"And how," he said, "could God, the immovable, be moved against us for not having known Him when He himself denied us access to Him? But by your faith, my little animal, if belief in God was so necessary, that is, if eternity depended upon it, wouldn't God himself have infused us with light as bright as the Sun which hides itself from no one? For if we pretend that He wanted to come among men like children playing hide and seek-'Hey, there He is!'-that is, by sometimes masking himself and sometimes unmasking himself, hiding himself from some while revealing himself to others, this is to invent a God who is either stupid or malicious, especially given that it is through my mind that I have known Him, it is He that is weak and not I, since He could have given me organs or a soul that would not mistake Him. And if, on the contrary, He had given me a mind incapable of understanding, it would not have been my fault but his, since He could very well have given me a mind bright enough to know Him."
These diabolical and ridiculous opinions made me shiver throughout my body. I began to look more carefully at this man and I was surprised to see that his face had something terrifying about it that I hadn't yet noticed. His eyes were little and deep-set, his skin was dark, his mouth immense, his jaw covered with hair, his nails black. "O God," I immediately said to myself, this miserable fellow is lost after this life and he may even be the Antichrist of whom so much is said in our world."
Nonetheless, I did not reveal these thoughts to my companion because of my respect for his intelligence and the fact that some of the favorable gifts that Nature had bestowed upon him at birth had inspired in me a certain friendliness toward him. Yet I could not keep myself from bursting out with warnings about the bad end he was facing. But he, in answer to my anger, cried, "Yes, by death itself. . ." I do not know what he was going to say, for at that very moment someone knocked at the door of our room and there entered a giant black man, covered with hair. He came in and, seizing the blasphemer by the body, threw him out through the chimney.
My own pity for the fate of this unhappy fellow drove me to grab him in order to pull him from the claws of the Ethiopian. But he was so strong that he threw us both out together, and, in a moment, we were in the sky. It was no longer love for my neighbor that compelled me to hang on tight, but fear of falling. After having risen into the sky for I know not how many days, with no idea what would become of me, I noticed that we were drawing near to our world. Already I could distinguish Asia from Europe and Europe from Africa. As we fell further, I could no longer see beyond Italy, when my heart told me that, without a doubt, the Devil would take my host to Hell, body and soul. For this reason we were passing our own Earth, since Hell lies at its center. Yet I soon forgot this reflection and everything that had overtaken me since the time that the Devil had become our means of transport. This was because of the terror inspired in me by the sight of a mountain on fire, which we nearly touched. The vision of this burning spectacle led me to cry out, "Jesus Mary." Scarcely had I finished the last syllable of these words than I found myself stretched out among the bushes on the top of a little hill with two or three shepherds around me, reciting litanies and speaking in Italian. "Oh," I cried. "God be praised! Finally I have found Christians on the Moon. Please tell me, friends, which province of your world I am in now." "In Italy," they answered. "What," I interrupted. "Is there an Italy in the world of the Moon too?" So little had I reflected on what had happened that I had not even noticed yet that they spoke Italian to me, and that I answered them back in the same language.
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