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The comet of 43 B.C. was held by some to be the soul of Julius Cæsar on its way to the abode of the gods. Bodin, a French lawyer of the sixteenth century, regarded this as the usual significance of comets. He was, indeed, sufficiently modest to attribute the opinion to Democritus, but the whole credit of the discovery belonged to himself.
Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle.
Other women appeared frequently like comets in his sky, flamed for a little into brightness and disappeared into conjugal obscurity, but Ayesha's star remained fixed, even if it was transitorily eclipsed by the brilliance of a new-comer. Sexual relations held for Mahomet towards the end of his life a peculiar potency, born of his intense energetic nature.
Of 262 comets recorded since 1680, 130 are direct, and 132 are retrograde. This equality is what the law of probabilities would indicate. Then, in the fourth place, the physical constitution of comets accords with the hypothesis. The ability of nebulous matter to concentrate into a concrete form, depends on its mass.
Why can't it be as romantic and agreeable as the things you want to say?" "Why," countered Garry, "isn't peace as romantic as war? Ask somebody who knows. I don't." He stared curiously at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or star-dust.
Father Secchi, in the clear sky of Rome, was able to push the identification even closer than had heretofore been done. The complete hydro-carbon spectrum consists of five zones of variously coloured light. Three of these only the three central ones had till then been obtained from comets; owing, it was supposed, to their temperature not being high enough to develop the others.
Curtains of cloth-of-gold seemed to hang behind the high altar; treasures of the goldsmith's art covered all the ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling sheaves; censers glowed full of burning gems; sacred vases gleamed like fiery comets; and around all there seemed to be a rain of luminous flowers amidst waving lacework beds, bouquets, and garlands of roses, from whose expanding petals dropped showers of stars.
The hypothesis that they, or any of the comets associated with them, were returns of an individual body is peremptorily excluded. They may all, however, have been separated from one original mass by the divellent action of the sun at close quarters.
In 1606 came a second treatise on the new star, discussing various theories to account for its appearance, and refusing to accept the notion that it was a "fortuitous concourse of atoms". This was followed in 1607 by a treatise on comets, suggested by the comet appearing that year, known as Halley's comet after its next return.
And, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun.
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