It was an extraordinary mark of friendship, for Georges loved Urania even more passionately than I did.  To him she was the personification of everything in life that lifted man above the level of the brute.

Possessing a nobler and finer intellect than mine, he had thrown himself into the study of the problems of the soul with a fury of passion and a concentration of thought that almost killed him.  Are our souls immortal, or do they perish with our bodies?  This was the question that tormented him to madness.  One night I found him sitting in his room in the Place du Pantheon with a glass of poison in his hand.

“This is the quickest road to the knowledge I want,” he said, with a smile.  “I shall soon know if the soul is immortal.”

He had been dissecting a skull; and by his side was a microscope with which he had been studying the grey matter of the brain.  Convinced at last of the uncertainty of the positive sciences, he had fallen into violent despair.  But Urania was at hand to comfort him, and his mind became calmer and clearer when we ceased to talk about earthly things, and ascended into high regions of philosophic speculation over which the muse of heaven presides.

“Ah, Camille,” he exclaimed, “the Uranian way is the best.  It is only by studying the heavens that we shall be able to understand this little earth of ours, and the part we play in it.  Look at the midnight sky, streaming with the light of infinite suns, and filled with an unending procession of worlds in which the spirit of life clothes itself in an unimaginable variety of forms.  This clot of dust on which we live will grow cold, and break and scatter in the abysses of space.  But it is not our home; we are only passengers, and when our journey here is done, fairer mansions are waiting for us in the depths of the sky.  If I die before you, I will return and convince you of this truth.”

Returning to the study of astronomy, Spero built up a system of philosophy which made him, at the age of twenty-five, one of the most famous men in France.

II.—­Love and Death

By way of relief from his severer work, Georges Spero resolved to go to Norway and study the wild and beautiful phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, and I went with him.  One morning, as we were standing on a mountain looking at a magnificent sunrise, I saw a girl climbing a neighbouring peak.  She did not perceive us; but when she reached the summit the image of Spero was thrown on a cloud in front of her, by one of those curious plays of sunlight and mist which sometimes occur in hazy, mountainous regions.  His fine, austere features and graceful figure were enlarged into a vast, god-like apparition, with a halo of bright colours shining like a glory around his head, and a fainter circle of rainbow hues framing his whole form.  It was the first anthelia that the lovely girl had seen, and it filled her with wonder and awe.