XIII
The weather was calm and still; the Milky Way, like a light cloud, divided the heavens, a kindly light came to me from every star, and, when I gazed at one attentively, its companions seemed to twinkle all the more brilliantly in order to attract my attention.
Each time that I gaze at the starlit sky I experience new pleasures and fresh delights, and I cannot reproach myself with ever having taken a nocturnal walk, without having paid my tribute of admiration to the wonders of the heavens. Although I feel keenly the utter feebleness of my mind in these lofty meditations, still I find in them an inexpressible pleasure. I love to think that it is not mere chance which has brought to my eyes these emanations from distant worlds; and every star sheds with its beams a ray of hope into my heart. May there not be some other relations between me and these wonderful objects besides this—that they glitter before my eyes? My mind raises itself to their level, my heart is moved at the sight of them; then are not they connected in some way? Man, the ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, raises for a moment his eyes to heaven and then closes them forever, but, during that short moment which is his, from every point of heaven and from the ends of the universe, a ray of consolation starts from every world and falls on his vision, to tell him that there is a relation between immensity and himself, and that he is a part of Eternity.