen, an original thesis; - I am going to prove that: given the quantity of oxygen contained in a determined volume of gas produced by the evaporation of a Theopolite, one can ascertain the means of burning the neighborhoods of Theopolis, with all its inhabitants. "

- "Hadn't you formulated this before saying 'from the gas produced by the evaporation of a Sophopolitan'?"

- "Yes, but I have changed my mind, because now I have at my disposal a Theopolite."

- "A Theopolite!"

- "I will say rather, the Theopolite."

- "The Theopolite!"

- "Have you forgotten," said the madman, "the incident that has just happened a moment ago?"

The madman was right, and if I use this name, it is only to preserve the one that our friend the cicerone had given him - I don't know how or why we had forgotten the movement and the cry. What had happened in that scene interrupted by the order of "silence!" from the president?

The individual who had spoken a moment after the session began, - without this signifying that he had said something - and various times had employed the vocative in the few words he addressed to the president, was a Theopolitan, a true Theopolitan, with all his characteristics concealed, silence turned into bland verbosity; the pale, phosphorescent light, casting vivid sophisticated flashes; the emaciation of the face lost by the filling of the internal cavities of the cheeks, and the misery of the glance, completely changed by artificial agitation. But when he had finished speaking, the borrowed light disappeared and his hypocritical eyes, his vipery physiognomy, regained their true value. It was then that the madman with the flask, who had followed his words, uttered the cry of "betrayal," simultaneously rushing to the spy.

The Theopolites are resilient.

The madman carried his large flask with him, and making use of the Theopolite's elastic properties, he inserted him into the flask, to the great satisfaction of some academics, who collectively saw, in a manner so eloquent, the belief that is driven by the lack of cohesion of the molecules of that degraded race.

The zoologist Biopos experienced a shock of supreme satisfaction, because he did not doubt that this flask, with its contents, would become part of his collection. What pleasure for him! A Theopolite in brandy!

- "Mr. President!" exclaimed the madman, "the moment of vengeance has arrived; now we will be able to set fire to the enemy city, and its infamous inhabitants, always rejected from every country, will leave, the abject spirit-images, to spin isolated in the confines of space."

- "And what are the means you intend to implement this?" asked my guide.

- "Very simple: the combustion which determines the oxygen of a Theopolite in a fixed quantity of matter can serve as a comparison point to find out how much of it is needed to ignite all the matter with which Theopolis is formed, and those that dwell in it."

- "It is not necessary," interrupted my friend the cicerone, "it is enough to burn alive the body of one Theopolite to transmit the fire to the entire population."

- "That is not true," said the madman, somewhat irritated by that insinuation, because if it was true, his long studies of so many years would have been useless, because with such a simple means, many inquiries, difficult, painful, and above all, enshrouded in danger, would have been avoided, "and what are the means that you propose?"

- "The combustion of a Theopolite produces a certain quantity of gas."

- "But it is necessary to evaporate it before."

- "No; just burn it."

- "Impossible!" exclaimed the madman.

- "Impossible? You'll see."

And he directed himself to the table on which the flask had been placed.

- "The experiment can be done right here," he said.

- "No! No!" shouted the zoologist; - "that piece is magnificent for a zoological collection."

- "Let it be burnt immediately," proposed the astronomer Hacksf looking at Biopos with a flushed face and volcanic gaze.

- "No, let it not burn," the academic Biopos insinuated again, "in the matter that forms a Theopolite, the same elements of the amphibian can always be found."

- "Mr. President! If Mr. Biopos insists, I will burn the Theopolite myself with a ray of condensed Sun."

- "A ray of condensed Sun!" exclaimed the botanist Geot, standing up suddenly; "Don't you know that a ray of Sun, under these conditions, would be the death of the Academy? What if that ray of Sun spread in that area?"

- "I would condense it again as I have done with this one."

And the astronomer presented a small box made of a green and transparent substance like emerald, in whose interior, suspended like a star in space, an intensely luminous dot was made visible.

- "Gentlemen! We depart from the question. Neither the academic Mr. Biopos will obtain the Theopolite for his collection, nor the academic Mr. Hacksf will have him burned," said the president.

- "Why not?" asked my friend. "Is it not praiseworthy, by any chance, to minimize the inconvenience to a worthy and persevering scholar who apparently seeks the truth where the truth does not exist?"

- "I am equally persevering and dignified," said the zoologist, "and that is precisely why I don't wish the Theopolite's body to be burned."

- "But gentlemen! Where are we going? I have said that the Theopolite will not be burned. It is a relic that we must conserve at all costs. And if due to any incident, its gases condense and its body regenerates, do you not understand that we'll be lost? Here, in the locale of the Academy, in a safe place, that flask must be conserved, and two academics, one from each section, will stand guard and prevent the entry of any Theopolite!" the president said, and his words were unanimously accepted. "When the time is right," he continued, "there will be no shortage of Theopolites, and everyone can have their own, if they please."

- "And how will that living body be preserved?" Biopos asked.

- "By placing the ray of Sun condensed by Mr. Hacksf in the flask," said the botanist Geot.

CHAPTER XXI

COMMENTARIES

The session continued at the Academy; but my friend the cicerone indicated with a gesture that we could withdraw.

I stood up, and then went to the door, where a moment later my accommodating friend came to meet me.

- "What are they going to deal with now?" I asked him when we were leaving the compound.

- "Of the means of organizing the opposition press."

- "Nothing more?"

- "There's some other issues; but this is the primary one. It seems useless to me that we remain here, because we are going to hear nothing new for today. The opposition press will always be the opposition press, and when trying to organize it, the Academy will not do anything but further debase it. On the other hand, once the three bases of the Aurelian Law have been accepted, the opposition must submit to it. "

- "And if they abstain, would nothing in particular happen?"

- "They can not."

- "What! They can't!"

- "You heard it, Mr. Nic-Nac: they can't."

- "But... so what... aren't they free citizens?

- "Precisely because they are free; but that same freedom has its limits, and one of them is the obligation to preserve the opposition press; it is a right of the people, and of their representatives; there is an imperative need for it to exist, but it exists subject to certain restrictions. Suppress its abuses, but leave the insults generally unpunished, and you will find yourself face to face with the most beautiful, the most noble conquest of a free people. Suppress the opposition press, and even the most benevolent and well-intentioned government can become, almost unwittingly, an abhorrent tyrant."

- "And what are the necessary steps to take so that the government of the Nation promulgates Aurelian Law?"

- "Nothing more than submitting it for its approval. The Academy of Sophopolis is also a National Congress."

- "Do you think these three bases are enough to curb the abuses of the press?"

- "Examine them well, and you will see, that yes."

- "Is that all the Academy is going to deal with today?"

- "I have told you that there is something else, but, it is secondary. Once the debate on the press is over, the author of the Complete Treatise on Martography will take the floor again"

- "For what?"

- "Have you not heard him say that his treatise was not complete?"

- "Yes, but that......"

- "It means that today he will continue to describe both Nic-Naquias: the Setentrional and the Meridional."

- "Indicating the names of the countries that form them?"

- "It's very natural."

How could I not take advantage of such a brilliant opportunity?

I ran with breakneck speed towards the Academy. My heart was pounding, my hair stood on end, the dense air was not yet enough to balance my fatigue.[Translators note: The phrase for "Breakneck speed" in the original is literally translated as "ran like an exhaltation". ]

I arrived at the Academy and, addressing the first person I observed at the door, I had made an expressive gesture to him, since I could not speak.

- "You're too late! The session is over for today," Biops said greeting me.

At that moment, I heard an inner voice, a voice of mine that exclaimed: "You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac! ha! ha! ha!"

CHAPTER XXII

FINALLY!

As the cicerone arrived at his house, he looked back and couldn't help but smile, seeing me tired, almost panting, coming back from my sudden run.

He stopped, and when I had also arrived at the house:

- "You are very curious, Mr. Nic-Nac." he told me. "If the cause of your agitation were another, I would have compassion for you..."

- "I reject it, your compassion, my friend."

- "Meow! Meow!"

- "Ah! Unhappy!" I exclaimed, hitting my forehead "unhappy, a thousand times unhappy! And I had forgotten the black cat, the inseparable and mysterious friend!"

- "Meow! Meow!"

- "Come here, my friend."

- "Me-yeow!", the cat made in a tone of deep submission.

- "Do you know this country?"

- "Meow!" and with his head he repeated the same anteroposterior movement that the Doctor had once made me observe.

- "Is it a monarchical country?"

Nothing. The cat did not respond at all.

- "Is it a Republic?"

- "Meow!"

- "And the name? I already know that it's the Nation..."

- "Me-ow..."

- "Ah! ah! I fell upon 'Aureliana!'"

- "Meow! Meow!" the cat disappeared.

- "Aaaah!" I exclaimed, an interjection that swelled in my throat, to the size of the whole alphabet. [Editor's note: Nic-Nac plagiarizes Dickens in this expression.] [Translator's note: From "The Chimes", 1844]

- "You see, my friend," said the cicerone, "you have become confused. When you heard them say at the Academy 'Aurelian Law' you should have assumed that it was the same as Tarantelian Law, or Ingelian, that would be of Tarentelia or Ingelia."

- "And why does it have this name?"

- "Why! What precious metal is abundant in this country?"

- "Gold."

- "Gold, in Latin, is 'aurum', and hence, Aureliana, that is, 'Nation of Gold.'" [Translator's note: As opposed to 'Argentina', from 'argentum', or 'silver', in Latin]

- "We have a lot to discuss regarding this, particularly about this country's form of government, of this Aurelian Nation."

- "Yes, my friend, but let's go inside. Don't you see? The poor Doctor is trying in vain to convince my beautiful daughter that she hasn't been consoled over the loss of the white dot."

- "And is your daughter accessible to this conviction?"

- "Mr. Nic-Nac... on all the planets each sex has its own characteristics."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DOCTOR AND THE SOPHOPOLITE WOMAN

- "Nothing is more natural," said the Doctor to the beautiful girl as we entered the house. "Supreme harmony in the laws of life, inevitable attractions as a manifestation of the inner essence of beings, here is the picture."

