like sleeping, and so, after finishing the birds the
president had brought down that morning, they persuaded Ayrault to sit
up and smoke with them. Wrapping themselves in their blankets--for
there was a chill in the air--they sat about the camp-fire they had
built in the mouth of the cave. Two moons that were at the full rose
rapidly in the clear, cold sky. On account of their distance from the
sun, they were less bright than the terrestrial moon, but they shone
with a marvellously pure pale light. The larger contained the exact
features of a man. There was the somewhat aquiline nose, a clear-cut
and expressive mouth, and large, handsome eyes, which were shaded by
well-marked eyebrows. The whole face was very striking, but was a
personification of the most intense grief. The expression was indeed
sadder than that of any face they had ever seen. The other contained
the profile of a surpassingly beautiful young woman. The handsome
eyes, shaded by lashes, looked straight ahead. The nose was perfect,
and the ear small, while the hair was artistically arranged at the top
and back of the head. This moon also reflected a pure white ray. The
former appeared about once and a quarter, the latter but three
quarters, the size of the terrestrial moon, and the travellers
immediately recognized them by their sizes and relative positions as
Tethys and Dione, discovered by J. D. Cassini in March, 1684. The sad
face was turned slightly towards that of its companion, and it looked
as if some tale of the human heart, some romance, had been engraved and
preserved for all time on the features of these dead bodies, as they
silently swung in their orbits forever and anon were side by side.

"In all the ages," said Cortlandt, "that these moons have wandered with
Saturn about the sun, and with the solar system in its journey through
space, they can never have gazed upon the scene they now behold, for we
may be convinced that no mortal man has been here before."

"We may say," said Ayrault, "that they see in our bodies a type of the
source from which come all the spiritual beings that are here."

"If, as the writers of mythology supposed," replied Cortlandt,
"inanimate objects were endowed with senses, these moons would
doubtless be unable to perceive the spiritual beings here; for the
satellites, being material, should, to be consistent, have only those
senses possessed by ourselves, so that to them this planet would
ordinarily ap