would give to each part but a journey of nine thousand leagues. Consider what a trifle are nine thousand in comparison of the terrific number I have just mentioned. [Footnote 11: According to later calculations, it would be a thousand millions of times a million of leagues; but a person who did not believe the motion of the earth would have no occasion to admit this prodigious distance.] Oh! replied the Marchioness; the sun and stars are made of fire, a swift motion is nothing to them, but the earth does not seem formed for motion. And should you think, I answered, if experience had not proved the fact, that a large ship, carrying a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, three thousand men, and a heavy freight of merchandize, could be _formed for motion_?--Yet a gentle breeze is sufficient to move it forwards, because the water, being liquid, and easily divided, makes a very slight resistance to the progress of the ship, or if it be in the middle of a river, it follows without difficulty the current of the water, since there is then no impediment. In like manner the earth, notwithstanding its weight, is with facility carried through the sky which is infinitely more fluid than water, and which fills the immense space occupied by all the planets. To what could the earth be fastened so strongly as to resist the current of this celestial fluid and remain motionless? We might as well imagine a little wooden ball could resist the tide of a river. But, said she, how can a body so ponderous as the earth be suspended in your celestial fluid, which from its great fluidity must be extremely light? It does not follow, I replied, that a substance must be extremely light because it is fluid. What do you think of the great ship we have been talking of, which, with all its lading, is lighter than the water that supports it? I won't have any more to say to you, answered she, half angrily, if you mention your ship again.[12] But tell me, is it not dangerous to inhabit such a whirli-gig as you represent the earth? If you are afraid, said I, let us have the world supported by four elephants, as the Indians do. Well! cried she, here is a new system. I like those people for providing such good foundations for the earth to rest on, whilst we Copernicans are imprudent enough to swim at random in this celestial fluid. I dare say if the Indians knew there was the least danger of the earth's being moved, they would double the number of elephants. [Footnote 12: The Marchioness was in the right not to listen to such an answer. It is absurd to pretend that the ætherial fluid, so light and rare, can be capable of bearing along those enormous masses, the planets.]