- "He's still smiling," interrupted the master of the house; "But ask Mr. Nic-Nac, if what just happened to him was so natural."

- "What was it, Nic-Nac?"

- "Imagine, that the black cat has settled the most terrible doubt in my spirit, which had dominated me until now."

- "What was it, Mr. Nic-Nac?" the girl asked.

- "The name of this country."

- "And did the cat tell you?"

- "He at least had indicated it to me."

- "He is a very original cat," said the Doctor.

- "It's true; - but why don't you continue your interrupted conversation?"

The Doctor had been a gentle and fine man on Earth, not with that cloying kindness that annoys at first and suffocates at last, but with a special manner of knowing what to say, persuading and elevating the spirit, a certain aristocratic air at its highest expression, which did not sit poorly when he defended republican institutions, add to this a particular arrogance in his movements and a gallant presence, and you will have his earthly portrait. But the Doctor had been made complete on Mars, and due to all his physical and moral garments, he assembled a new character, after the transmigration. Then, the Doctor had a Martian aspect.

I have always been of the opinion, both on Earth and on Mars, that physiognomic science is the key to souls, and although it is true that it has many adherents and many opponents, I have never believed that the latter should be taken into consideration. Don't blindly judge me for my opinion, no; experience teaches us and we must submit. I admit certain to limitations in the elements of this theory, but I can see that deep down there is something positive which never deceives. The eternal law of the subordination of certain beings to other beings, from one part to another, also governs the features of the physiognomies; the whole secret, then, is to discover its dominant features. The opponents of that science, not having a sufficiently penetrating spirit to be able to judge the relative value of the forms, absolutely deny the most exciting truths and are immersed in their foolish convictions.

Do not interrupt the laws of the abyss!

Do not awaken the souls that sleep in it!

The exaltation of the spirit on Mars, and very particularly in Sophopolis, sharpens, so to speak, the penetration, and it is not surprising that each Sophopolite is a conscious judge of the individual who judges.

A moment ago, just a moment ago, the Doctor lived as a family in our guide's house, and already had enjoyed all the confidence of all the people who had composed it - and this was because they had understood that the Doctor had a noble spirit, incapable of darkening the sublime simplicity of their customs.

Frankness was the soul of that family, and what being could be so abject that he does not find himself grateful in such conditions?

The Doctor's situation, on the other hand, was exceptional.

A soul was looking for him, perhaps from the beginning of the souls, if they had a beginning; a strange genius had prognosticated his next complement, revealing at the same time the secret of the spirit-image, the white soul that Seele snatched from him in that fatal moment; and that beautiful young woman, that splendid physical and moral beauty, was nothing less than the Martian form of the white soul.

Oh! what torment the Doctor suffered when Seele tore it from him!

But when he had regained a part of his calm, he remembered the prophecy, and he understood what only a generous spirit can understand, and that is that happiness is the daughter of desire.

And desire, when it is born and lives in the spirit, and for the spirit, is like a ray of hope tempering an infinite pain.

In a word, the Doctor understood that the spirit-image that had so attracted him, was the necessary complement of his soul, and of the soul of the young woman, and that both souls, before their absolute fusion, should be subject to the empire of spiritual desire, the form or delicious name that designates the attraction on Mars that is called 'love' on Earth, but with a higher, more sublime meaning, if you like.

But their souls, though incomplete, understood each other, as they should be understood within the universal soul, that eternal nucleus from which they emanate.

Had they resolved anything during our absence, that is, while the master of the house and I remained at the Academy?

We shall see.

CHAPTER XXIV

A PRESENT OF PSYCHIC VALUE

For a few days we remained in that paradise, without thinking of anything other than the delights of our new life.

The master of the house was the kindest of men; his wife, the most accommodating of women, and the three daughters of this happy couple, the most humorous and most agreeable girls that it is possible to find in this world - I mean, in the other.

- "Nic-Nac," the Doctor said to me one day when we were touring the great city alone, "Nic-Nac, don't you feel spiritually attracted to one of the daughters of our generous friend?"

- "Truly I tell you," I replied, "that all three attract me equally. But you, for your part, are not unfeeling with respect to one of them."

- "It's natural."

- "Without a doubt; but I remember that you once told me that you were thinking of exercising your old profession here."

- "During these past days I have studied the predispositions of the Sophopolites, and I have deduced that diseases are unknown on this planet."

- "And yet, the formidable rains that continually refresh it are the most effective generators of certain pulmonary affections."

- "Impossible! Until now there has not been a single patient in Sophopolis."

- "And in Theopolis?"

- "I'll give them to you in the case that there are."

- "Thank you; I don't know how to sign transmigration passports. But coming back to our adventure, what are you planning to do?"

- "Live in Sophopolis."

- "Perpetually?"

- "If it's possible."

- "And our travels, this desire that has dominated our lives?"

- "Yours, Mr. Nic-Nac, yours; I have never thought about travel. My transplanetation was not caused by any desire, but by terror - you must remember that."

- "Oh! Yes! When you saw the symbols appear in my burial chamber that my subordinate spirit had written out."

- "Life on Mars is delicious."

- "You avoid, Doctor, the question. What do you intend to do with the beautiful Sophopolite woman?"

- "That which any man can do in my circumstances."

- "Admitting, however, that they are exceptional?"

- "Oh! That's a yes, they don't impede me from acting in harmony with my desire. My only regret is that the fusion of the spirit-image has been prolonged for so long. The test that Seele submits me to is quite rough."

- "Why?"

- "Because that way the fusion of the material image will be less intense."

- "The family is not opposed?"

- "Absolutely not."

- "Are you sure about that?"

- "There are no obstacles of any kind in Sophopolis; the master of the house himself has communicated this to me."

- "Well Doctor, to me too. And since you have already spoken with him, I will tell you that he considers himself to be completely satisfied."

- "So much the better for him and me."

When we returned home, everything had changed in appearance. A splendid party was being prepared. Do you know for what? The Doctor's wedding.

From all parts of Sophopolis came in gifts for the young woman, and as can be expected from a city where everyone is wise, one sent a complete work in thirty volumes on the definition of the fixed stars, another a monograph of the genus Mirto, another the critical examination of Hacksf's publications, Biopos sent several copies of his monumental work on the amphibians of Ingelia, Geot a collection of Flowers from the air, with their descriptions. In a word, the house was a museum. But what fate do you think was in store for these gifts? Made immediate use of them? In no such fashion. They were kept in a safe place, and when the solemn hour arrived, they would be judged, and the one that had a the most remarkable psychic value would be accepted, returning the others to their authors or respective owners, expressing to them how much they appreciated the indicated interest that the works had aroused, which was but a formula.

Among the innumerable gifts that the young woman received, there was one whose transcendence or psychic value could very well not be doubted.

It was a small box. "Of a green and transparent substance like emerald, in whose interior, suspended like a star in space, an intensely luminous dot was seen." In it, we recognized, the master of the house and I, the box that we had seen in the Academy.

A letter from Hacksf accompanied it.

"It is a recently condensed ray of sunlight," he said, "I have seen it floating in space, as if an extraordinary force were making it trace an inexplicable curve. Keep it. Let the Doctor not see it until the last moment. It keeps the flame of life alive and with its white irradiations, suffocates the black troubles to which being in proximity of the Theopolites can expose you - Hacksf."

What mystery did he find in this present? Why did he want to prevent the Doctor from seeing it?

The Doctor was walking happily at that moment in the shade of the next garden; But when a moment later he entered the house, we all noticed that his face was flushed and that a visible agitation dominated him as he approached the hall of those presents.

He directed his eyes to a high altitude, as if trying to discover something in space. Nothing.

- "What is it, Doctor?" I asked him.

- "I feel, my friend, a strange discomfort, and nevertheless I consider it good. I experience the same impression as when my complementary spirit was floating in the upper regions."

What new mystery was this?

- "Come on" I told him, "your situation is not for nothing. Today you are going to celebrate one of the most solemn acts of your life and..."

- "Nic-Nac! Nic-Nac!" exclaimed the master of the house hastily.

He was waiting for me nearby.

- "My friend," he said, "read this letter."

I read: "In the Academy compound there is a large flask, inside which a Theopolite has been imprisoned, and in your house is a box sent by the astronomer Hacksf, which contains a ray of Sun condensed by him. That ray of Sun is nothing other than the spirit complementary to the Doctor and your daughter. If instead of bathing their souls, it penetrates that of the imprisoned Theopolite, he will transform himself as such from the most unfortunate being, into a worthy and happy Sophopolite, and although it is true that the absolute happiness of your children depends on this fusion, it is no less true that in the depths of their souls there is an inexhaustible source of self-denial, and this sacrifice, although very great, is of import to the salvation of the soul."

- "It's a terrible affair, my friend!"

- "I doubt it not, but it is necessary that the Doctor not ignore it."

CHAPTER XXV

WHY NOT?

On Earth, nothing would have been more delicate or more painful than communicating news like this to a person who was in the Doctor's circumstances; but on Mars, and particularly in Sophopolis, what a difference!

The frankness, that sublimation of the moral feeling of the individual, lives in the hearts of all, and all souls pay homage to it.

A moment after reading the terrible letter, I communicated its meaning to the Doctor.

- "Why not?" he said to me, "are spirit-images fleeting forms of infinity, ephemeral existences? No, Nic-Nac. Souls which are in search of each other from transmigration to transmigration, from planet to planet, come together at last, they merge into a single soul, they are transfigured, they amalgamate. If at any point in my Martian life the divine mystery of psychic fusion should be realized, why not trust in fate, firmly hoping that this fusion can be carried out at some point? If pouring out the effluvia of that white soul in the spirit of the Theopolite can turn him into a happy being, why not make a simple sacrifice?"

- "And so! Don't you know that that white soul is of a feminine substance?"

