Robur the Conqueror | Page 5

and
treated it in every form, throwing on it both light and darkness,
recording many things about it true or false, alarming and tranquillizing
their readers--as the sale required--and almost driving ordinary people
mad. At one blow party politics dropped unheeded--and the affairs of
the world went on none the worse for it.
But what could this thing be? There was not an observatory that was
not applied to. If an observatory could not give a satisfactory answer
what was the use of observatories? If astronomers, who doubled and
tripled the stars a hundred thousand million miles away, could not
explain a phenomenon occurring only a few miles off, what was the use
of astronomers?
The observatory at Paris was very guarded in what it said. In the
mathematical section they had not thought the statement worth noticing;
in the meridional section they knew nothing about it; in the physical
observatory they had not come across it; in the geodetic section they
had had no observation; in the meteorological section there had been no
record; in the calculating room they had had nothing to deal with. At
any rate this confession was a frank one, and the same frankness
characterized the replies from the observatory of Montsouris and the
magnetic station in the park of St. Maur. The same respect for the truth
distinguished the Bureau des Longitudes.
The provinces were slightly more affirmative. Perhaps in the night of

the fifth and the morning of the sixth of May there had appeared a flash
of light of electrical origin which lasted about twenty seconds. At the
Pic du Midi this light appeared between nine and ten in the evening. At
the Meteorological Observatory on the Puy de Dome the light had been
observed between one and two o'clock in the morning; at Mont
Ventoux in Provence it had been seen between two and three o'clock; at
Nice it had been noticed between three and four o'clock; while at the
Semnoz Alps between Annecy, Le Bourget, and Le Léman, it had been
detected just as the zenith was paling with the dawn.
Now it evidently would not do to disregard these observations
altogether. There could be no doubt that a light had been observed at
different places, in succession, at intervals, during some hours. Hence,
whether it had been produced from many centers in the terrestrial
atmosphere, or from one center, it was plain that the light must have
traveled at a speed of over one hundred and twenty miles an hour.
In the United Kingdom there was much perplexity. The observatories
were not in agreement. Greenwich would not consent to the proposition
of Oxford. They were agreed on one point, however, and that was: "It
was nothing at all!"
But, said one, "It was an optical illusion!" While the, other contended
that, "It was an acoustical illusion!" And so they disputed. Something,
however, was, it will be seen, common to both "It was an illusion."
Between the observatory of Berlin and the observatory of Vienna the
discussion threatened to end in international complications; but Russia,
in the person of the director of the observatory at Pulkowa, showed that
both were right. It all depended on the point of view from which they
attacked the phenomenon, which, though impossible in theory, was
possible in practice.
In Switzerland, at the observatory of Sautis in the canton of Appenzell,
at the Righi, at the Gäbriss, in the passes of the St. Gothard, at the St.
Bernard, at the Julier, at the Simplon, at Zurich, at Somblick in the
Tyrolean Alps, there was a very strong disinclination to say anything
about what nobody could prove--and that was nothing but reasonable.

But in Italy, at the meteorological stations on Vesuvius, on Etna in the
old Casa Inglesi, at Monte Cavo, the observers made no hesitation in
admitting the materiality of the phenomenon, particularly as they had
seen it by day in the form of a small cloud of vapor, and by night in that
of a shooting star. But of what it was they knew nothing.
Scientists began at last to tire of the mystery, while they continued to
disagree about it, and even to frighten the lowly and the ignorant, who,
thanks to one of the wisest laws of nature, have formed, form, and will
form the immense majority of the world's inhabitants. Astronomers and
meteorologists would soon have dropped the subject altogether had not,
on the night of the 26th and 27th, the observatory of Kautokeino at
Finmark, in Norway, and during the night of the 28th and 29th that of
Isfjord at Spitzbergen--Norwegian one and Swedish the other--found
themselves agreed in recording that in the center of an aurora borealis
there had appeared a sort of huge bird, an aerial monster, whose
structure they