I walked a few steps on the mountain-top with my new acquaintances, and coming in sight of the other slope, I saw multitudes of different colored lights flitting about in the air. It was the inhabitants, who, when they desire it, become luminous at night. Aerial cars, apparently formed of phosphorescent flowers, were carrying orchestras and choruses; one of them passed us, and we took our places in it, in the midst of a cloud of perfumes. The sensations which I experienced were singularly unlike any which I had ever felt on the Earth, and this first night on Mars passed like a rapid dream; for the dawn found me still in the aerial car conversing with my entertainers, their friends, and their indescribably lovely companions. What a panorama with the rising sun! Flowers, fruits, perfumes, fairy-like palaces rose on the islands with their orange vegetation; the waters stretched themselves out like limpid mirrors, and joyous aerial couples were whirling down to these enchanting shores. There, all material work is done by machines, and directed by a few perfected races of animals whose intelligence is very nearly of the same order as that of mankind on the Earth. The inhabitants live only for and by the mind; their nervous system has reached such a degree of development that each one of these beings, at once very delicate and very strong, seems an electric battery, and their most sensual impressions, felt more by their souls than their bodies, surpass a hundredfold all those that our five terrestrial senses together could ever offer us. A kind of summer palace illuminated by the rays of the rising Sun opened beneath our aerial gondola. My neighbor, whose wings were fluttering with impatience, placed her delicate foot upon a tuft of flowers which rose between two jets of perfume. "Will you return to the Earth?" she asked, holding out her arms to me. "Never," I cried, springing towards her. * * * * * But at that moment I found myself alone near the wood on the slope of the hill, at whose feet the Seine was winding with undulating curves. [Illustration] "_Never_," I repeated, trying to grasp the sweet, vanished dream once more. Where had I been? It was beautiful. The Sun had just set, and the planet Mars, then very brilliant, was already shining in the sky. "Ah!" I said, as a fugitive beam reached me, "I have been there!" Drawn by the same attraction, the two neighboring planets are looking at each other through transparent space. May we not catch a first glimpse of the eternal journey from this celestial fraternity? The Earth is no longer alone in the universe. The panoramas of the infinite are beginning to open themselves out. Whether we live here or near by, we are not the citizens of a country or of a world, but are in very truth the _Citizens of Heaven_! [Illustration] III. THE PLANET MARS. Had I been the plaything of a dream?