- "That's fine; but that does not prevent its Marsification into a male being. Do spirit-images have sexes? Don't you understand that they are nothing but sets of spiritual qualities with images?"

- "Yes, Doctor; but by accepting the conversion of the Theopolite, you must understand that you will deprive your fiancée of extraordinary qualities, and above all, how do you know if she will accept your rationale?"

- "Nic-Nac,...... our happiness, I can assure you, does not exclusively depend on the possession of the white spirit......"

- "I understand, Doctor, I understand it very well; but......"

- "But what?"

- "But...... it will be done as you wish. Your noble soul has an inexhaustible flow of goodness."

CHAPTER XXVI

CEREMONY

Each bird has its nest, each flower its fragrance, each insect its hue, each people their customs, each sect its concerns.

If the Doctor's wedding were to be celebrated in Theopolis, the people would gather at the foot of the altar, invoking the propitious spirits to drive away the genius of evil from the newly wedded couple, and the incomprehensible song would resound under the vaults of the Temple of Regeneration.

The ghostly faces of the Theopolites would be covered with sinister desires, and the voice of the High Priest, the only generous and Christian man of that unworthy population, would go to die like an echo lost in the depths of those satanic hearts.

But the great wisdom of the noble beings that inhabit Sophopolis, has selected a more dignified temple, a more sacred place, where ceremonies of such an august character take place: the Academy.

For this reason, a moment after the conversation that we had had with the Doctor, a procession, starting from the Sophopolite's house, arrived at the Academy, and the various members with which it was comsed, were distributed in its enclosure, waiting for the opportune moment in which the ceremony would be consecrated.

In the center were the Doctor and the young woman, accompanied by the family, and around this group, the other Sophopolites.

The flowers which were covering the columns, launched torrents of fragrance into the air, and a divine melody, produced by invisible instruments, announced that the moment was approaching.

Our surprise knew no bounds when, looking towards the back of the great hall, we perceived the flask of the madman, inside which the Theopolite was imprisoned. The Doctor approached him, and taking that glass jail by the neck, brought it to the young woman and placed it in the center of the room. Our friend the cicerone took Hacksf's box in his turn, and bringing it close to the supplicant prisoner, carried out the prevailing idea.

- "Yes! Yes!" he exclaimed in the background.

And just as the white soul slowly rose to rush into that abject being, we heard a strange noise, similar to the one we had once observed, when Seele had snatched the joys from the Doctor.

An indecisive light suddenly bathed their faces; it then grew more intense, and its vivid radiance at last eclipsed the halos of the bystanders.

- "Seele! Seele!" we exclaimed in chorus. Yes, it was Seele, who appeared as evoked by an inevitable fate, and whose presence at that moment, instilled in all minds a dreadful respect.

- "Turn, turn!" exclaimed the genius of Nevado; and at once the rotating force seized us, and a terrible vertigo, dominating our senses, which seemed to us experienced the attractions of the abyss.

- "Turn, turn!" Seele repeated, who at that moment, rising in the air like a cloud of incense, had taken the white dot, the spirit-image, and made it trace upward spirals.

But when we turned, the Theopolite also turned, and we observed with a mixture of pleasure and terror, that his body had evaporated just as the Martian Voltaire had evaporated.

A moment later it had disappeared, transforming into invisible gas, while the white dot, shining with dazzling brilliance, dwarfed Seele's flashes.

The rotation stopped suddenly, and we saw indescribable pleasures! that Seele was descending, as the cloud that refreshes the valleys descends, and that in his hand, his previously impious hand, the white dot shone, like a promise of eternal happiness.

Resting on the forehead of the beautiful young woman was the white soul, and the dreamy, delirium of the Doctor, approached it with marked intention.

- "Come to the Nevado," he said, "and all the splendors, and all the beauties, and all the pomp of the surrounding Eden, will be an inexhaustible source of admiration and well-being for you."

And as Seele spoke these words, the complementary spirit of the Doctor and the young woman unfolded, as morning clouds often unfold in space, rolling with other clouds, flying to other regions, and losing themselves beyond the horizon in its light flight.

The double spirit suddenly transformed into a luminous cloud, hiding both bodies with its splendid brilliance, and slowly moved away from the enclosure.

From that moment, both souls merged into a single soul, the Doctor could enjoy all the prerogatives inherent in his august mission, and freed from the ties that bound him to Seele, his existence could concentrate the entire sum of imaginable happiness.

The ceremony was over, if we forget, however, the madman with the flask, who could not resist the temptation to absorb, with his inimitable instrument, "the fixed quantity of gas produced by the evaporation of a Theopolite."

CHAPTER XXVII

AS YOU WISH, MR. SEELE

When everyone was retiring from the Academy, in the depths of their souls they were bearing the most poignant doubt regarding the appearance of Seele, who had refused to convert the Theopolite. Friedrich Seele, or Federico Alma, the earthly spiritist, the Martian master, made a sign for me to stay there, and eventually the last attendant had left, who as you can imagine, was the madman with the flask.

- "Do you have any particular interest in staying in Sophopolis?" he asked me.

- "No, Mr. Seele, not by any means, and much less now that the Doctor is separated from me, maybe forever."

- "You are deceiving yourself, Mr. Nic-Nac, the Doctor has not been taken away forever, but temporarily; he will return, have no doubt."

- "And in the meantime?"

- "We can, if you want, undertake a new voyage."

- "To some other planet? I assure you that I don't wish to rush. Martian life is so wonderful, and its mysteries harmonize in such a way with the nature of my character, that I would not dare to abandon my new habits. But first of all tell me Mr. Seele, - if your elevated character may permit for you to manifest a revelation to me - why have you not consented to the conversion of the Theopolite?"

- "Why? - I'll tell you. You already know, with enough accuracy, the antecedents relative to the founding of Theopolis, and I don't doubt that you will consider the Sophopolites in the right. They have the most generous and noble character, insofar as these other profound hypocrites, they retain their primitive character and will never lose it, unless youths, still without reflection, enter this city. If I have not consented to such a conversion, it has been because I did not want to see the evil elements of their perversion penetrate in here."

- "And the letter that was received by my guest?"

- "Ha! ha! Have you not understood that it was from a Theopolite?"

- "Aaah! And how is it that the astronomer Hacksf condensed the spirit-image, believing he condensed a ray of the Sun?"

- "Do you not remember that Hacksf said in his letter, speaking of the ray: 'I have seen it floating in space, as if an extraordinary force made it trace an inexplicable curve?'"

- "And so?"

- "It's very simple: my hand was pulling it through the upper regions."

- "Mr. Seele, my name is Nic-Nac."

- "Good, I know."

- "And that is the cause that prevents me from humiliating myself before your wonderful power."

- "Mr. Nic-Nac, I'll wait for you here tomorrow, when the hour of the Zenit passes." and he disappeared.

The night had come.

Upon entering the house of my friend the cicerone, I greeted all the smiling people gathered there, and retired to my room.

CHAPTER XXVIII

INSOMNIA

A deep lethargy has spilled into the atmosphere and the animated beings that inhabit Mars.

The same waters of the torrents seem to quench their murmur for an instant, and the confused murmur of the forests also lulls into the calm of the deep night.

A vague emotion takes hold of the mind, and the dream that flees from my eyelids wanders in the depths of the night landscape, personifying the herbs and the flowers and the trees, in each one of which I believe I see a specter rise, speaking to me, that calls me with voices from the grave; and my sight wanders in vain, the spirit is subjected to the personifications of the dream.

The plant sleeps and receives the baptism of heaven; the grass condenses the floating vapors, and some imperceptible ray of diffuse light will be reflected in the bottom of a dew drop.

Perhaps the geniuses of the air, hidden in the lilies, elaborate in their petals a very pure aroma; perhaps some playful sylph presides over the caste nuptials of the orange blossoms, or flying invisible from violet to violet, snatches from them, butterfly of the night, the blush of their candid mystery; or the fickle undine bathes in the imperceptible curls of the silent fountain, snatching a soft glow for the beloved waters from the stars.

The bustling and active insect sleeps, waiting in its silence so that the morning sun awakens the dormant leaf from its lethargy, and that by pouring its effluvia of light into the valleys and jungles, it breaks the rays of its glory in the curve of its pearly wings.

The birds hidden among the leaves of the Laurels and Lemon Trees, warm the soft nest of their loves, and with their maternal wings they protect the naked chick from the cold of the night and from the terrible enemy.

Profound silence! profound mystery!

The silent night, flying in the air, sheds strange vigor on the beings, and the lumen that shines with vivid rays, spreads mystery and love in its veils.

*
 
*   *

A breeze rises and caressing the beings, announces the next dawn, which is already spreading its wings in the background of the sky.

The cloud that crosses the shadows is gilded with indecisive radiance, and a luminous breath diffuses through the night, and casts dreams to the west.

The air is colored, and the blush of the morning appears timidly on the face of the day, extinguishing the light of the stars.

The mountains reflect, the rays still hidden, and the fire in the upper regions spreads more and more.

The little flowers, smiling within their emerald cloak, pour out the waves of their aromas in torrents, and the dew drop, the tear of heaven, reverberates the capricious changes of mother-of-pearl.

The birds flap their light wings, and blow their morning notes to the wind; the forest is full of strange noises, the air of clouds, the clouds of light; and among that harmonious whirlwind, in which each being takes the active part that corresponds to it in the struggle for existence, man is observed, the psychic element of that whole, energetically supporting the laws of destiny and the grandiose chord of life.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE DEPARTURE

- "Mr. Nic-Nac," said the master of the house, entering my room, "the ray of the zenith is the most beautiful effluvium that space has sent to us, as if to announce the moment in which Martian activity must unfold with all its splendor. "

- "And he told me so!"

- "And what is that?"

- "Nothing; - I haven't been able to sleep."

- "Perhaps you're worried about what has happened to the Doctor?"

- "What happened to him?"

- "Do you know that your question is quite unusual, Mr. Nic-Nac? Have you forgotten that his wedding was celebrated yesterday?"

- "Forgot! And why would you suppose that I have forgotten it?"

