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Title: Voyages to the Moon and the Sun
Author: Cyrano de Bergerac
Translator: Richard Aldington
Release date: July 10, 2024 [eBook #74000]
Language: English
Original publication: London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1923
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOYAGES TO THE MOON AND THE SUN ***
VOYAGES TO THE MOON AND THE SUN
By CYRANO DE BERGERAC
_Translated by_
RICHARD ALDINGTON
_With an Introduction and Notes_
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH
Broadway Translations
"_Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety._"
À FRÉDÉRIC LACHÈVRE
TÉMOINAGE D'ADMIRATION ET DE RECONNAISSANCE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
(1) The Legend of Cyrano
(2) The Life of Cyrano
(3) Cyrano's Friends
(4) The Libertin Question
(5) The Works of Cyrano
VOYAGE TO THE MOON
VOYAGE TO THE SUN
APPENDICES
(1) Extracts from Godwin, D'Urfey, and Swift
(2) Bibliography
(3) Genealogy
(4) Coat of Arms
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Portrait of Cyrano
2. Signature of Cyrano
3. Title-page to Lovell's Translation
4. Cyrano's First Attempt
5. Frontispiece to Lovell's Translation
6. Cyrano's Flight to the Sun
7. The Parliament of Birds
8. Gonzales' Voyage to the Moon
9. Cyrano's Coat of Arms
CYRANO DE BERGERAC
I
THE LEGEND OF CYRANO
The legend of Cyrano de Bergerac began, one might say, during his life;
but it was strongly founded by his friend Henry Le Bret who edited _The
Voyage to the Moon_ with an introduction, in 1657, two years after
Cyrano's death. The 'Préface' of Le Bret is one of the chief sources of
information about Cyrano. It is no discredit to Le Bret that he drew as
favourable a portrait of his friend as he could, but we cannot accept
literally everything he says and we are forced to read between the
lines of his panegyric. Le Bret is largely responsible for the moral
legend of Cyrano. He says:
"In fine, Reader, he always passed for a man of singular rare wit; to
which he added such good fortune on the side of the senses that he
always controlled them as he willed; in so much that he rarely drank
wine because (said he) excess of drink brutalizes, and as much care is
needed with it as with arsenic (with this he was wont to compare it)
for everything is to be feared from this poison, whatever care is used;
even if nothing were to be dreaded but what the vulgar call _qui pro
quo_, which makes it always dangerous. He was no less moderate in his
eating, from which he banished _ragoûts_ as much as he could in the
belief that the simplest and least complicated living is the best;
which he supported by the example of modern men, who live so short a
time compared with those of the earliest ages, who appear to have lived
so long because of the simplicity of their food.
"He added to these two qualities so great a restraint towards the fair
sex that it may be said he never departed from the respect owed it by
ours; and with all this he had so great an aversion from self-interest
that he could never imagine what it was to possess private property,
his own belonging less to him than to such of his acquaintance as
needed it. And so Heaven, which is not unmindful, willed that among the
large number of friends he had during his life some should love him
until death and a few even beyond death."[1]
[Footnote 1: Le Bret, Préface, 1657.]
It will be seen later that many of these virtues were probably
necessities arising from an unheroic cause; but this moral character
given by Le Bret was very useful to the 19th-century builders of the
Cyrano legend.
Other 17th-century writers give a very different impression of Cyrano
de Bergerac: where Le Bret saw a noble, almost austere genius, they
went to the opposite extreme and saw a madman. An anecdote in the
_Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Réaux gives us another Cyrano:
"A madman named Cyrano wrote a play called _The Death of Agrippina_
where Sejanus says horrible things against the Gods. The play was pure
balderdash (_un vray galimathias_).[2] Sercy, who published it, told
Boisrobert that he sold out the edition in a twinkling. 'You surprise
me', said Boisrobert. 'Ah, Monsieur', replied the bookseller, 'it has
such splendid impieties'."[3]
[Footnote 2: "Nothing could be clearer or better in style, and it is
less archaic than Corneille." (Remy de Gourmont).]
[Footnote 3: Which means "Strike, there is the enemy", but might also
mean "Strike, there is the sacrament."]
The implication that the success of the play was due to its "impieties"
is repeated in an anecdote of the _Menagiana_ quoted by Lacroix, to the
following effect: When the pious people heard there were impieties in
_The Death of Agrippina_, they went prepared to hiss it; they passed
over in silence all the tirades against the Gods which had caused the
rumour, but when Sejanus said:
"Frappons, voilà l'hostie",[4]
they interrupted the actor with whistling, booing and shouts of:
"Ah! the rascal! Ah! The atheist! Hear how he speaks of the holy
sacrament!"
[Footnote 4: Tallemant des Réaux, _Historiettes_, 1858. Vol. 7: "Suite
des Naifvetez, Bons Mots, etc."]
I cannot find this anecdote in my own copy of the _Menagiana_, but
since my edition is 1693 and Lacroix quotes that of 1715, I presume
his is an addition. In my edition I find another anecdote of Cyrano
which I give here both for its rarity and because it shows 17th-century
contempt for Cyrano at its most virulent:
"What wretched works are those of Cyrano de Bergerac! He studied at the
Collège de Beauvais in the time of Principal Grangier. They say he was
still in his 'rhetoric' when he wrote _The Pedant Outwitted_ against
his head-master. There are a few passable things in this play but all
the rest is very flat. When he wrote his _Voyage to the Moon_ I think
he had one quarter of the moon in his head. The first public sign he
gave of his madness was to go to mass in the morning in trunk hose and
a night cap without his doublet. He had not one _sou_ when he fell
ill of the disease from which he died and if M. de Sainte-Marthe had
not charitably supplied all his necessities he would have died in the
poor-house."[5]
[Footnote 5: _Menagiana_, Amsterdam, 1693, page 199.]
More 17th-century anecdotes of Cyrano will be found in the _Life_;
those cited will at least show the early tendency to attach anecdotes
to him and the curious conflict of contemporary opinion. During the
second half of the 17th century Cyrano remained popular and his works
were frequently reprinted. The 18th century saw a great decline in
reputation and in editions; Voltaire repeated the accusation: "A
madman!" No edition of Cyrano's works appeared in Paris between 1699
and 1855: the last of them before the revival of the 19th century was
the Amsterdam edition of 1761. For a century there was no edition
of Cyrano. He dropped out of sight almost entirely; but in the 19th
century he was destined to be revived as an increasingly legendary
figure, culminating in the heroic apotheosis of Rostand's _Cyrano de
Bergerac_.
Strangely enough the revival began in England in 1820 with an article
in the _Retrospective Review_.[6] This article shows some acquaintance
with Cyrano's originals as well as with the translation reviewed. The
anonymous writer says:
"Cyrano de Bergerac is a marvellously strange writer--his character,
too, was out of the common way. His chief passion appears to have been
duelling; and, from the numerous affairs of honour in which he was
concerned in a very short life and the bravery he displayed on those
occasions, he acquired the cognomen of 'The Intrepid'. His friend Le
Bret says he was engaged in no less than one hundred duels for his
friends, and not one on his own account. Others however say, that,
happening to have a nose somewhat awry, whoever was so unfortunate
or so rash as to laugh at it, was sure to be called upon to answer
its intrepid owner in the field. But however this may be, it is
indisputable that Cyrano was a distinguished monomachist and a most
eccentric writer."[7]
[Footnote 6: _Retrospective Review_, 1820. Vol. I. Part 2. Art. viii.
_Satyrical Characters and Handsome Descriptions in Letters, written to
several Persons of Quality_, by Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac. Translated
from the French by a Person of Honour. London, 1658.]
[Footnote 7: The critic proceeds to sum up Cyrano's writing in the same
Corinthian style. French commentators, quoting this passage, often make
the mistake of dating it 1658 instead of 1820.]
Seventeen years later that amiable man of letters, Charles Nodier,
resuscitated Cyrano in his _Bonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de
Bergerac_. Before this Nodier had incidentally defended Cyrano in his
_Bibliographie des Fous_:
"As to this book (_The Voyage to the Moon_), which he wrote when _he
was already mad_ (according to Voltaire), would you not be astonished
if you were told that it contained more profound perceptions, more
ingenious foresight, more anticipations in that science whose confused
elements Descartes scarcely sorted out, than the large volume written
by Voltaire under the supervision of the Marquis du Châtelet? Cyrano
used his genius like a hot-head, but there is nothing in it which
resembles a madman."[8]
[Footnote 8: Charles Nodier, _Bibliographie des Fous_. Quoted by F.
Lachèvre.]
Nodier is responsible for that portion of the Cyrano legend which makes
him an innovator, plagiarized from, and persecuted to an early grave.
"It seems that a man who opened up so many paths to talent and who went
so far in all the paths he opened, ought to have left a name in any
literature....
"There was once a wooden horse which bore in its flanks all the
conquerors of Ilion, yet had no part in the triumph. This begins like a
fairy-tale ... and yet it is true.
"Poor wooden horse! Poor Cyrano!"[9]
[Footnote 9: Charles Nodier, _Bonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de
Bergerac_. Quoted by Remy de Gourmont.]
But, if Charles Nodier carried on the legend, he did little more
than open the way for Theophile Gautier, whose famous _Grotesque_ is
filled with every conceivable error of fact and yet is obviously one
of Rostand's chief sources. _Les Grotesques_ appeared in 1844 and
contained ten pseudo-biographical sketches of "romantic" personalities
in French literature chiefly of the 17th century. The book itself is
an interesting by-product of the romantic movement, but here we are
only concerned with the sixth sketch, _Cyrano de Bergerac_. This opens
with a fantastic divagation upon noses, perhaps the most exaggerated
development of the legendary Cyranesque appendage. If the reader will
examine Cyrano's portraits, without prejudice and with particular
attention to the nose, he will scarcely be prepared for this outburst:
"This incredible nose is settled in a three-quarter face [portrait],
the smaller side of which it covers entirely; it forms in the middle a
mountain which in my opinion must be the highest mountain in the world
after the Himalayas; then it descends rapidly towards the mouth, which
it largely obumbrates, like a tapir's snout or the rostrum of a bird
of prey; at the extremity it is divided by a line very similar to,
though more pronounced than, the furrow which cuts the cherry lip of
Anne of Austria, the white queen with the long ivory hands. This makes
two distinct noses in one face, which is more than custom allows, ...
the portraits of Saint Vincent de Paul and the deacon Paris will
show you the best characterized types of this sort of structure; but
Cyrano's nose is less doughy, less puffy in contour; it has more bones
and cartilage, more flats and high-lights, it is more heroic."
[Illustration: _Cyrano de Bergerac._]
We then learn that Cyrano was a wonderful duellist, that he revenged
any insult to his nose with a challenge; after more disquisition on
noses we read that Cyrano was "born in 1620, in the castle of Bergerac,
in Périgord"[10], that he was unable to endure the pedantry of his
schoolmaster and so that good country gentleman, his father, allowed
him to go to Paris, where at eighteen he threw himself into fashionable
life with the greatest success. Then comes a highly-coloured picture
of the contrast between life in Paris in 1638 and the Bergerac
family in their "tranquil and discreet house, sober and cold, well
ordered and silent, almost always half-asleep in the shadow of its
pallid walnut trees between the church and the cemetery." This is
followed by a defence of Cyrano against the charge of atheism with a
quotation from _The Death of Agrippina_. Next we hear that this Gascon
gentleman joined the Gascon company of guards with Le Bret and of his
numerous prowesses with the sword, and this slides into a description
of Cyrano's early slashing style, with quotations from _The Pedant
Outwitted_ and the story of the actor whom Cyrano forbade to play. This
is followed by several pages of excited panegyric, paraphrased from Le
Bret; we get Cyrano's wounds, his love of study, his disinterestedness,
his love of freedom and scorn of serving _les grands_, his subsequent
service with the duc d'Arpajon, the falling timber on his head and his
death; then we hear of his simple habits, his brilliant friendships
and his study under Gassendi. The essay ends with several pages,
dealing with Molière's famous plagiarism from _The Pedant Outwitted_
and containing a most exaggerated account of Cyrano's writings,
extremely loose in expression, showing that Gautier can have had but a
superficial acquaintance with Cyrano's books.
[Footnote 10: Three errors in ten words!]
If this essay of Gautier's were meant as biography and criticism,
one can only say that it is likely to be misleading; if as fiction,
that the form is not well chosen. Nevertheless, this and Nodier's
article stimulated curiosity in Cyrano sufficiently to cause his works
to be reprinted in 1855. Lacroix in 1858 issued another edition and
wrote an enthusiastic preface (from the point of view of an ardent
free-thinker), making Cyrano a great predecessor of the 18th-century
_philosophes_ and adding more legend.
After this, the legend of Cyrano smouldered for some forty years and
then broke out in a final conflagration in 1897, with Edmond Rostand's
_Cyrano de Bergerac_. Everything picturesque which fancy and rumour
had attached to the name of Cyrano during the centuries was taken up
by Rostand, exaggerated, idealised almost to infinity--and the world
believed, and doubtless still believes, that this is the "real" Cyrano
de Bergerac. Strangely, Rostand apparently shared this illusion; for a
French savant, M. Emile Magne, wrote a pamphlet pointing out some of
Rostand's worst errors, and Rostand replied with a letter, claiming
that his play was historically correct.
Rostand's play is a pleasing, if belated, specimen of the French
romantic drama; its dramatic quality is undeniable, its appeal to
the sentiments irresistible, its verse skilfully handled; it is
characteristically, delightfully, absurdly French; it deserved its
popularity. A man who cannot enjoy Rostand's _Cyrano_ has taste too
fastidious for his own good. But when he has watched the heroic lover
of Roxanne fight his duels to the accompaniment of a ballade, promenade
his huge nose about the stage, exhibit the remarkable delicacy of
his sentiments and finally die a Gascon death--"mon Panache!"--this
imaginary spectator must not tell us that this is "the real" Cyrano
de Bergerac. It is an amusing Cyrano one would prefer not to lose;
but Rostand's invention has nothing to do with the man who wrote the
tragedy of _The Death of Agrippina_ and _The Voyages to the Sun and
Moon_; this is not the young man who enlisted in M. de Casteljaloux's
company of guards; this is not the follower of Gassendi and Rohault;
and this delicate lover is--alas!--not that Savinien de Cyrano,
self-styled de Bergerac, who died miserably in the prime of his age not
so much from the effects of the falling piece of timber as probably of
venereal disease.
