"No, Marguerite, I am not mad, believe me. This toil has not yet turned my brain, though it might indeed have done so, for it is sad and hard to labor night after night in pursuit of an object so distant and yet so prized. You ask me why I labor through the night? Foolish child! why you must know that the clock for which the city has offered so extravagant a prize, and to obtain which, not I alone, but so many others are wasting their health and squandering their youth--you must know that this clock is not only to tell the hour of the day, and the month of the year, but to contain within its works the secret of the movements of the heavenly bodies;--that to obtain this prize they must read the wonders of the skies, and penetrate its mysteries. It is a wild and fearful study, Marguerite--a study, the pursuit of which is not calculated by the hands on the dial-plate. Even now I marvel at the audacity of the men who proposed such a design, and the boldness of those who, like myself, have undertaken to fulfill it. You cannot imagine, Marguerite, how such contemplations remove one from the world in which we live. Until I knew you, Marguerite, I cared for and thought of nothing else." "And even now, Dumiger, is this not the case?" said she, with a gentle smile. "No, to your love I owe all, Marguerite," he answered. "It seemed to purify my feelings, to elevate my mind to the height of this vast argument--until I knew you there was a link wanting in my life. When I used to ponder on the marvelous love of the Infinite, which could work out this wondrous system, and give man the faculty and the desire of comprehending it, I felt that the mind contained capacities long concealed from its owner; I felt that even in this world there must be at some time a perfect revelation of perfect love to man, beyond that love of nature which is to be derived from the study of this world's natural laws and those of the lights which rule it. I was then unsatisfied, Marguerite, for there was a void in my heart which nothing could fill up; and I remember once meeting with a passage in a favorite author which said, that whosoever had a faculty or sensation unemployed could not be happy. I was in that situation; but strange to say, absorbing as the passion of love is, when I once understood this great mystery I was better able to devote all my energies to science. I had often heard it said, that a pure and holy affection is the purest and surest source of energy and greatness--until I knew you, Marguerite, I gave no credit to the saying." "And this star, Dumiger, which is growing fainter and fainter?"