- "Or is it your glory that absorbs you?"

- "My glory! On Mars! You're joking, my friend!"

- "No, Mr. Nic-Nac; I don't usually do that."

- "So, what name should I give to your expressions?"

- "Haven't you read the newspapers in the capital?"

- "No!"

- "Well, read them; but above all, why are you so worried?

- "About my next departure."

- "And where are you going?"

- "I don't know. Yesterday, when the ceremony ended, I was still at the Academy for a moment, - Seele had called to me - 'We can, if you want, undertake a new voyage,' he told me. I asked him to what place, but some doubts overcame me, and I asked Seele to resolve them for me. "

- "And did he resolve them?"

- "Yes; but in my haste, I did not wait for the genius of the Nevado to tell me where we would go. For the rest, I have no doubt that Seele has some surprises in store for me."

- "I hope so, Mr. Nic-Nac, and I don't hesitate to believe that you will soon come back to live with us. Our family will be yours, and the most cordial ties will bind us until the last moment."

I shook the hand of such an excellent friend, and I could not help but be moved to hear such a generous offer.

Moments later I said goodbye to that noble family, not without having read the newspapers of the Capital, in which the details of my arrival in Sophopolis were reported, then expressing vehement wishes that the dormant memories of Earth would awaken in them.

My friend accompanied me to the Academy, and upon reaching the entrance, he again shook my hand and walked away.

I entered the compound.

Seele, transformed into a Sophopolite, was waiting for me there.

- "Shall we depart?" he asked me.

- "Whenever you like, master," I replied.

CHAPTER XXX

THE PLAIN

It was the time when the orange trees develop the essence of the orange blossom in their sap and by diffusing it in the air like invisible vapor, they perfume the forests and the mountains and the valleys of that happy region.

The afternoon had made the skies rosy.

A soft breeze moaned among the humble grasses, moving their leaves, - the murmuring zephyr, eternally discontented, flew around us for a moment, then flew away, carrying the eternal lament of its inconstancy on its wings.

The birds of the fields modulated the hymn of the sunset, which vibrating in the heart like a groan of pain, lost itself softly and softly.

Why so much sadness in those notes?

Why so much melancholy?

Perhaps the last sun of your existence has saluted you?

Perhaps it was the last ray that was going to emit light and life from the depths of space?

The clouds, in a similar fashion to floating crepes, flew to the west on the invisible wings of the winds, and as they gathered around the dying star, they covered themselves with the carmine of the heavens, as if a modesty enclosed in their bosom, diffused in them to receive the caress of the star of day.

There, up in the high altitude, where the mysterious light of its gaze was almost extinguished, moving with turbulence, were the birds that guard that sea of grass, looming like imperceptible points, whose waves, sometimes agitated by furious whirlwinds, raise the foam of their flowers onto their crest.

And as we moved away from Sophopolis, whose buildings, gilded by the rays of the sun, were lost in the vagueness of distance, the afternoon wore on, dragging the luminous tulles of the day towards the west; and the twilight vapors, rising from the ground like frozen ghosts, broke the uniformity of the horizon with their fateful garb.

The fathomless plain unfolded the pomp of its immensity, and the flowers, by a supreme effort, absorbed the last flashes of the afternoon.

But no! Nature is not a grave, and the silence of the valleys is a note of the infinite harmony of the worlds; the paleness of a cloud is not a shroud, but perhaps a smile from the air; the bird's trill is not a hymn to pain, -it is a song of thanks; and the star that twinkles in the depths of the heavens, is a blessing of the spaces.

What vague presentiment, lost in the soul, tears away my happiness, and spreads it around me like sepulchral shadows?

Ah! Presentiments, no doubt, that have come to disturb a happy future's existence!

- "Tell me, master, why does my spirit stir in strange delirium, when I should feel my heart beating with joy?"

- "Dispel that darkness, Mr. Nic-Nac; they are daughters born of your situation, and of a certain influence that the surrounding nature exerts on you. This limitless plain, with its majestic monotony, is a reflection of eternity for your soul, and when you find yourself submerged in the chaos of such a grandiose idea, you cannot help but interpret your impressions with gloomy thoughts. But very soon the scene will change, and the hectic life of the new regions in which we will arrive will transform your discomfort."

- "And why don't you tell me where we are going?"

- "I have not tried to make a secret of it: we are going to the great capital of the Aurelian Nation, where the town is always agitated and turbulent, and at the same time generous, for you they reserve surprises unheard of."

- "Yes?"

- "Yes. Tomorrow when the sun shines its first rays, you will see the illustrious city appear, where the strangest circumstances call us."

- "And then?"

- "We will start a new voyage."

I couldn't help being surprised; but Seele, who was observing my features, from which the melancholic expression had already disappeared, said to me:

- "I greatly admire, Mr. Nic-Nac, the metamorphosis that you have experienced. Was it I, by any chance, who expressed the desire to fly from planet to planet, to impose upon the mysteries of the upper regions inaccessible to man, while not abandoning his human chrysalis? No, it was you, and at your urging, I had undertaken one of my last pilgrimages to Mars. "

- "Excuse me, master! I didn't ask you to leave Earth to accompany me to this planet."

- "Not directly, it is true; but since you wanted to transmigrate, I could not - having directed you from the first moment - abandon you like an atom thrown at random in the confines of Nature."

- "Thank you, master."

- "I don't accept your thanks, Mr. Nic-Nac, because you are not yet in a position to be able to appreciate your situation. But what new surprise will come to be portrayed in your physiognomy? I could know just by penetrating your spirit, but I would like to not use that medium."

- "How do you not wish me to be surprised at this phenomenon?"

- "Which?"

- "That our bodies no longer have an aura."

- "It means that it is useless in the capital. There, is more positivity, and the town appreciates a yellow reflection of the best of metals more than all the auras that are flaunted in Sophopolis."

- "Our situation, in that case, will be painful, because..."

Seele smiled as only geniuses of the mountain know how. A bluish glimpse illuminated his teeth, and his eyes released two strange vibrations, like two livid flashes of lightning.

I immediately recognized that my observation had been useless, because Seele was endowed with strange powers, with mysterious strength, before which any difficulty receeded.

- "Do you want us to abstract from our weight, and travel like two doves that will carry their wings at will?" he asked me.

To an inhabitant of Earth, unaccustomed to so many wonders, this question would have seemed like sarcasm, but no such thing happened to me, because I was so familiar with the impossible, that I answered affirmatively.

- "Fly!" Seele exclaimed, regaining his sparks, donning his aura.

The heights attracted us, and slowly cutting through the layers of the air, we rose like two luminous souls that were going to throw themselves into the ether of spirit-images.

This new means of locomotion did not cease to cause me some discomfort, because I thought that it might well occur to Seele to abstract from the bodies as well, which, when rolling in a fall, would have crashed on the hard ground, and the two souls reduced to their ante-Martian pilgrimage, would go to meet the whirlwind of spirits, which at that moment cast the rays of luminous spirals onto the planet.

CHAPTER XXXI

IN THE AIR

- "Tell me, master, what kind of town are we going to be acquainted with?"

- "A strange town, and I would almost say heterogeneous. A town in which the feeling of nationality is fading, as a planet has been turned off before the morning sunlight. Flocking to it are all peoples, all the races, and from this chaos, or condensation of conflicting feelings, internal quarrels arise daily, which are often resolved in battle. "

- "In battle!"

- "Yes, in battle, which should not surprise you, since they are children of Mars."

- "But... so what! Is it a town deprived of common sense?"

- "No, on the contrary, it seems that they are very developed.

"The cause of its ruin is the vehemence with which the passions unfold in its bosom. These immense plains, of extreme fertility, are completely uninhabited, and it is necessary, at any cost, for a living force to come and snatch the treasures that they contain. For this, they solicit the assistance of the other nations, which sends them all kinds of elements, good and bad, which, instead of scattering themselves far away from the large population centers, they amass themselves in them, powerfully contributing to accentuate the character and heterogeneous physiognomy more and more which palpitates in all its elements. From this assimilation, powerful relationships of diverse groups result which try to harmonize, to unite in ideas, and when one of those social or political manifestations explodes, so common in the towns that have not yet cemented their internal organization, these heterogeneous groups meet in two great centers, from which emanate all the dissensions, all the suspicions, all the threats, all the evils, that in a word, can afflict a country; as you can easily understand."

- "Mr. Seele! And does the feeling of nationality not overcome their petty passions?"

- "Overcome? Didn't I tell you that this feeling was fading?"

- "True; but what kind of town is that?

- "An original town. There, imagination has an ethereal subtlety, which needs to be continuously impressed upon by very vivid upheavals, and when these do not spontaneously manifest, the town creates them, formulates them, models them, expands them, gives them movement and life, until the vertigo of their regenerative activity, when they are sunk before a new upheaval, only to raise and to sink them again and again. The history of this town shows you an uninterrupted series of glorious events, but for many years, these events have not been presented in such a way which can revive a dormant national sentiment, as the current prevailing motives are very different from those which had generated these past glories. There is no middle ground there. The town comprehends that the advancement of nations is the favorite son of Peace, but this town, well or poorly educated, does not have, does not know how to have another choice other than this: civil war or national war. Why? For what? To keep the impressions of imagination alive. Civil war breaks out, blood runs in foaming streams, or it continues to be locked up, making the hearts of the most exalted palpitate, as it regularly happens."

- "Unfortunately."

