"I have already told you, palaces, or castles, if you prefer."

"You are serious?" I asked.

"Perfectly so. They cannot be anything else."

Seeing our astonishment and incredulity, Edmund added:

"Since they retain their places, it is evident that they are edifices of
some kind, attached to the ground. But their great height and aerial
structure indicate that they are erected in the air--floating, I should
say, but firmly anchored at the bottom. Really, I cannot see anything
astonishing about it; it accords with everything else that we have seen.
Your minds are too hidebound to terrestrial analogies, and you do not
give your imaginations sufficient play with the new materials that are
here offered.

"This atmosphere," he continued, after a pause, "is exactly suited for
such things. It is a region of atmospheric calm. If we were not moving,
you would hardly feel a breeze, and I doubt if there is ever a high wind
here. To build their habitations in the air and make them float like
gossamers--could any idea be more beautiful than that, or more in harmony
with the nature of this planet, which is the favorite of the sun, for
first he inundates it with a splendor unknown to the earth, and then
generously covers it with a gorgeous screen of cloud which cuts off his
scorching beams but suffers the light to pass, filtered to opalescent
ether?"

When Edmund spoke like that, as he sometimes did, suffusing his words