EARLY in the morning Uncle Paul and his nephews climbed the neighboring hill to see the sunrise. It was still quite dark. The only persons they met in passing through the village were the milkmaid, on her way to town with her butter and milk, and the blacksmith hammering away at the red-hot iron on his anvil, while the glow from the forge illumined the darkness of the road.

The Sun

Sheltered by a clump of juniper-trees, Paul and the three children await the grand spectacle they have come to the top of the hill to see. In the east the sky is getting lighter, the stars turn pale and go out one by one. Flakes of rosy cloud swim in a brilliant streak of light whence gradually there rises a soft illumination. It reaches the zenith, and the blue of day reappears with all its delicate transparency. This cool morning light, this half-daylight that precedes the rising of the sun, is the aurora or morning twilight. In the meantime a lark, the joy of the fields, takes wing to the highest clouds, like a rocket, and is the first to salute the awakening day. It mounts and mounts, always singing, as if to get in front of the sun; and with its enthusiastic songs it celebrates in the high heavens the glory of the day-bringer. Listen: there is a breath of wind in the foliage, which stirs and rustles; the little birds are waking up and chirping; the ox, already led to work in the fields, stops as if thinking, raises its large eyes full of gentleness, and lows; everything becomes animated, and, in its own language, renders thanks to the Master of all things, who with His powerful hand brings us back the sun.

And here it is: a bright thread of light bursts forth, and the tops of the mountains are suddenly illumined. It is the edge of the sun beginning to rise. The earth trembles before the radiant apparition. The shining disc keeps rising: there it is almost whole, now completely so, like a grindstone of red-hot iron. The mist of the morning moderates its glare and allows one to look it in the face; but soon no one could endure its dazzling splendor. In the meantime its rays inundate the plain; a gentle heat succeeds the keen freshness of the night; the mists rise from the depths of the valleys and are dissipated; the dew, gathered on the leaves, becomes warm and evaporates; on all sides there is a resumption of life, of the animation suspended during the night. And all day, pursuing its course from east to west, the sun moves on, flooding the earth with light and heat, ripening the yellow harvest, giving perfume to the flowers, taste to fruit, life to every creature.

Then Uncle Paul, in the shade of the juniper-trees, began his talk.

“What is the sun? Is it large, is it very far away? That, my children, is what I should now like to teach you.

“To measure the distance from one point to another, you know of only one means: that of laying off, as many times as it will go, the unit of length, the meter, from one end to the other of the distance to be measured. But science has methods adapted to the measuring of distances that one cannot travel in person; it tells us what must be done to find the height of a tower or mountain, without going to the top, without even approaching the base. They are methods of the same kind as are employed to calculate the distance that separates us from the sun. The result of the astronomer’s calculations is that we are distant from the sun 38 millions of leagues of 4000 meters each. This distance is equivalent to 3800 times the circumference of the earth. I told you that, to make the tour of the terrestrial globe, a man, a good walker, capable of walking ten leagues a day, would take about three years. He would need, then, nearly twelve thousand years to go from the earth to the sun, supposing that the journey were possible. The longest human life is incomparably too short for a journey of this length ever to be accomplished by one person; and a hundred generations of a hundred years each, succeeding one another on the journey and uniting their efforts, would not even be enough.”

“And a locomotive,” asked Jules, “how long would it take to get over that distance?”

“Do you remember how fast it goes?”

“I saw it myself the day we took the trip with you. If one looks out, the road seems to fly back so fast it frightens you and makes you dizzy.”

“The locomotive that drew us went at the rate of about ten leagues ............