Most fearfully, fearfully!—­this is indeed no dream.

‘Charmion’.

  Dreams are no more.  Was I much mourned, my Eiros?

‘Eiros’.

  Mourned, Charmion?—­oh, deeply.  To that last hour of all there hung a
  cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow over your household.

‘Charmion’.

And that last hour—­speak of it.  Remember that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing.  When, coming out from among mankind, I passed into Night through the Grave—­at that period, if I remember aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly unanticipated.  But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative philosophy of the day.

‘Eiros’.

The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a subject of discussion with astronomers.  I need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame.  The very moderate density of these bodies had been well established.  They had been observed to pass among the satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary planets.  We had long regarded the wanderers as vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in the event of contact.  But contact was not in any degree dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately known.  That among them we should look for the agency of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years considered an inadmissible idea.  But wonders and wild fancies had been of late days strangely rife among mankind; and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally received with I know not what of agitation and mistrust.

The elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated, and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path, at perihelion would bring it into very close proximity with the earth.  There were two or three astronomers of secondary note who resolutely maintained that a contact was inevitable.  I cannot very well express to you the effect of this intelligence upon the people.  For a few short days they would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any manner grasp.  But the truth of a vitally important fact soon makes its way into the understanding of even the most stolid.