But whatever may be the idea that one conceives of the inner constitution of bodies, the truth is now recognized and indisputable that the fixed point for which our imagination has been seeking, exists nowhere. Archimedes can vainly call for a point of support, that he may lift the world. _Worlds, like atoms, rest on the invisible_, on immaterial force; everything moves, urged on by attraction, and as if in search of that fixed point which flies as it is pursued, and which does not exist, since in the infinite the centre is everywhere and nowhere. So-called positive minds, which assert with so much assurance that "Matter reigns alone, with its properties," and who smile disdainfully at the researches of thinkers, should first tell us what they mean by that famous word "matter." If they did not stop at the surface of things, if they even suspected that appearances hid intangible realities, they would doubtless be a little more modest. To us, who seek the truth with no jealousy of system, it seems that the essence of matter remains as mysterious as the essence of force; the visible universe not being in the least what it appears to be to our senses. In fact, that visible universe is composed of invisible atoms; it rests upon the void, and the forces which govern it are in themselves immaterial and invisible. It would be less bold to think that matter does not exist, that all is dynamism, than to pretend to affirm the existence of an exclusively material universe. As to the material support of the world, it disappeared--a somewhat interesting observation--precisely with the conquest of Mechanics, which proclaim the triumph of the invisible. The fixed point vanishes in the universal balance of powers, in the ideal harmony of ether vibrations; the more one seeks it, the less one finds it; and the last effort of our thought has for a last support, for supreme reality, the Infinite. [Illustration] [Illustration] A SOUL CLOTHED WITH AIR. She was standing, in her chaste nudity, with uplifted arms, twisting the thick and waving masses of her hair, which she was trying to bring into subjection on the top of her head,--a fresh, young beauty, who had not yet attained the fulness and perfection of developed form, but was approaching it, radiant in the loveliness of her seventeenth year. A child of Venice, her white, soft, rose-tinted skin revealed the circulation of a strong and ardent life-blood beneath its transparency; her eyes shone with a mysterious and haunting light, and the dewy redness of her lightly parted lips made one think of the fruit as much as of the flower. She was marvellously beautiful as she stood thus; and if some hero Paris had received a mission to award the palm to her, I do not know which he would have laid at her feet, that of grace, elegance, or beauty,--for she seemed to blend the living charm of modern attractiveness with the calm perfections of classic beauty.