Omega, Camille Flammarion [top 10 books to read TXT] 📗

tropics, once the site of the Pacific ocean, Polynesia, Malaisia and the Sunda islands, and stopped at the landing of the crystal palace. The young girl, startled from her dream by the traveller, who fell from the air at her feet, fled in terror to the farther end of the immense hall, lifting the heavy curtain of skin which separated it from the library. When the young man reached her side, he stopped, knelt, and took her hand in his, saying simply: “You called me. I have come.” And then he added: “I have known you for a long time. I knew that you existed, I have often seen you; you are the constant thought of my heart, but I did not dare to come.”

She bade him rise, saying: “My friend, I know that we are alone in the world, and that we are about to die. A will stronger than my own compelled me to call you. It seemed as if it were the supreme desire of my mother, supreme even in death. See, she sleeps thus since yesterday. How long the night is!”

The young man, kneeling, had taken the hand of the dead, and they both stood there beside the funeral couch, as if in prayer.

He leaned gently toward the young girl, and their heads touched. He let fall the hand of the dead.

Eva shuddered. “No,” she said.

Then, suddenly, he sprang to his feet in terror; the dead woman had revived. She had withdrawn the hand which he had taken in his own, and had opened her eyes. She made a movement, looking at them.

“I wake from a strange dream,” she said, without seeming surprised at the presence of Omegar. “Behold, my children, my dream;” and she pointed to the planet Jupiter, shining with dazzling splendor in the sky.

And as they gazed upon the star, to their astonished vision, it appeared to approach them, to grow larger, to take the place of the frozen scene about them.

Its immense seas were covered with ships. Aerial fleets cleaved the air. The shores of its seas and the mouths of its great rivers were the scenes of a prodigious activity. Brilliant cities appeared, peopled by moving multitudes. Neither the details of their habitations nor the forms of these new beings could be distinguished, but one divined that here was a humanity quite different from ours, living in the bosom of another nature, having other senses at its disposal; and one felt also that this vast world was incomparably superior to the Earth.

“Behold, where we shall be tomorrow!” said the dying woman. “We shall find there all the human race, perfected and transformed. Jupiter has received the inheritance of the Earth. Our world has accomplished its mission, and life is over here below. Farewell!”

She stretched out her arms to them; they bent over her pale face and pressed a long kiss upon her forehead. But they perceived that this forehead was cold as marble, in spite of this strange awakening.

The dead woman had closed her eyes, to open them no more.

VI

It is sweet to live. Love atones for every loss; in its joys all else is forgotten. Ineffable music of the heart, thy divine melody fills the soul with an ecstasy of infinite happiness! What illustrious historians have celebrated the heroes of the world’s progress, the glories of war, the conquests of mind and of spirit! Yet after so many centuries of labor and struggle, there remained only two palpitating hearts, the kisses of two lovers. All had perished except love; and love, the supreme sentiment, endured, shining like an inextinguishable beacon over the immense ocean of the vanished ages.

Death! They did not dream of it. Did they not suffice for each other? What if the cold froze their very marrow? Did they not possess in their hearts a warmth which defied the cold of nature? Did not the sun still shine gloriously, and was not the final doom of the world yet far distant? Omegar bent every energy to the maintenance of the marvellous system which had been devised for the automatic extraction by chemical processes of the nutritive principles of the air, water and plants, and in this he seemed to be successful. So in other days, after the fall of the Roman empire, the barbarians had been seen to utilize during centuries the aqueducts, baths and thermal springs, all the creations of the civilization of the Caesars, and to draw from a vanished industry the sources of their own strength.

But one day, wonderful as it was, this system gave out. The subterranean waters themselves ceased to flow. The soil was frozen to a great depth. The rays of the sun still warmed the air within the glass-covered dwellings, but no plant could live longer; the supply of water was exhausted.

The combined efforts of science and industry were impotent to give to the atmosphere the nutritive qualities possessed by those of other worlds, and the human organism constantly clamored for the regenerating principles which, as we have seen, had been derived from the air, water and plants. These sources were now exhausted.

This last human pair struggled against these insurmountable obstacles, and recognized the uselessness of farther contest, yet they were not resigned to death. Before knowing each other they had awaited it fearlessly. Now each wished to defend the other, the beloved one, against pitiless destiny. The very idea of seeing Omegar lying inanimate beside her, filled Eva with such anguish that she could not bear the thought. And he, too, vainly longed to carry away his well beloved from a world doomed to decay, to fly with her to that brilliant Jupiter which awaited them, and not to abandon to the Earth the body he adored.

He thought that, perhaps, there still existed, somewhere upon the Earth, a spot which had retained a little of that life-giving water without which existence was impossible; and, although already they were both almost without strength, he formed the supreme