The internal heat of the globe, the light and warmth of the sun, terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, inter-planetary attraction, the psychic forces of the human soul, the unknown forces which preside over destinies,—all these science had conquered and controlled for the benefit of mankind. The only limits to its conquests were the limitations of the human faculties themselves, which, indeed, are feeble, especially when we compare them with those of certain extra-terrestrial beings. All the results of this vast progress, so slowly and gradually acquired by the toil of centuries, must, in obedience to a law, mysterious and inconceivable for the petty race of man, reach at last their apogee, when further advance becomes impossible. The geometric curve which represents this progress of the race, falls as it rises: starting from zero, from the primitive nebulous cosmos, ascending through the ages of planetary and human history to its lofty summit, to descend thereafter into a night that knows no morrow. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE CEMETERY. ] Yes! all this progress, all this knowledge, all this happiness and glory, must one day be swallowed up in oblivion, and the voice of history itself be forever silenced. Life had a beginning: it must have an end. The sun of human hopes had risen, had ascended victoriously to its meridian, it was now to set and to disappear in endless night. To what end then all this glory, all this struggling, all these conquests, all these vanities, if light and life must come to an end? Martyrs and apostles, in every cause, have poured out blood upon the earth, destined also in its turn to perish. Everything is doomed to decay, and death must remain the final sovereign of the world. Have you ever thought, in viewing a village cemetery, how small it is, to contain the generations buried there from time immemorable? Man existed before the last glacial epoch, which dates back 200,000 years; and the age of man extends over a period of more than 250,000 years. Written history dates from yesterday. Cut and polished flints have been found at Paris, proving the presence of man on the banks of the Seine long before the first historic record of the Gauls. The Parisians of the close of the nineteenth century walk upon ground consecrated by more than ten thousand years of ancestry. What remains of all who have swarmed in this forum of the world? What is left of the Romans, the Greeks, and the Asiatics, whose empires lasted for centuries? What remains of the millions who have existed? Not even a handful of ashes.