II
THE LIFE OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC
The family of Cyrano was not Gascon and was not noble. The first Cyrano
of whom anything was known in France is Savinien I de Cyrano, of
Sardinian origin, bourgeois of Paris and a merchant of fish. Doubtless
the prejudice of noble birth is antiquated, yet when one has been
brought up on Rostand's Cyrano the discovery is a shock, rather like
finding that Sir Philip Sidney's grandfather was a London fishmonger.
But this is only the first of the disagreeable surprises modern
investigators prepare for us.
This Savinien, grandfather of the poet, became notary and '_secrétaire
du Roy_' in 1571. He was wealthy, he owned a large house in the rue des
Prouvaires, various annuities, the fiefs of Boiboisseaux, Mauvières,
and Bergerac, the last two bought in 1582. These purchases represent
a familiar scene in the eternal social comedy of the rise and fall of
families; the genuine old de Bergerac family had disappeared but their
memory lingered on and no member of the Cyrano family ventured to call
himself de Bergerac at Bergerac. Indeed the poet was the only member of
the family who used the name either during the fifty-four years they
possessed the fief or afterwards. In any case this Bergerac is not the
Dordogne or Gascon Bergerac but a little estate not very far from Paris
in the modern department of Seine et Oise.[11] So much for the noble
Gascon of Gautier and Rostand.
[Footnote 11: In Périgord there is no castle called De Bergerac.
(Brun). Mauvières and Bergerac, often known as Sous-Forest, are in
the commune of Saint-Forgeux, canton of Chevreuse, arrondissement of
Rambouillet. (Frédy de Coubertin).]
This Savinien I de Cyrano married Anne Le Maire; their eldest son,
Abel I de Cyrano, '_avocat au Parlement de Paris_,' married Espérance
Bellenger on the third of September 1612.[12] An inventory of their
goods shows that Cyrano's father was an educated man who read Greek,
Latin, and Italian. Abel de Cyrano had six children; the eldest
surviving son was Savinien II, the poet, baptised on the sixth of March
1619 in Paris.
[Footnote 12: The genealogical tree of the Cyrano family will be found
in Appendix III.]
In 1622 Abel de Cyrano left Paris for his house at Mauvières, where
young Savinien de Cyrano remained "until he was old enough to read".
He was then sent to a small private school kept by a country parson,
where he met his lifelong friend and posthumous panegyrist, Henry Le
Bret. Savinien did not like his tutor; and this is not the first or the
last time in history when there has existed a mutual hatred between a
pert boy of talent and some plodding pedagogue. The boy complained so
continually to his father that he was taken away from the parson and
sent to the Collège de Beauvais in Paris.
These meagre details are all we know positively of Cyrano's childhood
except that his godmother left him six hundred _livres_ in 1628. How
much of the rebelliousness of his temper in later years was due to
hatred of this pedagogical parson is a matter of pure conjecture,
but Cyrano's dislike of pedants and priests might plausibly be
attributed at least in part to this man's clumsy usage. We may also
surmise that access to his father's extensive library gave him that
precocity for which he was remarkable, and that the years of childhood
spent at Mauvières created in him a genuine love of nature. Numerous
passages might be quoted from his writings to show that he really
liked out-of-doors life, enjoyed the beauty of the country, and felt
that kinship with wild living things--animals, birds, plants--which
is supposed to be a wholly modern sentiment. This sentiment may be
seen in the _Letters_, expressed with a good deal of affectation; but
unmistakably in those pages of _The Voyage to the Sun_ which describe
the talking birds and trees.
The head-master of Beauvais was at that time Jean Grangier, described
by some as an excellent pedagogue, by others as brutal, superstitious,
violent, and vicious. Apparently he was one of those pedagogues who,
in Ben Jonson's words, "swept their livings from the posteriors of
little children"; and therefore was very unpopular with Cyrano, who
made him the hero of _The Pedant Outwitted_. Flogging will always
drive a sensitive and high-spirited boy to revolt; and when we find
a truculent and sometimes offensive mood of revolt a main feature of
Cyrano's work, we should remember before condemning him that a large
portion of his childhood was passed under the birch of two bigoted
pedants.
Cyrano left Beauvais in 1637, when he was eighteen. In the preceding
year Abel de Cyrano had sold the fiefs of Mauvières, and Bergerac and
had returned to Paris. This sale of land only fifty-four years after
the purchase by the first Savinien de Cyrano shows how rapidly the
affairs of the family declined financially. It would be interesting
to know more of Cyrano's life in the period between his leaving
school and joining the guards. Le Bret tells us that "at the age when
nature is most easily corrupted", and when Cyrano "had liberty to do
as he chose", he (Le Bret) stopped him "on a dangerous incline". It
will easily be conjectured that the change from a flogging school to
complete liberty in the Paris of 1637 would not incline a precocious
youth to the monastic virtues. Many fantastic pictures of Paris under
Louis XIII have been drawn by novelists and essayists; whether it
were quite as picturesque as they make out may be doubted, but that
its taverns were filled with riot, excitement and debauch is certain;
and Cyrano frequented the taverns. The famous _Pomme de Pin_, the
_Croix de Lorraine_, the _Boisselière_, the _Pressoir d'Or_, and a
dozen other taverns were crowded with heterogeneous sets of courtiers,
gentlemen, gossips, poets, atheists, duellists, rogues of all sorts,
talking, laughing, drinking, writing, whoring, gambling and brawling.
From Gaston d'Orléans, the King's brother, downwards, the greater part
of the nobility, gentry and the learned at some time of their lives
frequented these commodious taverns, rubbed shoulders with knaves and
bawds and poets and held high carouse.
"Mordieu! comme il pleut là dehors!
Faisons pleuvoir dans nostre corps
Du vin, tu l'entens sans le dire,
Et c'est là le vray mot pour rire;
Chantons, rions, menons du bruit,
Beuvons ici toute la nuit,
Tant que demain la belle Aurore
Nous trouve tous à table encore."[13]
[Footnote 13: From Saint-Amant's _Le Débauche_. In English it means
roughly: "'Sdeath! how it rains outside | Let us make it rain wine in
our bellies--you understand that without a word spoken and that's the
real jest; sing, laugh, make a row, drink here all night, and to-morrow
let the fair Aurora find us all here still at table."]
Into that society of revellers, unscrupulous, heedless, coarse,
irreligious, but brave, witty, chivalrous, talented and merry, came
a young man of eighteen, the owner of a curious nose "shaped like a
parrot's beak", talented, witty and brave himself, already a brilliant
swordsman, scatter-brained, vain with all the vanity of young men in
Latin countries, eager for knowledge but filled with hatred for the
theology and pedantry of his early masters. Imagine the London of James
the First's reign so vividly and delightfully sketched in _The Fortunes
of Nigel_, adding to it that freedom of speech, morals and speculation
which Scott largely left out; transfer it to the turbulent Paris of
1637 and throw into that _milieu_ not a sober Scotch laird, but a
hot-headed young Frenchman. Is it not almost hypocritical to expect
that he would do anything different from what he apparently did do:
Drink, gamble, blaspheme, whore, talk atheism, play mad pranks and slit
men's throats in duels?
From this wild cabaret life Cyrano was rescued by Le Bret just about
the time when Abel de Cyrano threatened seriously to cut off supplies.
At nineteen Cyrano entered the company of guards commanded by the
"triple Gascon", M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux.
Cyrano de Bergerac was a good soldier, but that does not mean he was
free from the ordinary vices of soldiers. If the "dangerous incline"
from which Le Bret rescued his friend was gambling, he chose a curious
remedy; for gambling is inevitably one means of dispelling the crushing
ennui of military life. Another, almost universal, military amusement
is drinking; one would not expect to find teetotallers among the Gascon
guard. It seems probable that the "dangerous incline" was atheism
or a serious love affair; for the military life is dulling to the
affections and fatal to thought. Certainly, the mess and guard-room
of M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux's company would not greatly differ
from a noisy cabaret. One hardly sees what moral advantages were
gained by the change, except that military discipline and comradeship
probably steadied Cyrano if they failed to correct the extravagance of
his character and behaviour. Casteljaloux's company consisted almost
entirely of Gascons, and this fact has helped to propagate the myth of
Cyrano's noble birth; and doubtless he assumed the Gascon-sounding name
of de Bergerac to increase the illusion. But he must have possessed
some other merit than that of an assumed name to enable him to enter
the guards; this was of course his swordsmanship.
Duelling in France in the first half of the 17th century was more than
a fashionable mania, it was a real danger to the state. The fashion was
at its height in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII. During eight
years of the former reign no less than two thousand gentlemen lost
their lives in duels. Even the great Cardinal Richelieu only succeeded
in diminishing, not in crushing the habit. The duelling in Rostand's
_Cyrano_ is the most accurate part of the play; indeed it would be
difficult to exaggerate the fantastic nature of these duels. Men fought
for the merest trifles; not so much for honour as for the love of
fighting, of prestige and notoriety. Successful duelling was then a
sure means to those commonly desired ends. The thirst for "monomachy"
was so ardent that the seconds were not content to regulate the combat
but must needs take part in it; so that a girl's ribbon might be the
pretext for six men to pull out their rapiers in mortal combat, with
the result perhaps of several wounds and more than one death. Cyrano
de Bergerac was a brilliant swordsman, a talent which gave him a
position comparable to that of an aeroplane "ace" during the European
war. The stories told of his duelling sound fabulous and are probably
exaggerated, but certainly have a foundation in fact. Le Bret tells us:
"Duels, which at that time seemed the unique and most rapid means of
becoming known, in a few days rendered him so famous that the Gascons,
who composed nearly the whole company, considered him the demon of
courage and credited him with as many duels as he had been with them
days."
The most remarkable thing about these duels, and a point very much in
Cyrano's favour, was that he fought over a hundred as second to other
men and not on his own account. He was no Bobadil. Brun tries to argue
that Cyrano must have fought on his own account, but even M. Lachèvre,
who is hostile to Cyrano, denies it. Moreover, we have Cyrano's own
declaration: "I have been everybody's second."
Casteljaloux's company was ordered for active service in 1639. The
company was besieged in Mouzon by the Croats of the Imperial Army.
Cyrano has described part of the siege in the twenty-fourth of his
_Lettres Diverses_. The garrison was short of provisions and during
one of the numerous sorties Cyrano was shot through the body. He
had not recovered when the garrison was relieved by Chatillon on
the twenty-first of June 1639. Next year Cyrano was again on active
service. He was wounded a second time by a sword-thrust in the throat
at the siege of Arras, sometime before the ninth of August 1640. He had
served this campaign in Conti's gendarmes.
Two severe wounds in fourteen months are "cooling cards" even to a
pseudo-Gascon. Cyrano determined to retire from the service.
"The hardships he suffered during these two sieges," says Le Bret,
"the inconveniences resulting from two severe wounds, the frequent
duels forced upon him by his reputation for courage and skill, which
compelled him to act as second more than one hundred times (for he
never had a quarrel on his own account), the small hope he had of
preferment, from the lack of a patron, to whom his free genius was
incapable of submitting, and finally his great love of learning, caused
him to renounce the occupation of war which demands everything of a man
and makes him as much an enemy of literature as literature makes him a
lover of peace."
Cyrano, then, returned to his studies. Hitherto he had been unfortunate
in his instructors, but he now made the acquaintance of several
scholars and men of letters who had a strong influence on him, whose
ideas he adopted and copied in his works. The celebrated Gassendi, who
revived the philosophy of Epicurus and opposed both the Aristotelians
and Descartes, came to Paris and lectured to a small number of selected
students. Niceron makes the unlikely assertion that Cyrano forced his
way into this learned society at the sword's point. It is certain that
Cyrano sat at Gassendi's feet and picked up from his lectures those
fragments of Epicurean physics he afterwards scattered through his
works. There most probably he met Molière, Rohault, Bernier, Chapelle
and the younger La Mothe Le Vayer. Cyrano was therefore a member of a
distinguished literary group which contained one eminent philosopher
and a dramatist of supreme genius.
Philosophy and the society of men of letters did not cause Cyrano
to abandon his sword. Two documents are extant, dated October 1641,
showing Cyrano's arrangements to take lessons in dancing and fencing.
It is in these years 1641-43 that he began seriously to write and at
the same time performed his most famous feats with the sword.
The battle of the Porte de Nesle, more authentic and even more heroic
than the feats of Horatius celebrated by Lord Macaulay, has been
related by every writer on Cyrano, from Le Bret to Rostand, from
Gautier to M. Emile Magne. What happened, as far as one can make out,
was this. A friend of Cyrano's, the Chevalier de Lignières, had been
rash enough to banter the conjugal infelicities of a great lord who,
sensible of the affront to his person and rank, hired a set of fellows
to fall upon Lignières and to crop his ears in the public highway.
Lignières heard of this, took refuge with Cyrano and remained with
him until night, when they set out together for Lignières's home with
Cyrano as escort and two officers of Conti's regiment as witnesses,
in the rear. At the Porte de Nesle the _bravi_ were ambushed to catch
Lignières on his way to the Faubourg Saint-Germain; Le Bret says there
were a hundred of them. In any event there was a crowd. Incredible
as it seems, the fact is well attested that Cyrano attacked them all
single-handed, killed two, wounded seven and put the rest to flight.[14]
[Footnote 14: See M. Magne's _Chevalier de Lignières_ (1920) for an
elaborate and highly-coloured account of this affair. Marshal Gassion
is said to have offered Cyrano his protection when he heard of it,
which Cyrano refused.]
The battle of Brioché's monkey is less creditable to Cyrano and far
less authentic. The evidence is the unreliable one of an anonymous
work, _Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le Singe de Brioché, au Bout
du Pont-Neuf_, almost certainly written by Dassoucy, a friend with whom
Cyrano had quarrelled. Dassoucy fled to Italy when the pamphlet was
published. The gist of the pamphlet is as follows:
One Brioché exhibited a marionette show near one end of the Pont-Neuf.
Among the troup was a live monkey.
Cyrano came along, and some thirty or forty lackeys, waiting for the
puppet show, began to hustle him and to make fun of his singular
appearance; one of them actually flipped him on the end of his nose.
