r our heels.
However, the central fire diminishes, and the sun grows more feeble, so
much so that one day the earth will perish of refrigeration. It will
become sterile; all the wood and all the coal will be converted into
carbonic acid, and no life can subsist there."

"We haven't come to that yet," said Bouvard.

"Let us expect it," returned Pecuchet.

No matter, this end of the world, far away as it might be, made them
gloomy; and, side by side, they walked in silence over the shingles.

The cliff, perpendicular, a mass of white, striped with black here and
there by lines of flint, stretched towards the horizon like the curve of
a rampart five leagues wide. An east wind, bitter and cold, was blowing;
the sky was grey; the sea greenish and, as it were, swollen. From the
highest points of rocks birds took wing, wheeled round, and speedily
re-entered their hiding places. Sometimes a stone, getting loosened,
would rebound from one place to another before reaching them.

Pecuchet continued his reflections aloud:

"Unless the earth should be destroyed by a cataclysm! We do not know the
length of our period. The central fire has only to overflow."

"However, it is diminishing."

"That does not prevent its explosions from having produced the Julia
Island, Monte Nuovo, and many others."

Bouvard remembered having read these details in Bertrand.

"But such catastrophes do not happen in Europe."

"A thousand pardons! Witness that of Lisbon. As for our own countries,
the coal-mines and the firestone useful for war are numerous, and may
very well, when decomposing, form the mouths of volcanoes. Moreover,
the volcanoes always burst near the sea."

Bouvard cast his eyes over the waves, and fancied he could distinguish
in the distance a volume of smoke ascending to the sky.

"Since the Julia Island," returned Pecuchet, "has disappeared, the
fragments of the earth formed by the same cause will perhaps have the
same fate. An islet in the Archipelago is as important as Normandy and
even as Europe."

Bouvard imagined Europe swallowed up in an abyss.

"Admit," said Pecuchet, "that an earthquake takes place under the
British Channel: the waters rush into the Atlantic; the coasts of France
and England, tottering on their bases, bend forward and reunite--and
there you are! The entire space between is wiped out."

Instead of answering, Bouvard began walking so quickly that he was soon
a hundred paces away from Pecuchet. Be