Répondirent qu'ils eftoient habitans de la Lune.

 

When I got home, I found a book by Cardano in my study, open on the table, a book I had not put there. I hadn't intended to read it at all, but on approaching it my eyes fell, as if compelled to see, upon the passage in his memoir when he is up one evening, reading by candlelight, when two tall old men passed through the closed doors of his chamber. He asked them many things, but when he asked who they were, they told him they were from the Moon, and vanished. 

Naturally, I was surprised a book had put itself on the table and opened itself on that page of all pages. I took it to be a sign I must prove to all the Moon is a world like ours. I mean, here I am, this evening having spoken about this very subject, looking at the one book in the world treating of that topic in this way; it has flown down from its shelf and, now possessed of reason I assume, opened itself to draw my eye to that most marvellous adventure on the page, casting its reflection upon my imagination and setting my mind in motion!

Surely, I thought, the two tall old men who had appeared to Cardano must have set this book out for me to find, to save themselves the trouble of saying it all a second time. There was only one way to find out; one way or another, I must climb up there and ask them. 

Why not? Prometheus ascended Heaven to steal fire, and I am at least as tough as he was. What could possibly go wrong?