- "Yes. The institutions are republican, and in one of those moments in which the town is preparing to represent its autonomy, the press of one of these two great centers manifest themselves as highly contrary, hostile, we will say, to the beliefs of the other center. Commence the fight. Everything is going well. Indignation reaches its climax, and instead of insulting one another, individual to individual,... no... this is too little, it is necessary to lavish some blasphemies on the country itself, already tired of such monotonous evidence. While the native of the country, only he, takes action on the matter, it can be believed that he will be regarded as a disgrace, who speaks because he enjoys the gift of words, or who writes because he is not ignorant of the art of drawing symbols, but when the foreigner takes part, this time maintaining the neutrality that ensures his well-being, the appreciation and respect of his new fellow citizens and of the entire Nation, the scene varies in character; the insults take on a more serious aspect, the rook dresses with the plumage of the peacocks, to call them imbeciles and the peacocks, who see a brother in the rook...... do not pluck his feathers, because that is what suits the interests of the center to which they belong, postponing the dignity of the homeland, the fire of national sentiment, that sacred fire that a Vestal Celeste must animate perpetually, to all the petty interests of passions that each one tries to ennoble with reason, or without it."

As Seele spoke these words, the aura around him, translated the fury of his exalted spirit with fiery sparks, and moving away from the planet with intermittent speeds, like the leaps of an aerial lion, I rose with him, not only towards the upper regions of the air, but also to the upper regions of enthusiasm.

- "Yes, master," I exclaimed, "it is true what you say, and if your mission in the Capital of the Aurelian Nation is to shatter the prerogatives usurped from the human rooks, you will have in me a powerful backing that will try to support your efforts. "

Cold air nearly froze the nerves of my body... I had observed the phosphorescence on Seéle's teeth.

- "Me?" he said with ethereal calm, "Do you think I am going to change the situation in this country? No, my friend; a thousand times no. Let's forever fly, observe, study, comment from time to time on a custom, a habit good or bad, but we leave each to that which it corresponds. When the bee gets tired of sucking the same nectar, it looks for another flower and another flower, and when boredom takes hold of it, and when it is already cloying the honey, the bee dies at the entrance of the hive as if saying: 'here is the beginning and the end of my activity, and of my life'."

This observation received no reply; that phosphorescence had no compassion for my humility.

Some vague lights, lost in the mystery of the shadows, indicated that we were approaching human habitation, and that we had already touched the desert's edge.

I consulted with Seele.

- "Indeed," he replied, "soon the stars will have traced the arc of a night, in whose extreme east the first gleams of the day will appear. We are going to reach the Capital; but before descending, it is necessary that you choose, between invisibility and visibility."

- "What do you wish to tell me, master?"

- "I say that you should manifest your desire, that is, if you prefer to be visible or invisible to the inhabitants of this city."

- "Invisible," I replied, "that way it will be easier for me to penetrate certain mysteries."

- "If this is so, may the night absorb your corporeal personality..... and mine!" Seele exclaimed in a deep, calm voice.

The genius of the Nevado disappeared, leaving only the aura, a phenomenon that I also observed in myself.

- "You see," Seele told me, "the metamorphosis is very simple, and yet we have not annihilated our bodies."

- "And where are they?"

- "We carry them in a latent state."

The two auras, separated until then, were reunited into one, as solicited by a force that they lacked when the bodies had not yet disappeared.

We began to descend, and the first clouds of the morning flying to the west, resembling modest symbols from the kiss of day to quiet the sister crowned with stars.

- "Do you see it?" exclaimed the invisible Seele.

- "It's a great city," I answered with my invisible throat.

CHAPTER XXXII

SURPRISE

The first rays of the Sun divided and extinguished the luminous emanation that surrounded us, so that our existence, from that moment was reduced to a latent existence in relation our the previous one, there is no doubt, but we conserved all of our vital forces, which were manifested in a mysterious medium, incomprehensible to those who did not intimately know the phenomena produced by the complete abstraction of all terrestrial aspirations.

But this particular state to which Seele had subjected me must have awakened a violent impression in my invisible body.

The entire population of the great city had crowded into the western portion of it. For what? I was soon to know, for I could not yet precisely distinguish but a mass of human shapes, moving from one part to another, in a confused labyrinth.

As our descent continued, there came a time when we were able to perceive not only each one of the assembled individuals, but also their forms and movements. They pointed to space! They indicated precisely the direction in which our floating auras had plunged into the atmosphere, illuminated by the day!

What happened in my spirit in that instant? What veil? What cloud? What shadow? What feeling?

I do not know. But those faces, the timbre of those voices, were not unknown to me. I had a vague reminiscence of them, indecisive like a lost memory struggling to be reborn.

At what point in my life had I heard those sounds?

Under what circumstances had I contemplated those movable faces like the wave that breaks on the beaches?

And Seele? Where is Seele? - "Seele!! Seele!!"

Nothing! Seele doesn't answer.

One moment more and I would have been mixed up in that human chaos.

But before reaching the boundary of my flight, the descent occured in spirals, and as these decreased, I observed the city, whose narrow streets, irregular buildings and numerous temples fruitlessly evoke a dormant memory in the deep night of oblivion.

There, the two perfectly characteristic groups are not distinguished like in Theosophopolis: next to a palace is a humble hut, and next to a center of pleasure and joy, is a gloomy enclosure of sorrow.

In the countenance of the agglomerated population, traits of a national type cannot be seen, absorbed, devoured by the whirlwind of an inexplicable cosmopolitanism. I insist on this point: indigenous elements constitute the minority.

But lo and behold, it occurs to me to paralyze the force of the descent. Will I be able to rise to the upper regions once I have reached the ground? This I ignore.

So I prefer to stay in suspension, waiting for the right moment.

The crowd, meanwhile, divides. Some go to their respective homes. The others, more curious, still remain in contemplation, while various groups calmly take the path from the plaza, where they stop to comment on something that undoubtedly absorbs and dominates them, and that I, due to an excess of good humor, I attribute to the curiosity of these people.

- "There were two," says one individual to another who is in the same group.

- "Yes, but they merged into one."

- "Ah!" exclaims a third, "They merged, eh? Well, I believed that it had been nothing more than an apparent fusion, momentary, or rather, that there had been no fusion, but that their relative positions had made them appear united."

- "No, because in that case they would have benn adjusted and with their own intensities. But here there had been no such thing: the light was a single and unique light."

- "And how is it that later they unfolded?"

- "They disappeared with the radiance of the day."

- "And what luminous phenomenon will this be?"

- "And who knows how to answer that?"

I, I know. But I'm not going to tell you, if an extraordinary cause doesn't oblige me to do so; ha! ha! ha!

CHAPTER XXXIII

DISCORD

During that first day, I had occasion to observe that the inhabitants of that city were highly prone to fight indefinitely over any trifle; - and I say trifle, because before the appearance of the two lights, transcendent questions had been agitating their spirits; - so immediately, the echo born of the beliefs of the town, the press were empowered by this fact, and had introduced a torrent of comments on the plausibility of the belief that those two lights were accessible by human research.

"It is a cosmic, meteorological phenomenon," said some.

"It is a psychic phenomenon," observed others.

It was not long ago that Seele explained to me the circumstances under which the town was organized in matters of opinion, and I understood at once that the two interpretations surrounding our auras would give rise to a deep controversy, which would perhaps be resolved in a turbulent manner.

Scientific, literary, commercial, political interests, everything was abandoned and I can assure you that more than one organized center, forgot their personal aspirations in a moment.

The two opinions of "cosmic phenomenon" or "psychic phenomenon" had both gained ground with a dizzying rapidity, and on that same day, before the sun had reached its zenith, the two parties already were correct in that they had to fight fiercely, one, with tenacity, sustaining the cosmic nature of the appearance, and the other, the psychic essence of the phenomenon.

All means were used to gain proselytes and when already drafting, so to speak, the boundaries of each opinion's center, there was no shortage of people who said, with all daring, that it was necessary to give the controversy a social or political character, for which, whether or not it passed to the opposing party, the genuine representative of each of them should be immediately designated.

The members of the other party, by a graceful concession, accepted this idea, and applauded it warmly, which, seen by the promoters of the nomination of the leaders, regretted initiating propaganda that their opponents supported.

Such is the national opinion so far.

Those who attributed the light to a cosmic phenomenon, tried to find in their bosom a person who had, in verbatim words, "the greatest sum of psychic lights, in such a way that it would shine like a star."

Those who held the contrary opinion had named Seele, who had been incarnated in an inhabitant of the city whose soul had been put to sleep.

In the meantime, what was happening in the minds of the foreigners, whose number constituted the majority of the people?

It was easy to guess. Those who by their nature carried the inner light of fair judgment bowed to Seele. Such were the natives of Tedecia and Gandalia.

Those who had subordinated all the light they were born with joined the other group, whose representative bore the name of Psyche, which, like Seele, means Soul. Such were the natives of Espondia and Tarantelia.

Ingelia, more positive, remained neutral, however, her children showed a marked attraction for cosmic lights. They were waiting for the right moment to join one or another party.

The fight began, and with it, the enthusiasm of the members of each center for their respective leader.

I knew Seele. It was necessary to know Psyche.

CHAPTER XXXIV

PSYCHE

A giant force, almost limitless, serves my will.

I am invisible!

Do you know what that means?

It means there are no secrets for me, and so, it's enough where I want to transport myself from one point to another, abstracting the impenetrable, to become the master of powerful means.

I have been an inhabitant of the Earth, just as there are inhabitants of the Moon on the Earth. Today my wonderful existence was waning on Mars. Later, maybe I'll fly to Jupiter or Neptune. And who knows if I have flown, butterfly of the ether, to one of those distant stars that invisibly float in the infinite depths?

Like all those human beings that populate the innumerable worlds, my heart has palpitated under the impulse of pleasant passions, respective forms of each one of them, and which inevitably manifest themselves with a greater or a lesser intensity.

But let's observe Psyche.

My latent body flies to his mansion, and the invisible gaze penetrates his enclosure.

There I see him, completely abstracted, dominated by a thought that surely is not a scientific combination to resolve the questions raised in the debate.

He is sitting on a comfortable chair, which has been placed at the vertex of a cone. Of what material is that cone ...? I'm not perceiving well... I don't think... Ah!... Of sand!

Shapes swarm around him without light.

Those forms have raised the pedestal and the throne for him.

He makes a move.

Psyche will speak.

- "Gentlemen!"... (profound silence).

Deep in my soul, I experience a painful impression. That word has sounded in my ear with the very marked vibration of two words.