Out came that deadly rapier in a flash, and the intrepid little "fiery
whoreson," rushed at them, driving the whole mob of them before him.
Brioché's monkey, "making a leg" for a _sou_, got in Cyrano's way and
the gallant swordsman, not unnaturally mistaking it for one of the
rabble, pierced it effectually with his rapier. Brioché brought an
action against Cyrano to recover fifty _pistoles_ damages.
"Bergerac defended himself like Bergerac, that is, with facetious
writings and grotesque jokes. He told the judge he would pay Brioché
like a poet, or 'with monkey's money' (_i.e._ laugh at him); that coins
were an article of furniture unknown to Phœbus. He vowed he would
immortalise the dead beast in an Apollonian epitaph."
It is possible that Dassoucy was merely parodying the battle of the
Porte de Nesle; none of the facetious writings referred to is extant;
but they may have perished with the elegy Le Bret saw Cyrano writing in
the guard-room and the _Story of the Spark_ and Cyrano's _Lyric Poems_.
The third anecdote attached to this period relates to the actor Mondory
or Montfleury, the latter of whom is satirised in Cyrano's letter
_Against a Fat Man_. The 1695 edition of the _Menagiana_ gives the
story as follows:
"Bergerac was a great sword-clanker. His nose, which was very ugly,
was the cause of his killing at least ten people. He quarrelled with
Montdory, the comedian, and strictly forbade him to appear on the
stage. 'I forbid you to appear for a month', said he. Two days later
Bergerac was at the play. Montdory appeared and began to act his
part as usual; Bergerac shouted to him from the middle of the pit,
with threats if he did not leave, and for fear of worse Montdory
retired."[15]
[Footnote 15: _Menagiana._ 1695. Quoted by Remy de Gourmont. The reader
will remember Rostand's use of this anecdote.]
The year 1645 in several respects opens a new phase in Cyrano's life.
His mother was dead, he began to suffer from poverty--due to gambling
it is said--and contracted a disease. There is a mystery about the
death of Cyrano de Bergerac and the "_maladie_" which preceded it. M.
Lachèvre has discovered a document showing the payment of four hundred
_livres_ to a barber-chirurgeon by Cyrano and, from circumstantial
evidence we need not repeat, M. Lachèvre asserts that this was venereal
disease. If so, the moral philosopher created by Le Bret disappears as
completely as the delicate lover invented by Rostand.
It is a remarkable fact that Cyrano did not make a serious appearance
in print until the year before his death, 1654. He wrote earlier and
published prefaces and commendatory poems; he scribbled a few pamphlets
and libels during the Fronde; but his reputation as a writer during his
lifetime must have been based on the circulation of his writings in
manuscript. The letters were not published until 1654, but they must
have been written much earlier; _The Pedant Outwitted_ does not seem
to have been played, and _The Voyage to the Moon_ was circulated in
manuscript for some years before it was published.
The fact is we know very little about the last ten years of Cyrano's
life. Abel de Cyrano died in January 1648 and the poet's share of the
inheritance rescued him at least for a time from the poverty into which
he had fallen. In February 1649 there appeared an anti-Mazarin pamphlet
in verse, entitled _Le Ministre d'Etat Flambé_, signed D. B. This was
followed by several prose pamphlets directed against Mazarin: _Le
Gazetier des Interressé_, _La Sybille Moderne ou l'Oracle du Temps_,
_Le Conseiller fidèle_. Some have denied that these were Cyrano's
work; others are convinced to the contrary. If he did write them he
soon changed his political opinions; for in 1651 he published his
pro-Mazarin _Contre les Frondeurs_. One biographer thinks Cyrano was
bribed by Mazarin to change his politics; another biographer thinks
that since Cyrano undoubtedly wrote for Mazarin he could never have
written against him.
There is a legend that about this time Cyrano visited England, but
there is no confirmation of this.
Hitherto Cyrano had been too independent to enter the service of
any nobleman. We have noticed his refusal of the offers made him by
Marshal Gassion. Subjection to the whims of some wealthy person of
note was a misery endured by many authors of the 17th century; Cyrano
de Bergerac avoided it as long as he could, but about the end of 1652
he entered the service of the duc d'Arpajon. Saint-Simon in his usual
contemptuous way calls this nobleman "Un bonhomme"; he was a good
soldier, religious, vain and probably not very intelligent. Under his
patronage Cyrano's works were printed in two handsome quartos in 1654.
They contained _The Death of Agrippina_, _The Pedant Outwitted_, and
_The Letters_. There was a dedication to the duke and a charming sonnet
to his daughter. The success of these writings was considerable and
their popular vogue lasted at least half a century.
The death of Cyrano de Bergerac is surrounded with mystery. He was only
thirty-five when he died. Was this early death the result of a disease,
as M. Lachèvre asserts; or was it, as other commentators say, the
result of a blow on the head from a falling beam? If he were hit by a
piece of timber, was this an accident, or was it revenge? Had Cyrano's
very free philosophical speculations anything to do with it? It is
impossible to answer these questions definitely; each commentator has
replied to them according to his own prejudices.
The accident, if there were an accident, happened early in 1654. For
some unknown reason Cyrano was turned out of the Hôtel d'Arpajon about
this time. In June 1654 Cyrano was received into the house of M. des
Bois Clairs, with whom he remained for fourteen months until a few days
before his death. He then begged to be moved to a house at Sannois,
belonging to his cousin Pierre de Cyrano, where he died on the 28th of
July 1655. He was not buried in the convent of the Filles de la Croix
as the reference books say (this was his brother Abel), but in the
church of Sannois. He was converted to Christianity on his death-bed,
presumably by his sister, who was a nun, and his friend Le Bret, the
canon. A document is in existence stating that "Savinien de Cyrano,
escuier, sieur de Bergerac," died a good Christian; it is dated the
28th of July 1655, and signed by the parish priest, who owned the
curious name of Cochon. That Cyrano, like most of his contemporaries,
yielded to a death-bed repentance is probably true; it is equally true
that he spent most of his life as a free-thinker.
III
CYRANO'S FRIENDS
Among Cyrano's military friends were two senior officers, M. de
Bourgogne (_mestre de camp_ of the Prince de Conti's infantry) and
Marshal Gassion. They of course would know him simply as a brave
soldier in a company of dare-devils. More intimate soldier friends,
of a rank approaching his own, were Cavoye, brother of the celebrated
Cavoye killed at Lens; Hector de Brisailles, ensign in the Gendarmes
de Son Altesse Royale; Saint Gilles, captain in the same regiment;
Chasteaufort, whom Cyrano may have parodied in _The Pedant Outwitted_.
He also knew Le Bret's brother, a captain in Conti's regiment; Duret
de Montchenin and de Zeddé "braves de la plus haute classe", and de
Chavagne.
Le Bret also mentions the Comte de Brienne, M. des Billettes, M. de
Morlière.
The Comte de Brienne was the son of Louis XIII's minister; he was a
secretary of state, then an Oratorian; and he died mad. Gilles Fileau
des Billettes, brother of the Abbé de la Chaise, was "one of the most
learned men of his day." Adrien de Morlière was a famous genealogist.
Longueville-Gontier, also mentioned by Le Bret, was a "Conseiller au
Parlement". Cyrano appears to have been friendly with the translator,
Michel de Marolles, who has recorded in his Mémoires the fact that
Cyrano sent him copies of _The Death of Agrippina_ and _The Voyage to
the Moon_.
After these respectable gentlemen we come to a more varied group of
Cyrano's friends, most of whom are not mentioned by Le Bret, but who
interest us more. Some of them were perhaps picked up in taverns;
others he met in the course of his studies; others were congenial men
of letters.
Three especially influenced Cyrano in his serious studies, particularly
in philosophy and physics, and confirmed his natural tendency towards
rationalism and scepticism by furnishing him with the knowledge and
arguments he lacked. Chief among these was the celebrated Gassendi,
who was born in 1592 and died in the same year as Cyrano, 1655.
Gassendi was trained as an Aristotelian, but drew away from the
school and followed with special interest the researches of Galileo
and Kepler. He opposed Descartes. He is principally remembered for
his revival of Epicurus, of the Epicurean physics and morals, and
of Lucretius. Three translations of Lucretius were made as a result
of his influence, one by Molière, one by Chapelle, one by Dehénault
(all three friends of Cyrano) and, remarkably enough, all three of
these translations have disappeared. Gassendi exerted a considerable
influence over all the intellectual freethinkers of his age, and Cyrano
de Bergerac was especially indebted to him. Gassendi's exposition of
the Epicurean theory of atoms, his own ideas about "calor vitalis" and
"anima mundi", will be found freely copied in _The Voyages_; while
Gassendi's favourite principle "nihil in intellectu quod non prius
fuerit in sensu" made a deep impression upon Cyrano's mind.
Gassendi's lessons in physics were supported in Cyrano's memory by his
friendship with Jacques Rohault (1620-75). Rohault was a mathematician,
a pupil of Gassendi, but strongly influenced by Descartes. He wrote a
treatise on physics which has so much in common with the fragments of
Cyrano's treatise and the ideas expressed in _The Voyages_ that at one
time Rohault was supposed to have plagiarised from Cyrano. It is now
almost conclusively proved that the opposite is true.
It is difficult to say what relations Cyrano had with the elder La
Mothe Le Vayer (1583-1672). We know that he met his son at Gassendi's
lectures. Old Le Vayer was a famous sceptic and in many ways a
remarkable personality. Like many sceptics he lived to be immensely
old, was highly respected for his erudition and, though he never seems
to have been worried by the clergy, was the reverse of orthodox. His
position in 17th-century Paris is interesting; he was one of the very
few survivors of the great Humanist movement of the 16th century, and,
as such, carried with him an air of enthusiasm, learning and freedom
which must have been very stimulating in days when learning had been
interrupted by civil disturbances and the stifling influence of the
Catholic reaction was increasing.
A learned controversy has shaken a large amount of dust over the
"problem" of Molière's relations with Cyrano. It has been denied that
Molière studied under Gassendi, that he plagiarized two scenes from
Cyrano's Comedy. It seems more probable that both are true.
Jean Dehénault (1611-1682), another literary friend of Cyrano's, was
a melancholy sceptic, consistently unsuccessful in life; he wrote a
certain amount of verse and a prose piece, which had the honour of
being attributed to Saint-Evremond.
Bernier, Chapelle, Lignières, Dassoucy, Tristan l'Hermite, Royer de
Prade were also among Cyrano's friends.
François Bernier (?-1688) became a doctor, travelled in the East and is
remembered by his still readable _Philosophie de Gassendi_. Chapelle
(1626-1686) wrote a _Voyage_ in collaboration with Bachaumont and
furnished Sainte-Beuve with material for a delightful _Lundi_. François
Payot, Chevalier des Lignières (1628-1704), was chiefly concerned in
the Porte de Nesle episode. He was a minor poet of the epigrammatic
kind; Boileau called him "le poète idiot de Senlis." There is a book on
him by M. Magne. Dassoucy was one of the innumerable burlesque poets
of the time, for whom Cyrano wrote a preface and a madrigal; later
they quarrelled and libelled each other. Tristan l'Hermite (1601-1655)
was "an epicure of the cabarets, a hare-brained duellist, a gambler, a
libertin, a beggar"; as a youth he was exiled for killing a man. Cyrano
praises him as the greatest man of the age! Finally, Royer de Prade and
Henry Le Bret were Cyrano's oldest and most faithful friends. Henry
Le Bret was the son of Nicholas Le Bret; born 1617; soldier, lawyer,
then priest; canon in 1659. He lived to be ninety-three. De Prade was a
historian and tragic poet, known to his friends as "le Corneille Tacite
des Français". Cyrano wrote a preface to the 1650 edition of de Prade's
works and the latter wrote a sonnet on _The Voyage to the Moon_.
IV
THE LIBERTIN QUESTION
To write of Cyrano de Bergerac and not to mention the "libertin
question" is to shirk a difficulty. A "libertin" in French means a
free-thinker in religion, generally but not necessarily, a man of
free or even criminal morals. It is particularly applied to a whole
mass of sceptical or at any rate non-Christian French writers of the
17th century. To draw an English parallel: Marlowe, Greene in his
unregenerate days, Rochester, Sedley, even Wycherley and Hobbes would
be libertins; but Hume and Gibbon would be philosophes.
The father of the libertins was Montaigne; great, adorable Montaigne,
whose divine common-sense emerges from the churning floods of
metaphysical quiddities and the gross clouds of popular errors like
a glittering marble rock. _Super hanc petram_ the French libertins
founded their temple of incredulity, but from lack of unanimity the
edifice remains incomplete. It is the habit of official commentators
to insist upon the Stoic element in Montaigne. It is there, because
Montaigne had absorbed the wisdom of the Ancients; but one might
as legitimately insist upon the Epicurean or the Sceptical aspect
of his book. That, at least, is what the libertins did. They took
the sceptical wisdom of Montaigne and tempered it with the mirth of
Rabelais. Sometimes the wisdom was not very apparent and the mirth
was very Rabelaisian. Sometimes the mixture was happy. Molière was
a libertin; so were Saint-Evremond and his friend Ninon de L'Enclos
and the cardinal de Retz and Théophile and Saint-Amant and Boisrobert
and Cyrano and Chapelle and scores more. The degree of "libertinism"
runs from the mere sparkle and freedom from cant of Molière and the
fastidiousness of Saint-Evremond to the brutal orgies of the "goinfres"
and the criminality of Claude le Petit, who was burned for blasphemy,
murder and sodomy. Cyrano began towards the brutal end and developed
towards the gentler standard.
There are two current theories of libertinism. One is particularly
espoused by M. Frédéric Lachèvre, the erudite editor of the Libertins,
whose work is indispensable to a correct understanding of this period
of French literature. This theory refuses the libertins coherence
of thought or any real intellectual importance. It puts aside as
"sceptiques" those writers whose polite manners and respectable morals
make it difficult to disparage them, and concentrates upon those whose
lives show dubious or even criminal episodes. From an immense mass of
facts and skilfully arranged historical conjectures this critic argues
that the libertins are not to be considered as honourable and talented
men seeking truth, but as undisciplined egotists, lacking coherence
of thought and seriousness of purpose; who attacked institutions from
vanity, who cultivated sedition and irreligion because by proclaiming
such ideas they became involved in that stir of publicity for which
paltry vanity craves.
