M. Bergeret was in the habit of talking to M. Goubin, while they sat with two large beer-glasses in front of them, amidst the noise of the dominoes clicking on the marble tables all around them. At eleven o’clock the master rose and the pupil followed his example. Then they walked across the empty Place du Théâtre and by back ways until they reached the gloomy Tintelleries. In such fashion they proceeded one night in May when the air, which had been cleared by a heavy storm of rain, was fresh and limpid and full of the smell of earth and leaves. In the purple depths of the moonless, cloudless sky hung points of light that sparkled with the white gleam of diamonds. Amid them, here and there, twinkled bright facets of red or blue. Lifting his eyes to the sky, M. Bergeret watched the stars. He knew the constellations fairly well, and, with his hat on the back of his head and his face turned upwards, he pointed out Gemini with the end of his stick to the vague, wandering glance of M. Goubin’s ignorance. Then he murmured: “Would that the clear star of Helen’s twin brothers Might ’neath thy barque the wild waters assuage, Would that to Pœstum o’er seas of Ionia ...”[9] [9] “Oh! soit que l’astre pur des deux frères d’Hélène Calme sous ton vaisseau la vague ionienne, Soit qu’aux bords de Pœstum ...” Then he said abruptly: “Have you heard, Monsieur Goubin, that news of Venus has reached us from America and that the news is bad?” M. Goubin tried obediently to look for Venus in the sky, but the professor informed him that she had set. “That beautiful star,” he continued, “is a hell of fire and ice. I have it from M. Camille Flammarion himself, who tells me every month, in the excellent articles he writes, all the news from the sky. Venus always turns the same side to the sun, as the moon does to the earth. The astronomer at Mount Hamilton swears that it is so. If we pin our faith to him, one of the hemispheres of Venus is a burning desert, the other, a waste of ice and darkness, and that glorious luminary of our evenings and mornings is filled with naught but silence and death.” “Really!” said M. Goubin. “Such is the prevailing creed this year,” answered M. Bergeret. “For my part, I am not far from being convinced that life, at any rate in the form which it presents on earth, is the result of a disease in the constitution of the planet, that it is a morbid growth, a leprosy, something loathsome, in fact, which would never be found in a healthy, well-constituted star. By life I mean, of course, that state of activity manifested by organic matter in plants and animals. I derive pleasure and consolation from this idea. For, indeed, it is a melancholy thing to fancy that all these suns that flame above our heads bring warmth to other planets as miserable as our own, and that the universe gives birth to suffering and squalor in never-ending succession.