- "Gentlemen!" - he repeats looking up - "Do you see this mobile pedestal? It is a very pure reflection of the physical world and the moral world. To add to my glory and yours, you have built it out of sand, as if to prove to the future generations that, on the least secure pedestal, the incarnation of truth and justice can rise. Dislocate only one of its corpuscles, transpose only one of its grains, you will have essentially modified the balance of the molecules..."

- "And the building collapses!" - Seele exclaimed at that very moment.

How had I heard his voice, how had it reached me?

Seele was Seele.

But what mystery floats around Psyche? For what inexplicable reason does his voice have a double acoustic intensity? Is it a murmuring echo? Is it some genius of the air that alters my regular perception? No, that cannot be. In the person of Psyche there is a double personality, the manifestation of which can take place at one time or another. I will consult Seele.

Independent of all the mystery, Psyche's voice is sweet, attractive and pleasant. It sounds like the voice of a friend, and in his sensitive body, it becomes fascinating. Tear his tongue out and you are done with Psyche. But as long as he keeps this essential organ for the emission of the word, do not be surprised that it exerts a powerful action on the most exalted spirits, particularly on those who, abstracting from all their own strength, deprive themselves of reason.

The inhabitants of the Earth say that one day a fox, fleeing from the pursuit of some dogs, passed by a heap of guitars that impeded its path, which, when touched by feet of the fugitive, produced certain sounds! "I'm all for music!" exclaimed the fox.

A question of temperament.

A proselyte of Psyche would have forgotten the persecution, and would stay there listening to the semi-spontaneous sounds, precisely because of the sensitivity of his temperament.

Independent of any melody, Psyche's voice cannot interpret fixed ideas, because his abstractions have led him to the world of the impossible in social, economic, political, scientific, literary and artistic matters. Dislocate the grain of sand from Psyche's pedestal, and you will have already circumscribed the impossible, but for this it is necessary to fight with all the music of his proselytes.

For an ear accustomed to his voice, the double acoustic impression of his speech does not exist, and only a relatively extra-natural being can perceive this double vibration.

Such is Psyche, and such are the elements that surround him.

Can I bow to his followers who attribute our aura to a cosmic phenomenon?

That is impractical. I cannot completely disregard common sense.

CHAPTER XXXV

ESTABLISHED TERRORS

By an effort of will, I have moved away from Psyche's compound, and now find myself in a great hall, where some people from both parties are heatedly discussing an interesting point.

The night is coming.

- "Is light or isn't light a material phenomenon?" asks one of them.

- "Not at all!" one answers.

- "Yes!" adds another.

It is not difficult to understand who says yes and who says no.

Their opinions have been classified, and are consistent with their ideas about the nature of the phenomenon, they raise their tone in an inverse proportion to the knowledge they have of the matter, while the others raise it in direct proportion to their stubbornness.

- "It of little import, gentlemen, that it is one thing or another" says a voice that eminates from somewhere unknown. It's mine; but as I am invisible... "What should really interest you is finding out whether the two lights have merged into one or not."

A specter rising from the grave in the silence of a profound night, spreads no more terror around its white shroud.

Where does that voice that is speaking about the fusion of lights come from?

But the fact is that the question is interesting, and soon the fears are dissipated before the importance of the matter.

The most perfect discord is the soul of that distinguished corporation, if this name can be given to a heterogeneous set of elements.

- "Yes, they have merged!" exclaims one in a stentorian voice.

- "That's false!" repeats another.

- "I don't understand why your petulance leads you to assert precisely what is not true."

- "It's an indignity, what is happening here."

- "You're the instigators."

- "If I didn't see the premeditation in your words, I would think that you are an idiot."

Gentlemen! Gentlemen!

- "Eh! Gentlemen! Don't take the discussion to the grounds of fact!"

- "And what! Do you want us to stay in this vast field of theory?"

- "Yes! Because only theory can solve the question which is agitating us."

I observe with disgust, at this very moment, that my power is subordinate to the day. The night begins to awaken my aura.

Someone has noticed an almost imperceptible sparkle in the drawing room, and points it out to another.

- "Concerns! Concerns!" exclaims this person - "Not long ago we heard a mysterious voice, and now you see a light."

- "Something strange is happening here, gentlemen" says someone.

- "Why?"

- "I just saw an inexplicable reflection pass through my hand."

- "We are getting crowded."

- "No, because I've seen the same thing."

While saying these words, some flee in terror, and the others remain immobile, stunned.

And while the former are spreading alarm in the population, and the latter sink in silence, I rise slowly with my dazzling aura, and am going to hover, like a Martian eagle, over the very center of this surprised city.

At first the terror spreads with a proportionally increased speed. Psyche hesitates on his sandy pedestal, and Seele, who encourages the curious and carefree crowd, sent me a ray which increases my force of suspension, of descent and of ascent.

A moment later, the streets and balconies filled with people and everyone was gazing at the luminous cloud, tracing capricious curves in the air.

For I do not know what trait of good aerial humor, I begin to descend, and seeing Psyche on an isolated balcony, since I have not lost my material strength, I take him by the hands and raise him in the air, to the great satisfaction of his proselytes, who see the high opinion that they have formed of him corroborated, and with him I begin to trace dizzying orbits.

Psyche, inundated with borrowed sparks, experienced the vertigo of infinite glory, and I, who have regained all the good humor that characterizes me, experienced the most extraordinary temptations to throw Psyche into the abdomen of an obese man who, with his mouth open, like all of his party, observed him, an unexpected comet, circumscribing luminous rings in the furthest regions reached by the force of human sight.

From quite high up I hear Seele's animated laughter.

CHAPTER XXXVI

DESCENT AND ASCENT

There is no spectacle more beautiful for a contemplative spirit, than that presented by a town dominated by a being who fascinates it at every moment of its evolution. A being who concentrates in himself all the possible intellectual manifestations of that town, and to whom he discovers the minimum, almost insignificant part of what he keeps in the most intimate part of his soul. A being, in short, worthy of all the auras, like the one which at that moment had enveloped, and circumscribed itself around Psyche.

Admiration, that beautiful daughter of ignorance, manifested itself with all the attractions of her splendor, opening disproportionately the mouths of some, dilating beyond measure the eyes of others.

Do you think Psyche disliked them?

In no fashion. And if I repeat what Psyche said when he saw that he began to descend, without a doubt you would admire, because ...

- "Why?" the reader will ask.

- "Because," the author will reply, "you have always believed that Psyche only has a soul, and a heart and a desire, and a hope... and a voice... but an extra-natural being like me, yes, me, Nic-Nac, that have witnessed more wonders than the most dreamy of spirits, I can assure you that in Psyche there are two souls, and two hearts, and two wishes, and two hopes, as well as his words having a double intention in their double intensity, which can only be perceived when a supreme spirit such as Seele's has psychically and corporeally Marsificated an inhabitant of Earth, who is dominated by the sole desire to know and judge them".

- "And what did Psyche say?" the reader will ask again.

No, I can't tell you now. But sometime you will know.

Meanwhile, let me descend, because that simple mirror, in its double reflection, cannot support the immense intoxication of the infinite.

But what! Is it necessary for Psyche to descend as he has risen, deliberately and slowly?

No!

Psyche will descend with violence. Do you want to see him? But I don't want to finish up with him: it is necessary that he live, but that he live as an eloquent testimony of the powerful force that rules both the destinies of humanity and the destinies of the world, and that he understand that from the inaccessible atom to the most powerful and brilliant of the stars, a mysterious equilibrium exists from which a minimal part cannot be eliminated, because it would provoke universal disorder, breaking the harmony, disconcerting the equilibrium itself.

Suddenly the forces that kept Psyche isolated from the planetary center of attraction cease, and as a drop of water that precipitates from the cloud, he overcomes the space that separates us from the ground and sinks, until he is left, invisible, on his same pedestal of sand.

Meanwhile, the people, who have not witnessed this catastrophe, continue to contemplate the capricious aura, and only when the sun begins to shine its first rays do they understand that the time has come to withdraw, not without justifying, before whom they question nothing, that are waiting for its visible descent.

The press, however, encourages the mind: some point out the phenomena which have accompanied the exaltation of Psyche and try to explain the aura as "a luminous emanation detached from the planet to surround the most illustrious of men," with which they express, with tenacity, that the apparition is eminently cosmic, to which the others reply by saying that there can be no greater proof of folly than to discuss the evidence of obvious things, all the more so since the very curves, ascents and descents of Psyche cannot be explained except accepting that they have been determined by a psychic force.

But everything calms down.

Order is restored. My aura fades, absorbed by the daylight, and nobody remembers anything further of Psyche, because everyone believes him in the altitude and yet... he has already considerably modified the balance of the molecules on the pedestal.

Lowered, invisible, and in the city, I distinguish with momentary surprise, that a group of people has gathered near an old building, and that this group is going to serve as a nucleus for the entire population to gather once again, since trivial curiosity, that daughter of organic laziness, extends her dominions even in those remote regions of the planet Mars.

I get close.

What do you think is the cause of its accumulation?

A letter.

A letter!

Yes, or rather its address.

I don't know what it is, but I don't think the town should come together in this way anyway. If it were for the content... it would pass.

In an instant I am mixed up with the others, and as in addition to being invisible I do not occupy a place in space, so that at the same point where my body is, another can exist simultaneously, this is why nobody is concerned with my latent presence.

Some incoherent words seem to indicate to me that it is a question of starting a new fight, but, happily, I have seen that they're not presenting a character so grave where they should be feared, and that, on the contrary, they should exist, on behalf of the same sociability.

I finally arrive and see the letter.

- "And when did he come?" asks one.

- "I don't know. But in any case he has not used the regular means of transport."

- "It is very curious."

- "Without a doubt, but it is still mortifying."

What is it about? When has what arrived? Who? The letter or the individual to whom it is addressed?

That's easy to know. I approach and read with surprise:

"To Nic-Nac
in the capital."

