"La caisse sonne, étrange, Fortement elle retentit. Dans leur fosse ressuscitent Les vieux soldats péris." And this other:-- "C'est la grande revue, Qu'à l'heure de minuit Aux Champs-Élysées Tient César décédé." It was really Waterloo, but a _Waterloo beyond the tomb_, for the combatants were raised from the dead. Besides, in this singular apparition they marched backwards one against the other. Such a battle had a magical effect, and impressed me more forcibly, because I foresaw the event itself, and this event was strangely transformed in its counterpart image. Not less singular was the fact, that the longer they fought, the more the number of combatants increased; at each gap made by the cannon in the serried ranks a group of resuscitated dead filled up the gaps immediately. When the belligerents had spent the whole day in tearing one another to pieces with grape-shot, with cannons and bullets, with bayonets, sabres, and swords--when the great battle was over, there was not a single person killed, no one was even wounded; even uniforms that before it were torn and in disorder were in good condition, the men were safe and sound, and the ranks in correct form. The two armies slowly withdrew from one another, as if the heat of the battle and all its fury had no other object than the restoration to life, amid the smoke of the combat, of the two hundred thousand corpses which had lain on the field a few hours before. What an exemplary and desirable battle it was! [Sidenote: Reascending the ages.] Assuredly it was the most singular of military episodes, and the moral aspect of it far surpassed the physical, when I found that this battle resulted not in the defeat of Napoleon, but in placing him upon the throne. Instead of losing the battle, it was the Emperor who gained it; instead of a prisoner, he became a sovereign. Waterloo was an 18th Brumaire!... QUÆRENS. Dear Lumen, I do not half understand this new effect of the laws of light. If you have discovered it, I shall be grateful to you if you will give me an explanation of it. LUMEN. I have helped you to divine it by telling you that I removed from the Earth with a _greater_ velocity than that of light. QUÆRENS. But tell me, I pray you, how does this retrogression in space enable you to see events in an order inverse to that in which they took place? LUMEN. The theory is very simple. Suppose you set out from the Earth with the velocity exactly _equal_ to that of light, you would always have with you the aspect that the Earth assumed at the moment you set out, since you would be receding from the globe with a swiftness precisely equal to that which bore this very aspect into space. Thus, even if you voyaged for a thousand years or a hundred thousand years, this aspect would accompany you always like a photograph which did not grow old; whilst the original is made old by the years that elapse.