The other theory regards the libertins as expressing more or less
coherently a great trend of thought in French intellectual life, as
the heterodox tradition of France, as an exuberant product of the
French critical spirit. This spirit shows itself not in works of formal
criticism alone, but in a general temper of the mind, a disposition
to examine institutions and ideas critically, a readiness to laugh at
what had seemed terrible or oppressive, to jest down tyranny with a
bawdy song; a spirit co-existent with French literature, already strong
in the 13th century, when England intellectually was a mere Norman
province. The chansons de geste and the tales of chivalry are parodied
in satirical fabliaux; courteous love is mocked by innumerable voices;
the crusades are barely over and the great cathedrals still unfinished
when Rutebeuf writes:
"Papelart et Béguin
Ont le siècle honni."
We see a Louis IX set off by a Joinville--don Quixote and Sancho Panza
350 years before Cervantes. François Villon follows Charles d'Orléans;
Rabelais is the contemporary of Calvin; Racine is followed by
Voltaire. The précieux movement is followed by the burlesque; the hard
thought of Voltaire by the softness of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre; the
Romantics by the Naturalistes. The heterodox tradition from Le Roman
de Renart (12th century) and the Fabliaux (13th century) can be traced
throughout French literature to Anatole France and Remy de Gourmont.
French literature is like a great double stream which constantly
winds and branches out and reabsorbs side channels. We can see the
17th-century libertins as an episode in a great intellectual struggle
and Cyrano de Bergerac as a minor, but not unimportant, actor, in that
episode. In any case Cyrano is not an exception in French literature
in spite of a few eccentricities; he is one example of a perfectly
recognizable intellectual type and so far from being the complete
"original" he is made out to be, he has little to offer which cannot be
found in his contemporaries and immediate predecessors.[16]
[Footnote 16: F. T. Perrens, _Les Libertins en France au XVII^e
Siècle_, is an interesting book.]
V
THE WORKS OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC
The extant writings of Cyrano de Bergerac are: (1) A few poems,
including the libel on Mazarin; (2) Three or four political pamphlets
(doubtful); (3) _Entretiens Pointus_; a set of quibbling jokes; (4)
Three sets of Letters; (5) A prose comedy, _Le Pédant Joué_; (6) A
verse tragedy, _La Mort d'Agrippine_; (7) _Les Estats et Empires de la
Lune et du Soleil_; (8) _Traité de Physique_, fragmentary.
The first three are unimportant. The best of Cyrano's few short
poems is the sonnet to Jacqueline d'Arpajon. The political pamphlets
interest the researcher and are not certainly Cyrano's. The _Entretiens
Pointus_, or _Merry Conceited Jests_ are verbal quibbles and jokes,
supposedly memories of conversation in the Gassendi group.
With the letters we come to the first of Cyrano's works of literary
value and are at once met with a difficulty which makes the study
of Cyrano's work so troublesome. Whenever there exists a MS. of any
of his writings the differences between this and all the printed
editions before that of Gourmont (1908) is so considerable that in
many cases the whole intention of the work is different. Most of the
passages omitted in the printed editions are philosophical or satirical
arguments or sarcasms directed against the Church and religion and
were omitted in the 17th century for obvious reasons. No editions of
Cyrano show the MSS. texts prior to 1908; the editions of Gourmont and
particularly of Lachèvre have shown us a different Cyrano.
The Cyrano created by Gautier and Rostand was, of course, a chimera;
but there was something curious in his work which gave some support to
the theory that he was mad or at least very eccentric. He was not mad,
he was simply heavily censored. Essential words, sentences, paragraphs,
whole pages were omitted; always modifying the meaning, sometimes
making it absurd.
These Letters belong to a confused period of French literature, a
sort of interregnum between the age of Rabelais and Montaigne and the
age of Louis XIV. The literary influences in Cyrano's time were the
précieux, the satyriques and the burlesques. The letters of Guez de
Balzac (1594-1654) and Voiture (1598-1648) made polite letter-writing
fashionable. The libels of the Fronde, the satire of Regnier's
disciples, the burlesque of Sorel and Scarron formed, in the first half
of the century, the opposition to the Italianated schools of preciosity
and politeness--Marini, the Scudérys, Voiture, the Rambouillet salon.
Cyrano's Letters are a curious hotch-potch of these conflicting styles.
These fifty odd letters are Amorous, Descriptive and Satirical,
sometimes at the expense of real persons. Most of them are rhetorical
exercises; a few are serious. Nothing could be more creditable to
Cyrano than his letter _Against Sorcerers_. It is a vigorous and
well-expressed protest against the stupid belief in sorcery, the
grotesque legal proceedings and the barbarous sentences carried out
upon nervously hallucinated or innocent people. It is a wonderfully
just attack upon ignorance and superstition and contains his famous
saying:
"Not the name of Aristotle (more learned than I), not that of
Plato, nor that of Socrates, shall ever convince me if my judgment
is not convinced by reason that what they say is true."
The _Love-Letters_ are made of clever and wholly frigid conceits, which
glitter and clink like chains of icicles; nothing could be farther from
the language of genuine feeling. The Satirical Letters are abusive and
filled with "clenches." They do not denounce types, they blackguard
individuals. The _Lettres Diverses_ are mostly descriptive pieces on
themes like the seasons, a lady with red hair, a country house; written
in the highly conceited vein then affected by Cyrano. Some of them are
vigorous and well-expressed. They are well translated as to style by
the anonymous person who published _Bergerac's Satyrical Characters_ in
1658. The first edition of these Letters is dated 1654, but one of them
was published as early as 1648; others may have been written earlier.
They were probably rewritten before publication and were certainly
censored.
Cyrano de Bergerac is the author of a comedy, _Le Pédant Joué_, written
1645, published 1654, probably never played; and of a tragedy, _La Mort
d'Agrippine_, written in 1646, published 1654, played in 1653 or 1654
and revived for one performance on the 10th November 1872.
These plays alone would provide a theme for a very long essay; but here
I must necessarily be brief.
Corneille, Racine, and Molière were not isolated literary phenomena
without predecessors and contemporaries; any more than Shakespeare.
There is a large pre-Corneille and pre-Molière drama.[17] Du Ryer,
Rotrou, Gombaud, Scudéry, Hardy, Théophile de Viau, Boisrobert, are
some of the best known dramatists of the thirties and forties of the
seventeenth century. Among them was Cyrano de Bergerac. I cannot
wholly share the contempt expressed by official French criticism for
early French drama, though my acquaintance with it is superficial; I
certainly cannot agree with the contemptuous estimates of Cyrano's
plays. The fact that the plot of _The Pedant Outwitted_ is taken from
Lope de Vega seems very unimportant, when one considers the amazing
gusto and energy Cyrano put into his uncouth comedy. Here his curious
fustian style of ranting hyperbole serves him admirably; in _The Pedant
Outwitted_ bombast, exaggeration and caricature are carried to a
superlative degree. Nothing could be more pedantic than Granger, the
pedant, or more bombastic than the bragging poltroon, Chasteaufort.
Some of the best scenes, situations and scraps of dialogue in _The
Pedant Outwitted_ have been appropriated by more famous dramatists,
particularly by Molière. This may be seen in _Le Dépit Amoureux_, _Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and particularly in _Les Fourberies de Scapin_,
where the whole of the famous "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette
galère" scene is imitated from Cyrano.
[Footnote 17: See Rigal's _Le Théâtre Français avant la Période
classique_.]
The theme of the comedy is the outwitting of Granger by his son,
Charlot. Both wish to marry Genevotte; Granger attempts to send his son
away from Paris, and on various pretexts Charlot remains; by the device
of a play within a play Charlot marries Genevotte before Granger's
eyes. The whole is quite incredible, but amusing. The character Cyrano
most enjoyed was Granger, a caricature of his old schoolmaster. It
must be admitted that the long speeches of Granger and Chasteaufort,
ingenious and fertile as they are, grow somewhat tedious in a play;
all the characters, even the heroine, are infected with preciosity
and burlesque. Extraordinary hyperbolical epithets are piled one upon
another until the whole heap topples to absurdity; as for the rant of
Chasteaufort, it leaves that of Tamburlaine a mild understatement;
Bobadil and Bessus are realistic sketches in comparison with this. With
all its faults the play is a remarkable piece of work and ought to
interest anyone who likes Elizabethan drama.
The tragedy _The Death of Agrippina_ provides us with another surprise.
Whereas _The Pedant Outwitted_ seems extremely archaic for 1645, _The
Death of Agrippina_ has been compared favourably with Corneille's
minor tragedies. All the "precious" affectations of style, the
recondite allusions which make _The Pedant Outwitted_ a test of
one's knowledge of old French, all the oddities, the quiddities, the
"humours", disappear and we have a formal French tragedy written in
good Alexandrines, moving according to the rules and containing a
well-concerted action as well as good subsidiary scenes. Nothing could
better illustrate the versatility of Cyrano's literary personality; the
plays seem to have been written by two totally different persons. The
subject of the tragedy is the conspiracy of Sejanus against Tiberius;
Sejanus is in love with Agrippina, Livilla with Sejanus; Agrippina
takes part in the conspiracy to avenge herself upon Tiberius with the
hope of destroying Sejanus afterwards; the conspiracy is revealed by
Livilla and both Sejanus and Agrippina lose their lives. There is one
very fine scene at the end, where Sejanus is taunted by Agrippina; this
contains the "horrible impieties" complained of by Tallemant; but why
Sejanus should have talked like a Christian not even Cyrano's severest
censurers have yet explained. The play is well-written and impressive.
Cyrano's fragmentary treatise on Physics needs only the remark that it
is almost identical with Rohault's similar work and was either derived
from it or from a common source. It was in part to popularize these
studies and the sceptical ideas they inspired in him that Cyrano wrote
his famous _Voyages to the Moon and Sun_, so often reprinted in France.
_The Moon_ is supposed to have been written as early as 1648; _The Sun_
was begun about 1650 and was left unfinished. Two versions of _The
Moon_ exist. One is contained in the MSS. of Paris and Munich and the
other in the first edition, on the last of which all editions before
Gourmont's incomplete reprint were founded. The MSS. undoubtedly
contain the work as Cyrano wrote it and privily circulated it. The
1657 edition was heavily censored by Henry Le Bret, who was afraid
to publish many passages reflecting upon the Church, of which he was
a comfortably settled pillar. The early editions--and consequently
all previous English translations--mark the places of some of
these omissions with dots or the word "hiatus". The effect of this
expurgation was in some cases to make nonsense; in most to destroy
the point of Cyrano's sarcasm. Apart from merely variant readings and
single words or phrases (which often, by the way, greatly alter the
point of a passage), there are no less than fourteen out of a total of
ninety-six pages in M. Lachèvre's edition omitted by Le Bret, and these
are precisely the most daring and satirical parts of the whole work.
The last four pages are different in MSS. and in the printed editions;
I have given the MSS. These MSS. have only been recently available in
France and have never before been translated into English. Thus, if the
reader were familiar with Lovell's (1687) version and had also read the
French Bibliothéque Elzivirienne or Garnier editions, he would yet find
that about one-seventh of the matter given in this translation of _The
Moon_ would be new to him.
The MS. of _The Sun_ has disappeared; were it ever discovered we should
no doubt find that the printed editions had been mutilated, while if
the lost _Story of the Spark_ were recovered, we might find a still
more daring satire on Christianity. The first printed edition of _The
Voyage to the Sun_ appeared in 1662.
These imaginary voyages are often described by French writers as
'Utopias'; they are no more Utopias than _Pantagruel_ and _Gulliver's
Travels_. They lack the political system of the Utopian romance, whose
purpose is to recommend speciously some abominable form of tyranny
under the pretext of making everybody happy. At different times I
have read the _Republic_ of Plato, the _Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More,
Campanella's _Città del Sole_, William Morris's _News from Nowhere_,
and Hudson's _A Crystal Age_; and I am bound to say, with all reverence
to these great men, that Morris's _Nowhere_ sounded least unendurable,
while the rest were nightmares, visions of meddlesome cranks. I have a
deep reverence for Plato so far as I am able to comprehend him, but I
think I would rather die than be enslaved by his ideal state.
Now, Cyrano de Bergerac had no intention of creating one of these
ideally unpleasant tyrannies. His purpose was similar to that of
Rabelais and Swift. He wanted to satirise existing institutions,
humbugs and prejudices; he wanted to mock at a literal belief in the
Old Testament; he wanted to hold up to odium the fundamental villainy
of man; and he wanted to convey amusingly a number of quasi-scientific
and philosophical ideas which it was highly dangerous then to publish
and still more dangerous to try to popularise. Even then Cyrano dared
not publish the book in his lifetime; and it was mutilated when it
appeared after his death. The censorship of the _ancien régime_ was
almost exactly the antithesis to the police interference of to-day;
great licence in morals and personalities was allowed, obscenities
and even blasphemies were tolerated, but when an author, however
eminent and serious, trenched upon the authority of the Church or the
State, or offered new ideas which seemed likely to prove subversive,
he was certain of persecution and punishment. Both systems have
their defects. The tremendous hubbub raised against _Tartuffe_, the
self-exile of Descartes,[18] the prosecution of Théophile de Viau, the
outcry against Cyrano, the fact that Gassendi's _Syntagma_ did not
appear in print until after his death; all show the working of the
ancient censorship and the prejudices it appealed to in the populace.
One feels that many of the deplorable traits in Cyrano's character are
the result of a deliberate and high-spirited revolt against what he
thought was oppressive. He attacked the Church and war and paternal
authority as fiercely and recklessly as he attacked the _bravi_ at the
Porte de Nesle.
[Footnote 18: I know Descartes was patronised by Mazarin and made a
visit to Paris "to be honoured"; but he soon returned to Holland.]