Now I understand everything. My arrival in Sophopolis was announced in the Capital, and the desire of the town, even this time expressed by the press, that I had come to awaken the lethargic reminiscences of the Earth... everything, everything contributes to explaining this new agglomeration to me, that in another way would have been considered a superfluity of an idle people.

But my arrival in the great Capital city should not go unnoticed, nevertheless, nobody did notice it, precisely because my manner of introducing myself was so original, so little terrestrial, that, if it had not been for the letter, I would have been able to fly eternally over the city, today taking one of them on my aerial course, and tomorrow another, without anyone saying: "Here we have Nic-Nac."

- "Give it to me" I exclaim.

And immediately, without anyone explaining where that voice came from, the letter begins to circulate from hand to hand. A moment later it was in my power and when I opened it, to the great admiration of those around them who consider that the letter was opened spontaneously, I launched myself into the upper regions, where I'll become acquainted with its content.

CHAPTER XXXVII

PAINFUL REVELATION

A low murmur reaches me.

The people have discovered me!

My name, repeated a thousand times, rises in the air in a confused cry.

It does not matter. Let's read this letter. Ah! It's from the Doctor.

"My situation is painful," says the Doctor in it, "not because there is any disagreement between me and my tender Sophopolite, but because of the inexplicable presence of fateful lights of certain Theopolitans around my dwelling. I don't know what to believe. Was it better to accept Seele's advice when he invited me to live on the Nevado? I don't know. What are the Theopolites up to? What are they looking for near my mansion? A terrible presentiment overwhelms me, and this presentiment, that I do not dare formulate, is that Seele might make it vanish. Are they trying to restore their generation, and take as their first target, the wife of Earthly habitant recently consecrated on Mars? Ask Seele, ask him, Nic-Nac. For the first time, I've been living far from Sophopolis. Later I returned to the city, but this measure was not enough to ward off the phosphorescent radiance. Everyone tries to convince me that it is nothing more than an illusion. But I assure you my friend, if illusions have this color..."

Poor Doctor! Will he continue to be dominated by Seele's threat?

I don't know. On the other hand, it is best to have patience. Wait for the evolution of the circumstances and continue traveling. "Doctor! Doctor! If you can hear me from here, I recommend patience..."

- "Well, and?" Seele said who was invisibly listening to me.

- "It is not me, it is you, master, who should be directed this question".

- "The answer is very simple: be patient."

- "Nothing more?"

- "Nothing more."

- "As you wish, master. But remove all danger from the Doctor. I beg of you."

- "Fear nothing. In the meantime, my friend, we need to get back to ourselves. In this town, now dominated by an endless struggle over a question of little value, nothing new is going to present itself to us."

- "But what! Mr. Seele, wouldn't it be possible to end this fight by merging all their opinions into one?"

- "Merging! You don't know what you're saying, my friend Nic-Nac!"

- "I don't know what I say!"

- "Yes, and I'll say it again. How do you want to merge their opinions when all of them have been seized by the press? Don't you understand that their minds are bitter? And above all: by what means would you provide as to verify this fusion?"

- "The town has noticed my arrival..."

- "I don't see how that can influence opinion."

- "But I do. The fight is to determine if the lights (our lights, eh?) were cosmic in nature or psychic in nature."

- "That is very true."

- "Well then, by making us noticeable to the town with our actual bodies, they will be convinced ..."

- "It will amount to nothing... and you'll see why: your name is Nic-Nac, and my name is Seele. As long as some tenaciously hold that the opinion which must prevail is the one that recognizes the cosmic nature of the light, others will hold, with no less energy, the psychic essence of the apparition."

- "But it is no longer a question of a new discussion, only of adopting a middle ground, in whose value the mass of conflicting opinions are revised, rightly or wrongly."

- "Impossible. I can assure you that one of the arguments is going to be this, assuming that I also make myself visible and that they pronounce my name - 'Seele is absolutely the same as Alma, and this is irremediably Psyche ... then, call the Seelic or Almic phenomenon, the fact is, in the same fashion that he's Psychic.' Others will say that 'since light emanated from the latent bodies of Nic-Nac and Seele, these bodies being material, and their emanations material as well, the phenomenon must be cosmic.' The fusion of ideas is not possible. The perpetual divergence of their opinions is an organic law of this town. How, then, do you intend to deprive this social organism of one of its functions? No, Nic-Nac, let's get away from here. Later, when all is quiet, we will return, and you will see quite a metamorphosis."

- "And where are we going?"

- "Far, very far. Let's go to Seelia, Protobia and Melania. You will be witness to great feats of civilization, but you will also contemplate the misery of these societies. You will see how certain stupid corporations tear the crumb of bread out from the parents' rags to make it an ornament in an unnecessary ceremony for the children. You will see how children despise sacrifice and make it an inescapable obligation. You will see how societies disappear to give up their place to others, and how monarchies roll in the dust, and how republics collapse, and how tyrants sustain themselves and how the inept ones sink and how the inept, the tyrants, the republics, the monarchies and the societies are forever unhinged. Let's fly, Nic-Nac, let's fly. Let's fly to Seelia, Protobia and Melania!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

NIC-NAC TO THE READER

Here I see myself, kind or intransigent reader (one of the two things you have to be), I see myself, I say, in the case of deleting a large part of my book for very acceptable reasons that I believe reach a hundred: the first one is that I have not written it; the second, is that I don't think I'll write it now, but later; the third, to save you from a bad time with the narration of my marvelous voyage, if perhaps your reading has caused you one or more problems; the fourth, to generate disgust in you if perhaps reading my marvelous voyage has given you one or more good times ... leaving the ninety-six reasons that are missing on account of your good judgment, if you have it, or if you don't, on account of your bad judgment.

This suppression accelerates, as you must understand, the end of this work. Are you happy? I'm glad. Do you feel it? I'm glad.

At the beginning of my narration, I had promised to introduce you to the strange mysteries of the planet Mars. I have partially fulfilled this. Guiding you through the wide plains and rough mountains of Protobia and Melania. I have also accomplished this by presenting you a hundred acceptable reasons and accompanying you in the splendid forests of Nic-Naquia. What I have not fulfilled is your cause, since you have not appeared in them for me to accompany you.

CHAPTER XXXIX

RETURN TO SOPHOPOLIS

During our voyage, long and arduous, full of curious adventures, a trust far greater than that which can exist between two beings of unequal strength was established between Seele and me. We usually give ourselves the treatment of "friend" but by formula, by custom, since friendship in its absolute value cannot exist, or at least it cannot be lasting between two individuals whose forces are not in equilibrium: the king will never be a friend of the craftsman, nor the nobleman of the commoner, nor the rich of the poor, nor the strong of the weak, nor the butterfly of the swallow, nor the dove of the kite, nor the hare of the greyhound, nor the cat of the dog, nor Nic-Nac of Seele...

In one of those long conversations that we had on our aerial voyage, Seele had communicated very sad news to me, news that has increased the vague melancholy that had taken hold of me after that letter in which the Doctor sent me on account of the presentiments that overwhelmed him.

Poor Doctor! His fate is atrocious!

How can you not want me to suffer when he suffers, if we are friends? And this friendship, founded on the equality of individual conditions, will endure tenderly as long as these exist, and when they disappear, it will endure latently. I wanted to die on Earth and he passed the sentence for me. He, who perhaps wanted to die, died too, and flew with me, spirit-image, to the planet Mars.

The bonds have become closer at a distance and today I'm returning to his home, bringing him a rich wealth of friendship and comfort.

Poor Doctor! His fate is atrocious!

- "Tell me master, how many times will we see the sun at the zenith before reaching Sophopolis?"

- "None, if you'd like."

- "Are we able to abstract the distance?"

- "Yes, as you have made the penetration when you were examining Psyche."

- "And why didn't we make this abstraction during our many-year voyage?"

- "To strengthen your patience, at the same time as to instruct you during the aerial pilgrimages."

- "Thanks, master. You are incomprehensible."

- "My name is Seele, and this name explains it."

- "Which makes me believe that a supreme moment is approaching."

- "Yes, yes. But look..."

I looked and saw a confused glow on the distant horizon.

And we continued flying, flying, like messenger birds of peace towards that maze of pink and pale green sparkles.

We descended towards the planet's surface, without reaching it, and I recognized the plain that Seele crossed before when we left Sophopolis.

Moments later we touched the soft grass that covered it with our feet. Our bodies reappeared, evoked by Seele, and we continued walking headlong into the glow, already nearby.

- "What is that, master! Tell me Seele! What does this strange phenomenon mean?"

- "It means," replied Seele, "it means that we are going to witness a great catastrophe."

- "Ah! It's useless for you to tell me of what nature!"

Horror!

Sophopolis is in flames! A terrible fire devours the city of the wise!

What an immense evaporation, without the intervention of the high priest!

CHAPTER XL

THE PLANET MARS HAS NOT CHANGED ITS COURSE

My primary concern was to go to the house of my old cicerone where the flames had not yet reached, because it was isolated between gardens. But he wasn't there. What to do? Look for him. Seele, on the other hand, had disappeared, and if an extranatural phenomenon did not guide my steps, I would also be caught in the flames.

But lo and behold, in the midst of the tumult, the innumerable noises produced by the devouring fire, the woes of the Sophopolites who perish, evaporating in the flames, and the roar of the collapsing buildings, I hear a familiar voice coming from I know not where: it is a prolonged, painful “meow” that bristles my integument with a frightful chill, a “meow” that moves me like the most tender lament... what could it be? A vague presentiment tells me that it is the black cat, whose presence on the planet has more than once signalled the way to me. He is, without doubt, a perpetual image of earthly aspirations, and if his Martian form now perishes.... oh! Nic-Nac! Nic-Nac! don't give up... your life is linked in part to that of the black cat who is meowing pitifully right now.

- "I'm going to save you!"

Nothing. The cat does not answer.

- "I'm going to save the Doctor!"

- "Meow! Meow!"

- "Are you here?" Nothing - "Are you here?"

- "Meow! Meow!"

