The Pebble Dead of Love
A story fallen from the Moon

On the 24th tchoum-tchoum (Wéga reckoning, 7th series), a frightful moonquake devastated the Sea of Tranquillity. Horrible—or charming—fissures appeared in this virgin yet fertile soil. A flint (nothing yet of the age of split stone, and all the more so of polished stone) ventured to roll down from a lost peak and, proud of its roundness, went to lodge itself a few phthwfg from fissure A.B.33, vulgarly called Monkey-Mold. The rosy aspect of this landscape, quite new to it, a flint barely disembarked from its peak, the black manganese moss that overhung the fresh abyss, drove the rash pebble wild; it stopped hard, upright, stupid.

The fissure burst into the delicious but silent laughter peculiar to the Beings of the Atmosphere-less Planet. Its physiognomy, in this laughter, far from losing any of its grace, gained a je-ne-sais-quoi of exquisite modernity. Enlarged, yet more coquettish, it seemed to say to the pebble: “Come on in, then, if you dare!”

The latter (whose true name was SKKJRO) judged it wise to precede his amorous assault with a serenade sung in the perfumed void of magnetic oxide. He employed the imaginary coefficients of an equitation of the fourth degree. It is known that in ethereal space one obtains, by this method, fugues without equal. (Plato, bk. XV, §13.)

The fissure (its selenian name means “Augustine”) at first appeared sensitive to this homage. It was even weakening, welcoming. The pebble, emboldened, was about to abuse the situation, to roll further, to penetrate perhaps…

Here the drama begins—brief, brutal, true. A second moonquake, jealous of this idyll, shook the dry ground. The fissure (Augustine), terrified, closed forever, and the pebble (Alfred) burst with rage. From that moment dates the Age of Split Stone.

Charles Cros, 1886