Even in Cyrano's time there was nothing original in a fanciful voyage
to the Moon. Brun quotes a formidable list of predecessors--most of
whom one has never heard of--whose work Cyrano may or may not have
known. All probably derive directly or indirectly from Lucian of
Samosate. It is certain that Cyrano copied Rabelais, that he took whole
paragraphs and many ideas from Sorel's _Francion_ and several hints
from Bishop Godwin's _Man in the Moon_. Campanella furnished him with
numerous hints. The philosophic and quasi-scientific passages came
from Descartes, Gassendi, and Rohault. Cyrano is a Gassendist in _The
Moon_ and a Cartesian towards the end of _The Sun_. To trace these in
detail would be laborious; it is sufficient to say that the theory
which made Cyrano the predecessor of Rohault is now wholly disproved,
while those who have compared Cyrano with Gassendi and Rohault declare
that the author of the Voyages advances little that cannot be found
in their works. M. Juppont's endeavour to prove that Cyrano was a
marvellous scientific genius anticipating modern discoveries will
hardly bear investigation; to make his points he has to attribute to
Cyrano ideas derived from others and to wrest his language from the
scientific jargon of one period into the worse jargon of another. After
translating the Voyages, which implies a certain familiarity with them,
I conclude that when Cyrano attempts to be scientific he often fails to
understand thoroughly what he is talking about. As soon as he begins to
discourse of atoms, or attraction, or the magnet, his language becomes
vague, involved and hesitating; he is metaphorical at the moment he
should not be, and the thought obviously is not his own; the lack of
clarity in his speech suggests that he failed to comprehend the ideas
he pretends to expound, that he did not think them for himself but was
indoctrinated with them by others. He makes use of the anacoluthon
too often for a translator's comfort; for though the practice may
be defended in poetry, sermons and other inspired works, it is
unsuitable to the logical exposition of science. Finally, a certain
lack of common-sense often precipitates him into absurdity; he chooses
grotesque illustrations, wrecks ingenious ideas by some incongruity he
might easily have avoided. It is significant that when great men like
Molière and Swift have borrowed from Cyrano they improve on him chiefly
by purging him of what is grotesque and absurd.
I must confess I view Cyrano's plagiarisms more coolly than recent
French commentators; for Cyrano criticism has violently revolted from
the theory that he was a perfect, beplumed hero, the most original man
of his age, to the other extreme of a theory that he had no originality
whatever, that he was affected, vain, debauched, dirty, hypocritical;
ending up with a sort of Johnsonian "let us hear no more on't". Cyrano
deserves some severity in the matter of plagiarism on account of his
own stupid boast that he only read books to detect the plagiarisms
of the authors. We are all plagiarists; every word we use is the
creation of a poet; and a completely original author would probably be
completely incomprehensible. This scientists' prejudice about priority
of ideas is out of place in literature; we are engaged in creating
a temper of the mind, in civilizing, not in riding an intellectual
steeplechase. In works intended for amusement what matters plagiarism?
Cyrano took an idea, say, from Sorel; Cyrano amuses us, Sorel bores us;
are we not to read Cyrano because he plagiarized? And, in any event,
these sarcasms of his which are merely amusing to-day were perilous
matters then; if Cyrano had published an unexpurgated _Moon_ in 1650,
exile, imprisonment or some other torture might easily have been his
lot. The ideas in the Voyages are derived indeed, but they were then
new and worth circulating. Cyrano has been sneered at because, when
he had written these dangerous matters, he evaded the possibility of
martyrdom by refraining from publication; I confess I think he was
wise; Naaman bowed himself in the house of Rimmon, and there is no
obligation upon any man to sacrifice his life for his opinions.
Moreover, when we read an author whose purpose is "to instruct by
entertaining" we care little for the origins of the instruction so
long as the entertainment be there. Examined from this point of view
the Voyages emerge very well. In spite of all their faults, real and
alleged, they are entertaining. One would certainly rather spend an
evening with Cyrano than with his enemy, Father Garasse, that terrific
old bore, the "flail of the libertins". Moreover, the dullest passages
in _The Voyages_ are those he stole from his scientific friends and the
most entertaining those he took from Rabelais or Godwin or Sorel or
invented himself. By far the best part of _The Voyages_ is contained
in the early pages of _The Sun_, where Cyrano relates the persecutions
and inconveniences supposed to arise from the publication of _The
Moon_, together with his adventures with the police. The whole thing
bustles along admirably, reminding one of the adventures of the boys
in the _Satyricon_, and it is a dismal moment when Cyrano produces an
"icosahedron mirror" and we know we are in for some more quasi-science.
The satire on mankind in the story of the birds is very happy and
furnished Tom d'Urfey with an opera. The talking trees are quite good
until they get on to loadstones and iron filings and the poles and such
trash.
A large part of the opening of _The Moon_ is occupied with a parody of
the Old Testament, which Cyrano and his friends probably found more
amusing than we do. The influence of the burlesque school on Cyrano has
been noticed. Travesties then were a kind of craze; Virgil, Ovid, all
the classics were burlesqued. There was one book it was dangerous to
parody and Cyrano with his usual impetuosity rushed into a burlesque
of the Old Testament. Here indeed he may claim to have given Voltaire
several hints for his wickedly witty _Romans_.
It is not my intention to discuss _The Voyages_ at greater length. The
reader has here the full text before him and will form his own opinion.
He has in the introduction sufficient information to understand at
least in outline the writer of the book and his work, the _milieu_
in which it was produced, the intellectual movement which helped to
create it and its historical position.
The text used for the translation is that printed by M. Lachèvre in his
_Œuvres Libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac_, 2 vols., Champion, Paris,
1921. I wish to thank M. Lachèvre for the generosity with which he has
allowed me to make use of his book and his kindness in answering my
queries and supplying me with information. I am also indebted to the
work of Brun, Gourmont, Perrens, Lacroix, Juppont, Magne and of course
Cyrano's friend Le Bret. The only English work I have examined is an
essay by Henry Morley, which should be read with great caution.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
[Illustration: _Title-page to Lovell's expurgated translation._]
VOYAGE TO THE MOON
The moon was full, the sky clear, and the clocks had just struck nine
as I was returning with four of my friends from a house near Paris.[19]
Our wit must have been sharpened on the cobbles of the road for it
thrust home whichever way we turned it; distant as the moon was she
could not escape it. The various thoughts provoked in us by the sight
of that globe of saffron diverted us on the road and our eyes were
filled by this great luminary. Now one of us likened her to a window in
Heaven through which the glory of the blessed might be faintly seen;
then another, inspired by ancient fables, imagined that Bacchus kept
a tavern in Heaven and had hung out the Full Moon for his sign; then
another vowed that it was the block where Diana set Apollo's ruffs;
another exclaimed that it might well be the Sun himself who, having
put off his rays at night, was watching through a hole what the world
did when he was not there. For my part, said I, I am desirous to add
my fancies to yours and without amusing myself with the witty notions
you use to tickle time to make it run the faster, I think that the Moon
is a world like this and that our world is their Moon. The company
gratified me with a great shout of mirth.
[Footnote 19: Ed. 1657: "returning from Clamard, near Paris (where M.
de Cuigny the younger, who is its Seigneur, had entertained several of
us....)".]
"Perhaps in the same way", said I, "at this moment in the Moon they
jest at some one who there maintains that this globe is a world."
But though I showed them that Pythagoras, Epicurus, Democritus and, in
our own age, Copernicus and Kepler had been of this opinion, I did but
cause them to strain their throats the more heartily.
This thought, whose boldness jumped with my humour, was strengthened
by contradiction and sank so deep in me that all the rest of the way I
was pregnant with a thousand definitions of the Moon of which I could
not be delivered. By supporting this fantastic belief with serious
reasoning I grew well-nigh persuaded of it. But hearken, reader, the
miracle or accident used by Providence or Fortune to convince me of it:
I returned home and scarcely had I entered my room to rest after the
journey when I found on my table an open book which I had not put
there. I recognised it as mine, which made me ask my servant why he
had taken it out of the book-case. I asked him but perfunctorily, for
he was a fat Lorrainer, whose soul admitted of no exercises more noble
than those of an oyster. He swore to me that either the Devil or I had
put it there. For my own part I was sure I had not handled it for more
than a year.
I glanced at it again; it was the works of Cardan[20]; and though I
had no idea of reading it I fell, as if directed to it, precisely upon
a story told by this philosopher. He says that, reading one evening
by candle-light, he perceived two tall old men enter through the
closed door of his room and after he had asked them many questions
they told him they were inhabitants of the Moon; which said, they
disappeared. I remained so amazed to see a book brought there by itself
as well as at the time and the leaf at which I found it open that I
took this whole train of events to be an inspiration of God urging me
to make known to men that the Moon is a world.
[Footnote 20: Girolamo Cardan, 1501-1576, Italian mathematician and
astrologer, a man of remarkable scientific attainments. There is an
interesting article on him in _The Retrospective Review_.]
"What!" quoth I to myself, "after I have talked of a matter this very
day, a book, which is perhaps the only one in a world that treats of
this subject, flies down from the shelf on to my table, becomes capable
of reason to the extent of opening at the very page of so marvellous an
adventure and thereby supplies meditations to my fancy and an object to
my resolution. Doubtless", I continued, "the two old men who appeared
to that great man are the same who have moved my book and opened it at
this page to spare themselves the trouble of making me the harangue
they made Cardan. But", I added, "how can I clear up this doubt if I do
not go there? And why not?" I answered myself at once, "Prometheus of
old went to Heaven to steal fire!"
These feverish outbursts were followed by the hope of making
successfully such a voyage.
I shut myself up to achieve my purpose in a rather lonely country-house
where, after I had flattered my fancy with several methods which might
have borne me up there, I committed myself to the heavens in this
manner:
I fastened all about me a number of little bottles filled with dew, and
the heat of the Sun drawing them up carried me so high that at last
I found myself above the loftiest clouds. But, since this attraction
caused me to rise too rapidly and instead of my drawing nearer the
Moon, as I desired, she seemed to me further off than when I started,
I broke several of my bottles until I felt that my weight overbore the
attraction and that I was falling towards the earth. My opinion was
not wrong; for I reached ground sometime later when, calculating from
the hour at which I had started, it ought to have been midnight. Yet I
perceived that the Sun was then at the highest point above the horizon
and that it was midday. I leave you to conjecture my surprise; indeed
it was so great that not knowing how to explain this miracle I had the
insolence to fancy that in compliment to my boldness God had a second
time fixed the Sun in Heaven to light so glorious an enterprise. My
astonishment increased when I found I did not recognise the country I
was in, for it appeared to me that, having risen straight up, I ought
to have landed in the place from which I had started. Encumbered as I
was I approached a hut where I perceived some smoke and I was barely a
pistol-shot from it when I found myself surrounded by a large number
of savages. They appeared mightily surprised at meeting me; for I was
the first, I think, they had ever seen dressed in bottles. And, to
overthrow still more any explanation they might have given of this
equipment, they saw that as I walked I scarcely touched the ground.
They did not know that at the least movement I gave my body the heat of
the midday sun-beams lifted me up with my dew; and if my bottles had
been more numerous I should very likely have been carried into the air
before their eyes. I tried to converse with them; but, as if terror had
changed them into birds, in a twinkling they were lost to sight in the
neighbouring woods. Nevertheless I caught one whose legs without doubt
betrayed his intention. I asked him with much difficulty (for I was out
of breath) how far it was from there to Paris, since when people went
naked in France and why they fled from me in such terror. This man to
whom I spoke was an old man, yellow as an olive, who cast himself at
my knees, joined his hands above his head, opened his mouth and shut
his eyes. He muttered for some time but as I could not perceive that he
said anything I took his language for the hoarse babble of a dumb man.
[Illustration: _Cyrano's first attempt._]
Sometime afterwards I saw coming towards me a band of soldiers with
drums beating and I noticed that two left the main body to reconnoitre
me. When they were near enough to hear I asked them where I was.
"You are in France", replied they, "but who the Devil put you in this
condition? How does it happen that we do not know you? Has the fleet
arrived? Are you going to warn the Governor of it? Why have you divided
your brandy into so many bottles?"
To all this I replied that the Devil had not put me in that condition;
that they did not know me because they could not know all men; that I
did not know there were ships on the Seine; that I had no information
to give Monsieur de Montbazon[21] and that I was not carrying any
brandy.
[Footnote 21: Monsieur de Montbazon was governor of Paris in 1649.
(Lachèvre).]
"Oh! Ho!" said they taking me by the arm, "you are pleased to be merry!
The Governor will understand you!"
They carried me towards their main body as they spoke these words and I
learned from them that I was indeed in France, but not in Europe, for I
was in New France.
I was brought before the Viceroy, Monsieur de Montmagnie. He asked
me my country, my name and my rank, and when I had satisfied him by
relating the happy success of my voyage, whether he believed it or only
feigned to believe it, he had the kindness to allot me a room in his
house. I was happy to fall in with a man capable of lofty ideas, who
was not scandalised when I said that the earth must have turned while
I was above it, seeing that I had begun to rise two leagues from Paris
and had fallen by an almost perpendicular line in Canada.
That evening just as I was going to bed he came into my room.
"I should not have interrupted your rest", said he, "had I not believed
that a man who travels nine hundred leagues in half a day can easily
do so without being weary. But you do not know", added he, "the merry
dispute I have just had on your behalf with our Jesuit Fathers?[22]
They are convinced that you are a magician and the greatest mercy you
can obtain from them is to pass for no more than an impostor. And,
after all, this movement you assign to the Earth is surely some neat
paradox? The reason I am not of your opinion is that although you may
have left Paris yesterday you could still have reached this country
to-day without the Earth having turned. For the Sun, which bore you up
by means of your bottles, must have drawn you hither since, according
to Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe,[23] and modern philosophers it moves in a
direction opposite to that in which you say the Earth moves. And then
what probability have you for asserting that the Sun is motionless when
we see it move, and that the Earth turns about its centre with such
rapidity when we feel it firm beneath us?"
[Footnote 22: The word "Jesuit" is omitted in the early editions.]
[Footnote 23: Tycho Brahe, 1546-1601, Danish astronomer.]