I rush through one of the streets that lead to the great central plaza, the one in which the cube containing the double name of the double city is located, and I observe with terror mixed with an unspeakable satisfaction, that the flames part to let me pass, and they form themselves around me like a dome of fire. It is frightening. I believe, yes, I cannot help but believe in the transmigration of souls into human bodies, but never in metempsychosis to the bodies of other beings, and this separation from the active element, seems to combine in the graduated waves, and in its bright colors sounds the word "Salamander"! No! No! I would rather rerish a thousand times in the flames of Sophopolis than take the appearance of a reptile... "Salamander"... "Salamander."

The forces abandon me. Ah! The flames! ...

I cry out. I'm saved. Biopos, who has heard the mysterious word, believes that it is actually the last piece for his already burnt collection.

- "Nic-Nac!" he exclaims "Is it you?"

- "Yes, my friend. Tell me, I beg of you, where I can find the Doctor."

- "Ah!" mutters the zoologist, "the Salamander... the daughter of the flames..." and then adding in loud voice "This way, come, Mr. Nic-Nac."

Suffocated between the cupolas of fire, and the reverberation of the flames, I experience a discomfort of agony.

We are in the great plaza.

Most of the inhabitants are gathered there. Many have already perished.

- "What is this?" I ask my old friend the cicerone.

- "What is it? The Theopolitans kidnapped my daughter. We have proceeded to attack them but they have repelled us. They have done this, we haven't been able to contain them, and they have burned our city. At this moment something strange is happening, don't you see?"

I directed my sight up towards Theopolis, and observed the madman with the flask, calm as the statue of satisfied vengeance, staring toward the center of the city. His calm ceases, and in waving his arms in a perfect circle around his head, I think that he has reached the final degree of his insanity.

- "No!" the astronomer Hacksf tells me, who had not been able to detatch himself from his telescope, and I communicate to him the idea that has assailed me regarding the madman "no! The madman with the flask is submitting the last force of his spirit to the last recourse of vengeance. Can't you see?" he asks, suddenly pointing to the madman.

He evaporates! But his vapors, instead of concentrating in a small cloud, diffuse in a gigantic ring, which in an instant later, surrounds the city.

At the door of the temple, the Theopolitan high priest, the only one worthy of veneration among that crowd of hypocrites and wretches, contemplates the scene without being able to explain it. The madman with the flask has disappeared, but at that very moment, a vision which pours the supreme well-being into our souls stands out from the hectic center of Theopolis. The doctor! The beautiful Sophopolite woman!

And so we, reunited in the square, ran towards them. When passing near the Temple, the Doctor, with a terrified physiognomy, gives the High Priest a look of infinite vengeance and the High Priest, considering it to be an act hostile to his dignity, extends his hand towards the Doctor and the young woman. At the point in which they begin to turn: with the vertigo from the evaporation of their bodies for their exaltation of their souls.

The young woman's father rushes towards his children, and the High Priest who sees him heading towards that point, doesn't know how to interpret the wishes of a father who is going to save his children... and he also extends his hand towards him. But at that moment, arriving at our our ears, is the fatal formula : "Evaporate!"

- "Nic-Nac! Save yourself!" exclaims the Doctor.

The sad cry of the black cat is heard for the last time. It has all the pain of agony.

"Seele! Seele! Help me!" I break out involuntarily, and launched like a fireball towards the group in which my friends perished.

Biopos, Geot, Hacksf, and all the Sophopolites run after me towards the collapsing temple and a ring of fire, flashing its radiance around Theopolis, refocuses its curve and spreads consternation amongst the surprised inhabitants.

The madman's vapors have ignited.

The fire spreads, and all will perish.

Sophopolis is avenged.

But the High Priest had time to extend his hand toward us for the last time. Vertigo evaporates us!

An immense spiral of psychic lights rises from Theopolis. Martian spirit-images, where will we go?

There on the horizon rises a pale light, green-blue like the ray of the moon. It's Seele's aura!

The aura is approaching. The Theopolitans grouped around the temple await the supreme hour of their death. The inhabitants of Sophopolis, the Doctor and I, whirling spirits, rise to the ether.

A voice is heard at that moment: "Rush into the shadows of eternal night!" it is Seele who orders it. The Theopolites in a compact cloud, unworthy of an ethereal spiral, launch themselves into space in a straight line, drift away, become confused, and are lost forever in the hopeless night.

The two souls merged into one, that of the Doctor and that of the young Sophopolitan woman, form the nucleus of the ring that has to fly into the bosom of the universal soul.

Meanwhile Mars, carrying the ashes of that catastrophe through its orbit, moves away from us and the night that envelops the rubble of Theosophopolis, reveals to us the immense whirlwind of spirit-images.

Where shall we go, brilliant little lights of detached bodies?

New forces dominate my spirit and as I move away from Mars, memories of Earth awaken. I count time and deduce, with extraordinary surprise, that soon Mars and Earth will be in opposition and that, consequently, the latter will be the closest to Mars in relative distance in space.

There, yes, there I see her, and a vague feeling tells me that I am coming back to her.

And the whirlwind of spirit-images spins, fluctuates, undulates and flashes, as the silent stars flash, undulate, fluctuate and spins in the eternal majesty of space.

END OF THE WORK OF MR. NIC-NAC

EPILOGUE

THE EDITOR HAS THE FLOOR FOR A MOMENT

When the work of Mr. Nic-Nac fell into our hands, we began reading it with the firm conviction that it would perhaps resolve some matter of import.

A horrible disappointment!

However, there is something that stands out in it, and that it cannot fail to surprise those for whom the fact is new; is that the planet Mars is not only habitable, but it is inhabited. Its seas, its continents, its forests, its nature, in short, everything fortifies us in this belief. That the habitability of Mars is not news to the wise, this is unquestionable. Why should we maintain that only on Earth beings exist endowed with sufficient intelligence of being able to contemplate and judge the eternal wonders of the universe, as if it had been formed exclusively for them? No, a thousand times no. Brilliant spirits like that of Flammarion maintain today from the heart of Europe, and maintain it with all the powers with which they are endowed, that the other planets are habitable, because in them, are all the essential conditions for the evolution of life, and although it is true that they do not positively guarantee that other men roam their lands, they at least admit the possibility of an analogous existence.[Translators note: Camille Flammarion, 1842-1925, French astronomer and author of non-fiction and some science-fiction adjacent texts, in particular "Lumen" (1872), deals with many of the same themes present in Holmberg's Nic-Nac. Flammarion was also a public promoter of science and his works were massively popular in the late 19th century.]

Earth, a small, humble astral body, thrown into space like a fragment unworthy of Jupiter or Saturn. Could this be the king of the planets? No, because those gigantic, spherical moles[Translators note: The unit of measurement] that send us their distant radiance, not only contribute, with a greater force to the perpetual harmony of attractions and repulsions, but also, due to their position, their size, and their own conditions, they seem rather to reclaim the problem of life on a larger scale and therefore of greater intensity.

The plurality of inhabited worlds is not a fantasy born out of ONE feverish brain, it is a necessity, a conquest of the human spirit, a tribute to the greatness of the Universe.

Nic-Nac has only just confirmed that tribute, that conquest, that need.

But we will be allowed to ask: to what extent should the narration of Mr. Nic-Nac be accepted? Are we forced, by any chance, to sustain the reality of such an original voyage? Is it subject to the limits of the possible? Is it optimistic to affirm it? Who dares to discuss these problems? There is not a single man among all men who has the courage to launch himself in such an endeavor.

Otherwise, the work of Nic-Nac is responding to the nature of the attempt.

That indefinable vagueness of concepts, those luminous forms, those indecisive gleams that are born with the night, that die with the day, that black guide, the mysterious cat, symbol of a whim, of a vehement desire, those spirals... in short, all those elements that make up the whole could not have been expressed, perhaps, in another way, without taking from them the color of an ethereal whirlwind, of which the author has preserved an agonizing flash.

But who is Nic-Nac? Where is he? Ah! In a madhouse!

When we finished reading his book, we remembered this fact, and our indignation congested the globes of our eyes in their respective sockets.

But reflecting later, we asked ourselves: Is Nic-Nac a sensible man? Has he been locked up in San Buenaventura as if he were a hyena, from which he must be removed from human proximity?

No, Nic-Nac is not an angry madman, he is a quiet madman.

And what we affirm is so true, that it is enough to open the admissions book of that establishment to read an item in which it is stated that Mr. Nic-Nac suffers from "planetary mania."

The director of the establishment, an educated man and a tireless observer, has stated that Nic-Nac is an original entity, affable, and somewhat educated, who can be believed in many of the things he says, except, however, his validation of the means of which he has transmigrated from Earth to Mars, and from there and back again.

From this point of view, we do not hesitate to accept the opinions of Dr. Uriarte; it is, however, painful to see that a man who has done what no other man has done, being reduced to such a sad situation.

Planetary mania! Here is a true bottomless abyss, into which, if Seele is not found, he will have to rush in, either denying his voyage, which is what he wants, or confirming it with greater tenacity, which is precisely what has him confined in this establishment. But why is he detained? To avoid harmful propaganda.

That he has written a book defective in more than one concept, we should not observe it a little here. What! Is it not possible to make a jest at the reader's expense, deleting numerous chapters, on the pretext that a part of them was alien to the nature of the work?

No. But Nic-Nac believed that to justify himself, it was necessary to promptly publish his book.

Poor Nic-Nac! Now more than ever the reader can be convinced that he really is mad.

But what is the moral situation of the individual, if he actually verified his voyage? Is he resigned to his fate? Can he crawl into the miseries of a prosaic life, having been dazzled by unspeakable splendors?

But no, reason resists one to accept the voyage of Nic-Nac, which perhaps has been but one of those long inspirations whose elements are elaborated in deep ecstasy, and the poor dreamer, the unfortunate madman, will have no more consolation than the one that provides him with a fresh stream of water, in the form of a shower, to calm the outbursts of his "planetary mania."

THE END