pleased," answered the voyager. "I want to be
taught. Tell me how many senses the men of your planet have."

"We only have 72," said the academic, "and we always complain about
it. Our imagination surpasses our needs. We find that with our 72
senses, our ring, our five moons, we are too restricted; and in spite
of all our curiosity and the fairly large number of passions that
result from our 72 senses, we have plenty of time to get bored."

"I believe it," said Micromegas, "for on our planet we have almost
1,000 senses; and yet we still have a kind of vague feeling, a sort
of worry, that warns us that there are even more perfect beings. I
have traveled a bit; and I have seen mortals that surpass us, some
far superior. But I have not seen any that desire only what they
truly need, and who need only what they indulge in. Maybe someday I
will happen upon a country that lacks nothing; but so far no one has
given me any word of a place like that."

The Saturnian and the Sirian proceeded to wear themselves out in
speculating; but after a lot of very ingenious and very dubious
reasoning, it was necessary to return to the facts.

"How long do you live?" said the Sirian.

"Oh! For a very short time," replied the small man from Saturn.

"Same with us," said the Sirian. "we always complain about it. It
must be a universal law of nature."

"Alas! We only live through 500 revolutions around the sun," said the
Saturnian. (This translates to about 15,000 years, by our standards.)
"You can see yourself that this is to die almost at the moment one is
born; our existence is a point, our lifespan an instant, our planet
an atom. Hardly do we begin to learn a little when death arrives,
before we get any experience. As for me, I do not dare make any
plans. I see myself as a drop of water in an immense ocean. I am
ashamed, most of all before you, of how ridiculously I figure in this
world."

Micromegas replied, "If you were not a philosopher, I would fear
burdening you by telling you that our lifespan is 700 times longer
than yours; but you know very well when it is necessary to return
your body to the elements, and reanimate nature in another form,
which we call death. When this moment of metamorphosis comes, to have
lived an eternity or to have lived a day amounts to precisely the
same thing. I have been to countries where they live a thousand times
longer than we do, and they also die. But people everywhere have the
good sense t