"Sir", replied I, "here are the reasons which oblige us to suppose so:
First it is a matter of common sense to think that the Sun is placed
in the centre of the Universe, since all bodies in Nature need this
radical fire, which dwells in the heart of the Kingdom to be in a
position to satisfy their necessities promptly; and that the cause of
procreation should be placed in the midst of all bodies to act equally
upon them: In the same way wise Nature placed the genitals in the
centre of man, pips in the centre of apples, kernels in the centre of
their fruit; and in the same way the onion shelters within a hundred
surrounding skins the precious germ whence ten million others must
draw their essence. The apple is a little universe by itself whose
core, which is warmer than the other parts, is a Sun spreading about
it the preserving heat of its globe; and the germ in the onion is the
little Sun of that little world which heats and nourishes the vegetable
salt of the mass. Granted this, I say that since the Earth needs the
light, the heat and the influence of this great fire, she turns about
it to receive equally in every part this strength which conserves
her. For it would be as ridiculous to hold that this great luminous
body turns about a point of no importance to it as to imagine when
we see a roasted lark that it has been cooked by turning the hearth
about it.[24] Otherwise, if the Sun were made to perform this labour
it would seem that the doctor needs the patient, that the strong must
yield to the weak, the great serve the small, and that instead of a
ship coasting the shores of a country we must make the country move
around the vessel. And if you find it hard to believe that so heavy a
mass can move, tell me, I pray you, are the stars and the Heavens that
you make so solid any lighter? And it is easy for us who are convinced
of the roundness of the earth to deduce its movements from its shape;
but why suppose the sky to be round since you cannot know it and since
if, of all possible shapes it has not this shape, it certainly cannot
move? I do not reproach you with your eccentrics, your concentrics and
your epicycles,[25] all of which you can only explain very confusedly
and from which my system is free. Let us speak only of the natural
causes of this movement. On your side you are compelled to invoke
the aid of intelligences to move and direct your globes! But without
disturbing the tranquillity of the Sovereign Being, who doubtless
created Nature quite perfect and whose wisdom completed it in such a
way that by fitting it for one thing He has not rendered it unfit for
another--I, on my part, find in the Earth herself the power which makes
it move. I declare then that the sun-beams, together with the Sun's
influence, striking upon the Earth in their motion, make it turn as we
turn a globe by striking it with the hand, or that the vapours which
continually evaporate from the Earth's bosom on that side where the
Sun shines, are repulsed by the cold of the middle regions, rush back
on the Earth and, of necessity being only able to strike it obliquely,
make it dance in this fashion.
[Footnote 24: An illustration frequently used by early followers of
Copernicus.]
[Footnote 25: Cartesian terms.]
"The explanation of the two other movements is still less intricate.
Consider I beg of you...."
At these words the Viceroy interrupted me.
"I prefer", he said, "to excuse you from that trouble (I have myself
read several books of Gassendi on the subject) provided that you will
listen to what I heard one day from one of our Fathers who shared your
opinion. 'Truly', said he, 'I imagine that the Earth turns, not for
the reasons alleged by Copernicus but because the fire of Hell (as we
learn from Holy Scripture) being enclosed in the centre of the Earth,
the damned souls, flying from the heat of the fire to avoid it, clamber
upwards and thus make the Earth turn, as a dog makes a wheel turn when
he runs round inside it.'"
We praised the good Father's zeal and, having finished the panegyric,
the Viceroy said he greatly wondered the system of Ptolemy should be so
generally received, considering how little probable it is.
"Sir", I replied, "most men judge only by their senses, are convinced
only by their eyes; and just as a man in a ship sailing by the coast
thinks himself stationary and the shore moving, so men, turning with
the Earth around the sky, believe that the sky itself turns around
them. Add to this the intolerable pride of human beings, who are
convinced that Nature was made for them alone--as if it were probable
that the Sun, a vast body four hundred and thirty-four times greater
than the Earth,[26] should have been lighted only to ripen its medlars
and to head its cabbages. For my part, far from yielding to their
impertinence, I believe that the planets are worlds around the Sun
and that the fixed stars are suns too with planets around them, that
is to say, worlds, which we cannot see from here because they are
too small and because their borrowed light cannot reach us. For, in
good faith, how can we suppose that globes so spacious are only huge
desert countries and that ours, because we grovel on it before a dozen
proud-stomached rogues, should have been made to command them all?
What! Because the Sun measures our days and our years, does that mean
it was created only to save us from breaking our heads against the
wall? No! If this visible God lightens man it is accidental, as the
King's torch accidentally lightens a porter passing in the street."
[Footnote 26: Linear diameter of sun: 109 × earth's equatorial diameter
= 864,000 miles. Sun's mass = 332,000 × mass of the earth.]
"But", said he, "if, as you assert, the fixed stars are so many suns we
may deduce thence that the universe is infinite since it is probable
that the people in the worlds about a fixed star, which you take to be
a sun, perceive above them other fixed stars which we cannot see from
here and that it continues in this manner to infinity."[27]
[Footnote 27: M. Lachèvre says this notion is "accepted by science,"
but it is rejected by recent astronomers and assuredly by the
Relativists.]
"Doubt it not", replied I, "as God was able to make the soul immortal
so could He make the World infinite, if it be true that Eternity is
nothing else than duration without bounds and the infinite, space
without limit. And then God Himself would be finite if we believe the
world not to be infinite, since He could not be where there is nothing
and since He could not increase the size of the World without adding
something to His own extent, by beginning to be where He had not been
formerly. We must believe then that as we see Saturn and Jupiter from
here we should perceive, if we were in one or the other, many worlds we
do not perceive from here and that the universe is constructed in this
manner to infinity."
"Faith!" replied he, "you may well talk but I cannot comprehend
infinity."
"Why, tell me," said I, "do you understand better the nothing which is
beyond it? Not at all. When you think of this nothing you imagine at
least something like wind, something like air, and that is something;
but if you do not comprehend infinity as a general idea you may
conceive it at least in parts, for it is not difficult to imagine
beyond the earth, air and fire that we see, more air and more earth.
Infinity is simply a texture without bounds. If you ask me how these
worlds were made, seeing that Holy Scripture speaks only of one created
by God, I reply that it speaks only of ours because this is the only
world God took the trouble to make with His own hand and all the
others, whether we see them or do not see them, hanging in the azure of
the universe, are dross thrown off by the suns.[28] For how could these
great fires continue if they were not united with matter to feed them?
Well, just as fire casts off the ashes which choke it, just as gold in
the crucible severs itself from the marcasite which lessens its purity,
and just as our heart frees itself by vomiting from the indigestible
humours which attack it; so the suns disgorge every day and purge
themselves of the remnants of that matter which feeds their fire. But
when these suns have altogether used up the matter which maintains
them, you cannot doubt but that they will spread out on all sides to
seek new fuel and will fall upon all the worlds they had thrown off
before and particularly upon the nearest ones: Then these great fires
again burning up all these bodies will again throw them off pell-mell
on all sides as before, and being purified little by little they will
begin to act as suns to these little worlds which they engender by
casting them out of their spheres; doubtless it was this which made
the disciples of Pythagoras predict an universal conflagration. This
is not a ridiculous fancy; New France, where we are, produces a very
convincing proof. This vast continent of America is one half of the
Earth, and though our predecessors had sailed the ocean a thousand
times they never discovered it. At that time it did not exist, any more
than many islands, peninsulas and mountains which rise on our globe,
until the rusts of the Sun being cleaned off and cast far away were
condensed into balls heavy enough to be attracted towards the centre of
our world, either little by little in small parts or perhaps suddenly
in one mass. And this is not so unreasonable but that Saint Augustine
would have applauded it had this country been discovered in his time,
for this great personage whose genius was enlightened by the Holy Ghost
asserts that in his time the Earth was as flat as an oven and that it
swam upon the water like half of a cut orange; but if ever I have the
honour to see you in France I will prove to you, by means of a very
excellent perspective glass I have, that certain obscurities which from
here seem to be spots are worlds in process of formation."
[Footnote 28: Commentators have seen in this and the following passage
a hint of the "nebula theory".]
My eyes were closing as I said this, which obliged the Viceroy to bid
me good-night. The next and following days we had conversations of
the like nature; but since some time afterwards the press of business
in the Province interrupted our philosophizing I fell back the more
eagerly on my plan of reaching the Moon.
As soon as the Moon rose I went off among the woods meditating on the
contrivance and issue of my undertaking. At length on Saint John's
Eve when those in the fort were debating whether or no they would aid
the savages of the country against the Iroquois, I went off by myself
behind our house to the summit of a little hill, where I acted as
follows.
With a machine I had constructed, which I thought would lift me as
much as I wanted, I cast myself into the air from the top of a rock;
but because I had taken my measures badly I was tumbled roughly into
the valley. Injured as I was I returned to my room without being
discouraged. I took beef-marrow and greased all my body with it, for I
was bruised from head to foot; and after I had comforted my heart with
a bottle of cordial I returned to look for my machine, which I did not
find, seeing that certain soldiers who had been sent into the forest
to cut wood for the purpose of building a Saint John's fire to be
lighted that evening, had come upon it by chance and carried it to the
fort. After several hypotheses of what it might be they discovered the
device of the spring,[29] when some said they ought to bind around it a
number of rockets because their rapid ascent would lift it high in the
air, the spring would move its great wings and everyone would take the
machine for a fire-dragon.
[Footnote 29: "Ressort". Cyrano's mechanics are vague. He may or may
not have imagined some sort of propeller.]
I sought it for a long time and at last I found it in the middle of
the market-place of Quebec just as they were lighting it. The pain of
seeing the work of my hands in such peril affected me so much that I
rushed forward to grasp the arm of the soldier who was about to fire
it. I seized his slow-match and cast myself furiously into the machine
to break off the fire-works which surrounded it; but I came too late,
for I had scarcely set my two feet in it when I was carried off into
the clouds. The fearful horror that dismayed me did not so thoroughly
overwhelm the faculties of my soul but that I could recollect
afterwards all that happened to me at this moment. You must know then
that the flame had no sooner consumed one line of rockets (for they
had placed them in sixes by means of a fuse which ran along each
half-dozen), when another set caught fire and then another, so that the
blazing powder delayed my peril by increasing it. The rockets at length
ceased through the exhaustion of material and, while I was thinking I
should leave my head on the summit of a mountain, I felt (without my
having stirred) my elevation continue; and my machine, taking leave
of me, fell towards the Earth. This extraordinary adventure filled me
with a joy so uncommon that in my delight at finding myself delivered
from certain danger I was impudent enough to philosophize about it. I
sought with my eyes and intelligence the reason for this miracle and I
perceived that my flesh was still swollen and greasy with the marrow
I had rubbed on it for the bruises caused by my fall. I knew that at
the time the Moon was waning and that during this quarter she is wont
to suck up the marrow of animals; she drank the marrow I had rubbed on
myself with the more eagerness in that her globe was nearer me and that
her strength was not weakened by any intervening clouds.[30]
[Footnote 30: This was a popular superstition of the age.]
When I had traversed, according to the calculation I have since made,
more than three-quarters the distance which separates the Earth from
the Moon, I suddenly turned a somersault without my having stumbled
at all; in fact I should not have perceived it had I not felt my head
burdened with the weight of my body. I realised then that I was not
falling towards our world, for although I was between two Moons and
could see very well that I drew further from the one as I approached
the other, I was certain that the larger was our Earth since after a
day or two of travelling the distant reflection of the Sun confounded
the diversity of bodies and climates and therefore it appeared to me
like a large gold platter, similar to the other. From this I supposed
I was descending upon the Moon and I was confirmed in this opinion
when I remembered that I had only begun to fall when I had passed
three-quarters of the distance. For, said I to myself, the Moon's mass
being less than ours the sphere of its activity must be less extended
and consequently I felt the attraction of its centre more tardily.
After I had been long falling, as I supposed, for the violence of my
fall prevented me from observing it, I remember no more than that I
found myself under a tree, entangled with three or four rather large
branches which I had snapped off in my fall and my face moistened with
an apple which had been crushed against it.[31]
[Footnote 31: The subsequent pages satirising the book of _Genesis_
were greatly mutilated in the early editions, to the great detriment of
the sense.]
As you shall know very soon, this place was happily the Earthly
Paradise and the tree I fell on precisely the Tree of Life. You may
well suppose that without this miraculous chance I should have been
dead a thousand times. I have often reflected since on the vulgar
notion that a man who throws himself from a great height is suffocated
before he reaches the ground; but from my adventure I conclude this to
be false, or else this fruit's powerful juice trickling into my mouth
must have recalled my soul which was yet near my warm corpse and ready
to perform the functions of life. In fact as soon as I was on the
ground my pain departed before it had even limned itself in my memory
and I had but a slight recollection of having lost the hunger that had
so tormented me during my voyage.
I got up and I had scarcely noticed the banks of the largest of
the four great rivers, which there form a lake, when the spirit or
invisible soul of the herbs which breathe out over that land delighted
my nostrils. The little stones were neither hard nor rough except to
the sight; they were soft when walked on.
I came first of all to a place where five avenues met and the oaks
which formed them were so extremely tall that they appeared to support
in the heavens a high garden-plot of greenery. Glancing from the root
to the top and then from the summit to the foot I wondered whether the
Earth bore them up or whether they themselves did not rather carry
the Earth hanging from their roots. It seemed as if their heads, so
proudly lifted, were bowed by force under the burden of the celestial
globes and that they groaned as they supported this weight; their arms
extended towards the sky seemed to embrace it and to ask from the stars
the pure benignity of their influences which they receive before they
lose any of their innocence in the bed of the elements. There, on all
sides the flowers with no gardener but Nature exhale a wild breath
which awakens and satisfies the sense of smell; there, the incarnate
of a rose on the eglantine and the bright blue of a violet under the
brambles leave no liberty of choice and make you think that each is
more beautiful than the other; there, every season is spring; there,
no poisonous plant grows but that its existence betrays its safety;
there, the rivulets relate their journeys to the pebbles; there, a
thousand little feathered voices make the forest ring with the sound of
their songs and the flattering assembly of these melodious throats is
so general that every leaf in the wood seems to have taken the tongue
and form of a nightingale; Echo delights so much in their songs that
to hear her repeat them one would think she wished to learn them by
heart. Beside this wood two meadows are to be seen whose continuous
happy green formed one emerald to the horizon. The confused mixture of
colours which the Spring attaches to a hundred little flowers mingles
the tints together and these waving flowers seem running to escape
the caresses of the wind. This meadow looks like an ocean but, since
it is a sea without shore, my eye, terrified at having wandered so
far without discovering a limit, quickly sent my thought over it; and
my thought wondering if it were not the end of the world would have
convinced itself that so charming a scene had perhaps compelled Heaven
to join itself to Earth. In the midst of this vast perfect carpet flow
the silver bubbles of a rustic fountain whose banks are crowned with
turf enamelled with daisies, buttercups and violets, and the crowding
of these flowers all about appears as if each were thrusting forward
to be the first reflected. The stream is still in its cradle, it is
but just born and its young smooth face shows not one wrinkle; the
large curves it makes, returning upon itself a thousand times, show
how regretfully it leaves its native country, and, as if it had been
ashamed to be caressed too near its mother, it repulsed murmuring the
hand I put forth playfully to touch it; the animals that came there to
drink, more reasonable than those of our world, showed their surprise
at seeing it was full day above the horizon while yet they saw the Sun
in the Antipodes and scarcely dared to lean over the brink lest they
should fall into the firmament.[32]
[Footnote 32: All this long paragraph comes from an earlier work of
Cyrano's, a letter called "Le Campagnard". _Œuvres Diverses._ 1654. In
Jacob's edition, 1858, the title is "D'une Maison de Campagne".]
