Just as the navigator follows the coast of a continent, verifying all the lights one after another; so, midway between horizons, the astronomer standing on the moving earth, like a mariner on his bridge, calculates the exact hour with his eyes on the most complete sextant of all. The enormous scheme of things, the innumerable universe is reduced to the establishing of these proportions, to the elaboration of these distances! There is no trembling of the stars that does not influence our emotions, no design woven by the harmony of the planets in which we may not be involved. There is no star revealed by the microscope on the photographic plate to which I may be indifferent. The hour strikes, and by its act the immense sky seems to lighten. Between the pendulum buried in the heart of a sick-room and the flaming angel which successively reaches in the sky all the points prescribed by its circular flight, there is an exact response. I shall not compute another hour; I shall not face it with less decision for all that. THE DELIVERANCE OF AMATERASU No mortal man can, without incongruity, honor the moon by a public devotion. She is the computer and the fabricator of our months, the spinner of a thread avariciously measured. In the clear light of day we rejoice to see everything in harmony, beautiful like an ample, multicolored fabric. But as soon as the night is come, I find the fatal shuttle weaving again across the web of the sky. My friend, may thine eye alone avow it, glamoured by its evil light,--and those five fingernails which shine on the handle of thy lute! But the sun, always pure and young, always the same,--intensely radiant, intensely white,--does it abate each day the flowering of its glory, the generosity of its face? And who can look at it without being forced to laugh also? With a laugh as free, then, as when you gather up a pretty little child, give your heart to the good sun! Why, in the most shallow waters, in the narrowest puddle left at the turning of the public road, it will find something to mirror its ruddy face; and shall the secret soul of Man alone remain so sealed that it refuses such an image, and shows in the depth of its shadows no touch of gold?