The listeners nodded their heads in assent; the absurdity appeared to them palpable—­as it always did when Gabriel spoke.

“If you wish to penetrate the heavens,” continued Luna, “you must get rid of the human conception of distance.  Man measures everything by his own stature, and he conceives dimensions by the distance his eyes can reach.  This Cathedral seems to us enormous because underneath its naves we seem like ants; but, nevertheless, the Cathedral seen from far is only an insignificant wart; compared with the piece of land we call Spain it is less than a grain of sand, and on the face of the earth it is a mere atom—­nothing.  Our sight makes us consider thirty or forty yards a dizzy height.  At this moment we think we are very high because we are near the roof of the Cathedral, but compared to the infinite this height is as small as when an ant balances on the top of a pebble not knowing how to come down.  Our sight is short, and we who can only measure by yards, and apprehend short distances, must make an immense effort of imagination to realise infinity.  Even then it escapes us and we speak of it very often as of a thing that has no meaning.  How shall I make you understand the immensity of the world?  You must not believe, as our ancestors did, that the earth is flat and stationary and that the heaven is a crystal dome on which God has fastened the stars like golden nails, and in which the sun and moon move to give us light, you must understand that the earth is round, and whirls round in space.”

“Yes, we do know a little about that,” said the bell-ringer doubtfully, “for we were taught so at school.  But, really, do you think it moves?”

“Because in your littleness as human beings, because to our microscopic mole-like sight the immense mechanism of the world is lost, do not for a moment doubt it.  The earth turns.  Without moving from where you are, in twenty-four hours you will have made the complete circuit with the globe.  Without moving our feet we rush along at the rate of four hundred leagues an hour, a velocity that the fastest trains cannot attain.  You are astonished?  We rush along without knowing it.  Our planet does not only turn on itself, but at the same time it turns round the sun at the rate of nearly a hundred thousand miles an hour.  Every second we cover thirty thousand miles.  Men have never invented a cannon ball that could fly so quickly.  You move through space fixed to a projectile which whirls with dizzy speed, and, deceived by your smallness, you think you are living immovable in a dead cathedral.  And this velocity is as nothing compared with others.  The sun round which we turn, flies and flies through space, carrying on by its attraction the earth and the other planets.  It goes through immensity, dragging us along, travelling towards the unknown, without ever striking other bodies, finding always sufficient space to move in with a rapidity which makes one giddy; and this has gone on for thousands and millions of centuries without either it or the earth who follows it in its flight ever passing twice over the same spot.”