the most splendid of transformations. Each year in this world represents about two hundred terrestrial years. Two thirds of the year is lived in the lower condition, one third (winter) in the chrysalis state, and the following spring the sleepers feel life coming back to their transformed flesh; they stir, awaken, leave their fleecy coverings on the trees, and freeing themselves from them, fly away, wonderful winged creatures, to aerial regions, there to live for a new Phoenician year,--that is, for two hundred years of our swiftly moving planet. We crossed a great number of planets in this way, and it seemed as though all eternity would not be long enough to admit of my enjoying these creations unknown to earth; but my guide barely left me time to realize this, and still new suns and new worlds were appearing. We were very near striking against some transparent comets in our rapid flight, that were wandering about like a breath from one system to another, and more than once I felt myself strongly attracted toward wonderful planets with fresh landscapes, whose occupants would have been new objects of study. And yet the celestial Muse bore me on without fatigue still higher, still farther away, until at last we came to what seemed to me the confines of the universe. The suns grew more rare, less luminous, paler; darkness was more intense between the stars; and we were soon in the midst of an actual desert, the thousands of millions of stars which constitute the universe visible from the Earth being far distant: everything had faded to a little, lonely Milky Way in empty infinity. "At last we have reached the very limits of creation!" I cried. [Illustration] "Look!" she replied, pointing to the zenith. [Illustration] IV. ETERNITY AND THE INFINITE What was that? Could it be true? Another universe was coming down to us! Millions and millions of suns grouped together were floating about like a celestial archipelago, and as we flew toward them they spread themselves out like a limitless cloud of stars. I looked about me on all sides, trying to pierce the depths of boundless space, and saw similar clusters of twinkling stars scattered about in all directions, at various distances. The new universe which we were entering was made up principally of red, ruby, and garnet suns. Many of them were absolutely blood-red.