The Life of the Fly 



that other smoke, oblivion, the ultimate rest- 

 ing-place of our vain agitations. 



But let us return, little table, to our young 

 days; those of your shining varnish and of 

 my fond illusions. It is Sunday, the day of 

 rest, that is to say, of continuous work, unin- 

 terrupted by my duties in the school. I greatly 

 prefer Thursday, which is not a general holi- 

 day and more propitious to studious calm. 

 Such as it is, for all its distractions, the Lord's 

 day gives me a certain leisure. Let us make 

 the most of it. There are fifty-two Sundays 

 in the year, making a total that is almost 

 equivalent to the long vacation. 



It so happens that I have a glorious quest- 

 Ion to wrestle with to-day; that of Kepler's^ 

 three laws, which, when explored by the 

 calculus, are to show me the fundamental 

 mechanism of the heavenly bodies. One of 

 them says: 



'The area swept out in a given time by the 

 radius vector of the path of a planet is pro- 

 portional to the time taken.' 



From this I have to deduce that the force 

 which confines the planet to its orbit Is dl- 



^Johan Kepler (1571-1630) announced the first two of 

 his three laws of planetary motion in 1609 and discovered 

 the third in 1618. — Translator's Note. 



310 



