inhabited. His first reason was that he had not seen
anyone. Micromegas politely indicated that this logic was rather
flawed: "For," said he, "you do not see with your little eyes certain
stars of the 50th magnitude that I can perceive very distinctly. Do
you conclude that these stars do not exist?"

"But," said the dwarf, "I felt around a lot."

"But," answered the other, "you have pretty weak senses."

"But," replied the dwarf, "this planet is poorly constructed. It is
so irregular and has such a ridiculous shape! Everything here seems
to be in chaos: you see these little rivulets, none of which run in a
straight line, these pools of water that are neither round, nor
square, nor oval, nor regular by any measure; all these little pointy
specks scattered across the earth that grate on my feet? (This was in
reference to mountains.) Look at its shape again, how it is flat at
the poles, how it clumsily revolves around the sun in a way that
necessarily eliminates the climates of the poles? To tell the truth,
what really makes me think it is uninhabited is that it seems that no
one of good sense would want to stay."

"Well," said Micromegas, "maybe the inhabitants of this planet are
not of good sense! But in the end it looks like this may be for a
reason. Everything appears irregular to you here, you say, because
everything on Saturn and Jupiter is drawn in straight lines. This
might be the[1] reason that you are a bit puzzled here. Have I not
told you that I have continually noticed variety in my travels?"

[1] All the editions that precede those of Kehl read: "It might be
for this" B.

The Saturnian responded to all these points. The dispute might never
have finished if it were not for Micromegas who, getting worked up,
had the good luck to break the thread of his diamond necklace. The
diamonds fell; they were pretty little carats of fairly irregular
size, of which the largest weighed four hundred pounds and the
smallest fifty. The dwarf recaptured some of them; bending down for a
better look, he perceived that these diamonds were cut with the help
of an excellent microscope. So he took out a small microscope of 160
feet in diameter and put it up to his eye; and Micromegas took up one
of 2,005 feet in diameter. They were excellent; but neither one of
them could see anything right away and had to adjust them. Finally
the Saturnian saw something elusive that moved in the shallow waters
of the Baltic sea; it was a