I cannot choose but admit that the sight of so many fair objects
tickled me with those agreeable pangs the embryo is said to feel when
the soul is infused in it! My old hair fell out and was replaced by
thicker and finer tresses; I felt my youth re-lighted, my face grow
rosy, my natural heat mingle gently once more with my radical moisture;
in fine, my age diminished some fourteen years.
I had walked half a league through a forest of jasmine and myrtles
when I perceived something that moved, as it lay in the shade; it was
a young man whose majestic beauty compelled me almost to adore him. He
arose to restrain me.
"'Tis not to me", he exclaimed loudly, "but to God, that you owe these
acts of submission!"
"You see me", I replied, "amazed with so many miracles that I know not
how to begin the expression of my wonder. First I come from a world
which you here no doubt take to be a Moon; and I thought to reach
another, which the people of my country call the Moon, and I find
myself in Paradise at the feet of a God who refuses to be adored, of a
stranger who speaks my language."
"Except for the attribute of God", he replied, "what you say is true;
this Earth is the Moon which you see from your Globe and the place
where you walk is Paradise, but it is the Earthly Paradise into which
only six people have ever entered: Adam, Eve, Enoch, Myself who am
old Elijah, Saint John the Evangelist and you. You know very well
how the two first were banished hence but you do not know how they
came to your World. Know then that when they had both tasted the
forbidden apple, Adam, fearful lest God should be further irritated by
his presence and increase his punishment, considered the Moon, your
Earth, as the sole refuge wherein he could shelter from the vengeance
of his Creator. Well, at that time man's imagination was so strong,
being not yet corrupted by debaucheries, by coarse foods or by the
weakening of diseases, that when he was excited by a violent desire
to reach this refuge his whole body became lightened through the fire
of this enthusiasm and he was uplifted just as certain philosophers,
whose imagination has been greatly moved by something, have been
carried into the air by transports which you call ecstatic. Eve who was
weaker and not so hot, because of the infirmity of her sex, doubtless
would not have possessed an imagination able to conquer by the mere
strength of its will the weight of matter, but since she had been but
a little time made out of her husband's body the sympathy which still
bound this portion to the original whole carried her after him as he
went up, just as amber is followed by a straw, as the loadstone turns
to the north from whence it has been torn. And Adam attracted this
part of himself as the sea attracts the rivers which are made out of
her. When they reached your Earth they took up their abode between
Mesopotamia and Arabia; the Hebrews knew him by the name of Adam and
the idolaters by the name of Prometheus, feigned by their poets to have
stolen fire from Heaven, because the progeny he begot were endowed
with a soul as perfect as that which God had filled him with; thus the
first man left this world deserted to inhabit yours, but the All-Wise
willed that so happy a dwelling-place should not remain uninhabited
and a few centuries later he granted Enoch permission to leave the
company of mankind, whose innocence had become corrupted. This holy
personage considered that no retreat was secure against the ambition
of his relatives (who were already cutting each other's throats for
the possession of your world) except that happy land whereof Adam,
his grandfather, had formerly talked so much. Yet how was he to get
there? Jacob's Ladder was not yet invented! The grace of the Most High
supplied the deficiency by causing Enoch to observe that the fire from
Heaven descended upon the sacrifices of the just and of those who were
acceptable before the face of the Lord, according to the word of His
mouth: 'The savour of the just man's sacrifices has reached me.' One
day when this divine flame was fiercely consuming a victim which he
offered to the Eternal, he filled two large vessels with the vapour
it gave off, sealed them hermetically and attached them under his
arm-pits. The smoke immediately had a tendency to rise straight up to
God and, not being able to penetrate the metal save by a miracle, bore
the vessels upwards and in the same way carried with them this holy
man.[33] When he reached the Moon and looked upon this fair garden
an almost supernatural out-pouring of joy showed him that it was
the Earthly Paradise wherein his grandfather had formerly dwelt. He
promptly loosened the vessels which he had bound like wings on to his
shoulders and did so with so much good fortune that he was scarce four
toises in the air above the Moon when he took leave of his bladders.
However he was sufficiently high up to have been sadly hurt had not the
wind borne up the ample skirts of his robe.[34] The ardour of the fire
of charity sustained him also. As to the vessels they continued to rise
until God set them in the Heavens and they are what you to-day call the
Balance, showing us every day that they are still full of the odours of
a just man's sacrifice by the favourable influences they exert on the
horoscope of Louis the Just, who had the Balance as his ascendant.
[Footnote 33: Juppont considers this a premonition of the balloon.]
[Footnote 34: A parachute. (Juppont).]
"Enoch nevertheless was not yet in this garden; he arrived there some
time later. This was during the flood when the waters which engulfed
your world rose to so prodigious a height that the Ark swam in the
Heavens beside the Moon. The human beings within saw this globe
through the window but the light reflected from this great opaque body
was weakened because they were so near that they shared it and so
each of them thought it was a part of the Earth not yet flooded. One
daughter of Noah, named Achab, alone maintained tooth and nail that
it was positively the Moon, perhaps because she had noticed they had
approached this body as the ship rose. They pointed out to her that the
sounding-line marked but fifteen fathoms of water; she only replied
that the lead must have touched the back of a whale which they took for
Earth and that for her part she was well assured it was the Moon in
person they were about to board. In fine, since each one follows the
opinion of his like, all the other women in turn grew convinced of it
and in spite of the men's prohibition they launched the skiff on the
water. Achab was the most daring and desired to be the first to affront
the peril. She threw herself gaily into the boat and would have been
followed by all those of her sex had not a wave separated her from the
ship. They called to her, said she was a hundred times lunatic, vowed
that through her every woman would one day be reproached for having a
quarter of the Moon in her head--she did but flout them. There she was
sailing outside the world. The animals followed her example, for most
of the birds, impatient at the first prison that had ever restrained
their liberty, flew thither if they felt their wings strong enough to
risk the journey. The boldest of the quadrupeds even began to swim.
More than a thousand got out before Noah's sons could shut the stables
which were kept open by the crowd of animals rushing through. Most of
them reached this new world. As for the skiff, it grounded upon a very
pleasant hill where the courageous Achab landed. Delighted at having
recognised that this Earth was indeed the Moon she was unwilling to
embark again and join her brothers. She spent some time in a cave and
one day as she was walking out, debating whether she were sorry or very
glad to have lost the company of her relatives, she saw a man knocking
down acorns. The joy of such a meeting made her fly to embrace him, and
she received the like from him, for it was still longer since the old
man had seen a human face. It was Enoch the Just. They lived together,
begat posterity and had he not been obliged to withdraw into the
woods by the original sin of his children and the pride of his wife,
they would have passed the remainder of their days together with all
the comfort God bestows as a blessing upon the marriage of the Just.
There, every day in the wildest retreats of these terrible solitudes
he offered up to God with a purified spirit his heart as a sacrifice.
One day the Tree of Knowledge, which as you know is in this garden,
dropped an apple in the river on whose bank it is planted and the fruit
was carried out of Paradise by the waves to a place where poor Enoch
was fishing to gain his scanty subsistence. This beautiful fruit was
caught in his net and he ate it. Immediately he knew where the Earthly
Paradise was and he came to live in it by secret means which you cannot
conceive if you have not eaten, as he did, the Apple of Knowledge.
"Now I must tell you the manner in which I came here myself. You have
not forgotten, I suppose, that my name is Elijah, for I told you so
just now. You must know then that I was in your world and that I dwelt
with Elisha, a Hebrew like myself, on the banks of the Jordan where I
spent among books a life pleasant enough not to make me regret that
it was continually passing away. However, as the enlightenment of my
spirit increased, the knowledge of the enlightenment I did not possess
increased also. Whenever our priests reminded me of Adam I could not
forbear sighing at the recollection of that perfect Philosophy he had
possessed. I despaired of being able to acquire it, when one day,
after I had sacrificed to expiate the sins of my mortal Being, I fell
asleep and the Angel of the Lord appeared to me in a dream. As soon as
I awoke I failed not to labour at those things he had commanded me; I
took of loadstone two square feet and cast it into a furnace, and when
it was purged, precipitated and dissolved, I drew out the attractive
principle, calcined the whole elixir and reduced it to the bulk of a
medium-sized ball.
"Following upon these preparations I had made a very light chariot
of iron and some months later, all my engines being completed, I
entered my ingenious cart. Perhaps you will ask what was the use of
this appliance? Know then that the Angel told me in my dream that if
I desired to acquire the perfect knowledge I wished for I should rise
from the world to the Moon, where I should find the Tree of Knowledge
in Adam's Paradise and as soon as I had tasted its fruit my soul would
perceive all the truths a created mind can perceive. For this voyage
I had built my chariot. I got into it and when I was well and firmly
seated in it I cast the loadstone ball high into the air. Now I had
expressly made my iron machine thicker in the middle than at the ends
and so it was lifted immediately in perfect equilibrium because it
moved always more eagerly in that part. Thus, directly I arrived where
the loadstone had drawn me I threw up the ball again in the air above
me."
"But", I interrupted, "how did you throw the ball so straight above
your chariot that it never went sideways?"
"I see nothing astounding in this adventure", said he, "for when the
loadstone was cast into the air it attracted the iron straight to it
and consequently it was impossible that I should rise sideways. I must
tell you that I held the ball in my hand and continued to rise because
the chariot rushed always towards the loadstone which I held above it;
but the movement of the iron to join with the ball was so vigorous
that it bent my body double and I dared not attempt the new experiment
more than once. In truth it was a very surprising spectacle to behold,
for I had polished the steel of this flying house carefully and it
reflected on all sides the light of the Sun so keenly and sharply that
I myself thought I was being carried away in a chariot of fire. At
length after I had many times thrown the ball upwards and had flown
after it, I arrived (as you did) at a place where I began to fall
towards this world; and because at that moment I happened to be holding
the loadstone ball tightly in my hands my chariot pressed against me
to approach the body which attracted it and therefore did not leave
me. All I had to fear now was breaking my neck, but to preserve myself
from that I threw up the ball from time to time so that my machine,
feeling itself attracted back, would rest and so break the force of
my fall. Finally, when I was about two or three hundred toises above
the ground I threw the ball out on either side level with the chariot,
sometimes in the one direction and sometimes in the other, until my
eyes discovered the Earthly Paradise. Immediately I failed not to throw
my loadstone above it and, when the machine followed, I let myself
fall until I saw I was about to be hurled against the ground; then I
threw the ball upwards a foot only above my head and this little cast
diminished altogether the speed I had acquired in falling so that my
descent was no more violent than if I had jumped down my own height. I
will not describe to you my amazement at the sight of the marvels which
are here, because it was very similar to that which I perceive has just
perturbed you.
"You must know, however, that the next day I came upon the Tree of
Life, by whose means I prevented myself from growing old. Age very soon
disappeared and the serpent went up in smoke."
At these words I said: "Venerable and holy Patriarch, I should be happy
to know what you mean by this serpent which disappeared."
With a laughing face he replied thus: "I forgot, O my son, to reveal to
you a secret which could not hitherto have been imparted to you. You
must know then that after Eve and her husband had eaten the forbidden
apple, God punished the serpent that had tempted them by confining it
in man's body. Since then in punishment for the crime of the first
father every human being who is born nourishes in his belly a serpent,
the issue of the first one. You call this the bowels and think them
necessary for the functions of life, but learn that they are nothing
else than a serpent coiled upon itself in several folds. When you hear
your guts rumble, it is the serpent that hisses and, according to that
gluttonous nature with which he formerly incited the first man to eat
too much, asks for food himself. God, to punish you, desired to make
you mortal like other animals, and caused you to be possessed by this
insatiable beast, to the intent that if you feed him too much you choke
yourself or, if you refuse him his pittance when the starveling gnaws
your stomach with his invisible teeth, then he rumbles, he rages, he
pours out that venom which doctors call bile and so heats you with the
poison he pours into your arteries that you are soon destroyed by it.
Finally, to show you that your bowels are a serpent you have in your
body, remember serpents were found in the graves of Æsculapius, Scipio,
Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England, still feeding upon the
corpses of their hosts."
"Truly", said I, interrupting him, "I have observed that since this
serpent is always trying to escape from man's body his head and neck
may be seen projecting from the lower part of our bellies. But God did
not permit man alone to be tormented by it, he willed that it should
rise up against woman to cast its venom upon her and that the swelling
should last nine months after she had been bitten. And to prove to you
that I speak according to the word of the Lord, He said to the serpent
(to curse it) that though it might make woman fall by rising up against
her, she would make it lower its head."
I would have continued these trifles but Elijah prevented me:
"Remember", said he, "that this place is holy." He then remained silent
some time as if to recollect the place in which he dwelt, and continued
in these words: "I only taste the Fruit of Life every hundred years.
The taste of its juice somewhat resembles spirits. I think it was the
apple that Adam had eaten which caused our earliest forefathers to
live so long, because something of its energy had flowed into their
seed and was only extinguished in the waters of the flood.[35] The Tree
of Knowledge is planted opposite. Its fruit is covered with a rind
which produces ignorance in anyone who tastes it and preserves under
the thickness of this peel the spiritual virtues of that learned food.
After Adam was expelled from this blessed land God rubbed his gums
with this peel, lest he should find the way back to it again. For more
than fifteen years after this time he doted and forgot everything so
completely that neither he nor his progeny down to Moses remembered
the creation. But the remains of the power of this weighty peel were
finally dissipated by the warmth and light of that great Prophet's
genius. Happily I began on one of the apples which was so ripe it had
shed its skin and my saliva had scarcely dampened it when universal
Philosophy took me by the nose. It seemed to me that an infinite number
of little eyes sank into my head and I knew at once how to converse
with the Lord. Afterwards when I reflected upon this miraculous removal
I felt that I could not have overcome merely through the occult virtues
of a simple body the vigilance of the Seraph whom God placed on guard
over this Paradise. But since it pleases Him to make use of secondary
causes I thought He had inspired me with this means of entering it as
He had made use of Adam's ribs to create a woman, although He could
have formed her out of earth as well as the man.
[Footnote 35: Cyrano seems to have forgotten that the apple of Eden
came from the Tree of Knowledge, not the Tree of Life.]
"I remained for a long time in this garden walking without a companion.
But at last, as the Angel at the Gate of the place was my principal
host, I felt a desire to speak to him. An hour's walking ended my
journey, for at the expiration of this time I reached a country where a
thousand flashes of lightning confounding themselves into one formed a
blinding daylight which served but to make darkness visible.
"I had not yet recovered from this adventure when I saw a fair young
man before me. 'I am', said he, 'the Archangel you are seeking and I
have just read in God that He had suggested to you the means of coming
here and that He desires you to await His pleasure.' He conversed with
me on several subjects and among other things told me that the light at
which I had seemed frightened had nothing formidable about it, that it
lighted up almost every evening when he was making his rounds because,
in order to avoid the artifices of sorcerers, who enter everywhere
without being seen, he was forced to indulge in broad sword play with
his flaming brand all round the Earthly Paradise and that this light
was caused by the flashing of his steel. 'Those which you perceive
from your World', he added, 'are produced by me. If you see them
sometimes afar off, that is because the clouds of a distant country,
being disposed to receive this impression, reflect on to you these
light images of fire, just as vapour differently placed is disposed
to make a rainbow. I will not tell you any more, because the Apple of
Knowledge is not far from here and as soon as you have eaten of it you
will be as learned as I. But above all take care of this mistake; most
of the fruits which hang on that plant are covered with a rind and if
you taste it you will descend beneath Man, whereas the inner part will
uplift you as high as the Angels.'"
Elijah had reached this point in the instructions the Angel had given
him when a little man joined us. "This is the Enoch of whom I have
spoken", whispered my guide. As he spoke, Enoch presented us with a
basket filled with I know not what fruits, similar to pomegranates,
which he had discovered that day in a retired grove. I put some of them
in my pockets at Elijah's command, when Enoch asked who I was.
"'Tis an adventure which merits a longer conversation", answered my
guide, "this evening when we go to bed he will tell us himself the
miraculous details of his journey."
As he said this we reached a kind of hermitage made of palm branches
ingeniously interwoven with myrtles and orange-trees. There I perceived
in a little corner several heaps of a certain thread so white and so
fine that it might have passed for the spirit of snow. I saw also
spindles lying here and there. I asked my guide what they were used for
and he replied, "To spin. When the good Enoch wishes to unbend from
his meditations, sometimes he dresses the thread, and sometimes he
weaves the linen which serves to make chemises for the eleven thousand
virgins. You must have met sometimes in your world with something that
floats through the air in the autumn about harvest-time. The peasants
call it, 'Our Lady's cotton', but it is really the waste which Enoch
clears off the linen as he makes it."
We went away without taking leave of Enoch, who lived in this hut, and
we were obliged to depart from him so soon, because he prays every six
hours, and that time had fully elapsed since his last orison.
As we went along I besought Elijah to conclude the story of the
assumptions he had begun, and I told him that I thought he had broken
off at the story of Saint John the Evangelist.
"Since you have not the patience", said he, "to wait until the Apple of
Knowledge teaches you all these things far better than I can, I will
tell you. Know then that God...."
At this word I know not how the Devil interfered, but I could not
prevent myself from interrupting him waggishly:
"I remember", said I, "God was one day informed that the soul of this
Evangelist was so detached that he only retained it by clenching his
teeth. The Eternal Wisdom was mightily surprised at so unexpected an
accident, exclaiming: 'Alas! He must not taste death. He is predestined
to rise up to the Earthly Paradise in his flesh and bones. Yet the hour
wherein I had foreseen he should be uplifted has almost expired! Just
Heavens! What will men say of Me when they know I have been mistaken?'
Thus to cover up His mistake the Eternal was constrained in His
irresolution to cause him to be there without having the time to make
him go there."
All the time I was speaking Elijah gazed at me with eyes that would
have killed me had I been in a condition to die of anything but hunger.
"Abominable wretch!" said he, recoiling from me, "you have the
impudence to banter holy things and assuredly it would not be with
impunity if the All-Wise did not wish to leave you as a famous example
of His pity to all nations. Hence, thou impious fellow, go from here,
publish in this little world and in the other (for you are predestined
to return there) the irreconcilable hatred of God to Atheists."
He had scarcely finished this imprecation when he seized hold of me and
began to drag me roughly towards the gate. When we came near a large
tree, whose branches were weighed almost to the ground by their burden
of fruit, he said: "That is the Tree of Knowledge from which you would
have drawn inconceivable enlightenment had you not been so irreligious."
He had not finished speaking when, pretending to faint with weakness,
I stumbled against a branch from which I nimbly stole an apple. I had
still several steps to make before I should get out of this delightful
park but I was so violently attacked by hunger that I forgot I was in
the hands of an angry prophet, pulled out one of the apples I had put
in my pocket and thrust my teeth into it. But instead of taking one
of those which Enoch had given to me, my hand fell on the apple I had
picked from the Tree of Knowledge, which unfortunately I had not peeled.
I had scarcely tasted it when a thick night descended upon my soul;
I did not see my apple any more nor Elijah beside me and my eyes did
not recognise a single trace of the Earthly Paradise in the whole
hemisphere, yet I did not cease to remember all that had happened to me
there.
Afterwards, reflecting on this miracle, I supposed that the rind of
this fruit did not wholly stupefy me, because my teeth went through
it and felt a little of the inner juice, whose energy dispelled the
malignities of the peel.
I was vastly surprised to find myself all alone in the midst of a land
I did not know. I turned my eyes about me and gazed over the country,
but no living thing presented itself to console me. At last I resolved
to walk forward until Fortune brought me into the company of some
creature or of death. She heard me favourably, for at the end of a
half-quarter of an hour I met with two very large animals, one of which
stayed before me while the other ran swiftly towards its den; at least
I thought so, because a little time later I saw it return with more
than seven or eight hundred of the same species, who surrounded me.
When I could examine them near at hand I perceived that their body and
face were like ours. This adventure made me remember the stories I had
heard my nurse tell formerly about sirens, fauns and satyrs; from time
to time they set up such furious shriekings, caused no doubt by their
wonder at seeing me, that I almost thought I had become a monster.
One of these beast-men seized me by the neck, as wolves do when they
carry off a sheep, cast me upon his back and took me to their town.
I was greatly astounded when I saw that they were indeed men and yet
every one I met walked on four legs. When the people saw me pass,
seeing I was so small (for most of them are twelve cubits high) and
that my body was supported by two feet only, they could not believe
I was a man; for they hold that as Nature has given men two arms and
two legs like the beasts, they ought to use them in the same way. And
indeed, musing on this subject afterwards, I have thought that this
position of the body was not so extravagant, for I recollected that our
children walk on four feet when they are taught by Nature alone and
only rise on two feet through the care of their nurses who set them in
little carts and tie them with straps to prevent their falling on four
feet, which is the only position wherein the shape of our body tends to
repose.
At that time they said (according to the interpretation made to me
afterwards) that I was certainly the female of the Queen's little
animal. As this or as something else I was carried to the town hall,
where I noticed from the buzz and the gestures made by the people and
the magistrates that they were arguing together about what I might
be. When they had talked together for a long time a certain citizen
who kept rare beasts begged the aldermen to lend me to him until the
Queen sent for me to live with my male. No objection was made. This
mountebank took me to his home; he taught me to play the buffoon, to
throw somersaults, to make grimaces and in the afternoon he took money
at the door for showing me.[36]
[Footnote 36: See Appendix I. for Swift's use of this idea.]
At length Heaven, moved by my misfortunes and displeased to see the
Temple of its Master profaned, willed that one day when I was tied
to the end of a cord with which the mountebank made me leap to amuse
the mob, one of those looking on gazed at me very attentively and at
length asked me in Greek who I was. I was vastly surprised to hear him
speak there as in our world. He questioned me for some time; I replied
and told him afterwards in general terms what I had undertaken and
the success of my voyage. He consoled me and I remember that he said:
"Well, my son, you suffer the penalties of the failings of your world
at last. Here, as there, exists a mob which cannot endure the thought
of things to which it is not accustomed, but know that you receive a
reciprocal treatment, for if someone from this earth should rise to
yours and have the boldness to call himself a man, your learned men
would have him smothered as a monster or as an ape possessed by a
Devil." He promised me afterwards that he would inform the Court of
my disaster; he added that as soon as he looked at me his heart told
him I was a man, because he had formerly travelled to the world whence
I came, that my country was the Moon, that I was a Gaul and that he
had once lived in Greece, where he was called the Demon of Socrates
and that after the death of this philosopher he had directed and
instructed Epaminondas at Thebes; that afterwards he had passed over to
the Romans, where Justice had attached him to the party of the younger
Cato; then, that after his death he had devoted himself to Brutus;
that since these great personages had left nothing behind them in the
world but the phantom of their virtues, he retired with his companions
sometimes to the temples, sometimes into solitude. "At last", he
added, "the people of your world became so stupid and so gross that
my companions and I lost all the pleasure we once had in teaching
them. You must inevitably have heard us spoken of. They called us
Oracles, Nymphs, Genii, Fairies, Hearth-gods, Lemures, Larvae, Lamias,
Hobgoblins, Naiades, Incubi, Shades, Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms. We
left your World in the reign of Augustus a little after the time when
I appeared to Drusus, the son of Livia, who was waging war in Germany,
and forbade him to proceed further. It is not long since I returned
thence for the second time. During the last hundred years I was
instructed to travel there, I wandered about in Europe and conversed
with persons whom you may have known. One day I appeared to Cardan as
he was reading; I instructed him in many things and in recompense he
promised me that he would bear witness to posterity that I was the
person from whom he obtained knowledge of the miracles he proposed
to write. I saw Agrippa, Abbot Tritheim, Doctor Faust, La Brosse,
César[37] and a certain group of young men, known to the uninitiate
by the name of Knights of the Rosy-Cross, to whom I imparted a number
of artifices and natural secrets which no doubt will have caused the
people to consider them great magicians. I knew Campanella[38] also.
When he was in the inquisition at Rome it was I who advised him to
conform his face and body to the usual grimaces and postures of those
whose inner mind he needed to know, so that he might excite in himself
by a similar position the thoughts which this same situation had called
up in his adversaries; because he would treat better with their soul
when he knew it. At my request he began a book, which we called _De
Sensu Rerum_. Similarly in France I frequented La Mothe Le Vayer and
Gassendi[39]: the second is a man who has written as much philosophy as
the first has lived. I know there are numbers of other men whom your
age considers divine, but I found nothing in them save a vast deal of
chatter and pride.
[Footnote 37: Famous sorcerers.]
[Footnote 38: See Introduction.]
[Footnote 39: See Introduction.]
"When I left your country for England to study the manners of its
inhabitants I met a man who is the shame of his country; for certainly
it is a shame to the great men of your state who recognize in him,
yet fail to adore, the virtue of which he is the throne. To cut short
his panegyric; he is all Wit, he is all Heart, and if by giving both
these qualities (one of which formerly sufficed to mark a hero) to one
person were not as good as naming Tristan L'Hermite,[40] I should not
have mentioned his name, for I am sure he will not forgive me for this
indiscretion. But as I do not expect ever to return to your World I
desire to bear witness to this truth for my conscience's sake. Truly
I must tell you that when I saw so high a virtue I feared that it
was not recognized; for this reason I tried to make him accept three
phials. The first was full of oil of Talc, the second of the powder
of projection, and the third of potable Gold, that is to say, the
vegetable salt whose eternity is promised by your chemists. But he
refused them with a disdain more generous than that with which Diogenes
received the compliments of Alexander who came to visit him in his tub.
Finally I can add nothing to the praise of this great man except that
he is the only Poet, the only Philosopher and the only free Man that
you have. These are the eminent persons with whom I have conversed; all
the others, at least those I knew, are so far below men that I have
seen beasts who were above them.
[Footnote 40: See Introduction.]
"For the rest, I am not an inhabitant of your earth nor of this; I
was born in the Sun; but because our world is sometimes overpeopled
on account of the long life of its inhabitants and the fact that it
is practically free from wars and diseases, our rulers from time to
time send out colonies to the surrounding worlds. I was ordered to go
to your Earth and declared leader of the expedition sent out with me.
Since then I have come to this world for the reasons I told you; and I
remain here because these men are lovers of truth; there are no pedants
to be seen here, the philosophers allow themselves to be convinced by
reason alone and neither the authority of a learned man nor numbers can
overwhelm the opinion of a corn-thresher if the corn-thresher reason
powerfully. In short the only madmen recognised in this country are the
sophists and the orators."
I asked him how long they lived; he replied, "Three or four thousand
years", and continued in this manner: "To render myself visible as I
am now, when I feel the corpse I dwell in almost used up or when the
organs do not exercise their functions perfectly, I breathe myself into
a young body that has recently died.
"Although the inhabitants of the Sun are not so numerous as those
of this World, nevertheless the Sun is often overcrowded, because
the people are of a very hot temperament and consequently restless,
ambitious and voracious.
"What I tell you ought not to seem a marvellous thing; for, although
our globe is very vast and yours small, although we only die at the
end of four thousand years and you after half a century, learn that,
just as there are not so many pebbles as earth, nor so many insects as
plants, nor so many animals as insects, nor so many men as animals; so
there cannot be so many demons as men, because of the difficulties to
be met with in the generation of so perfect a composition."
I asked him if they were bodies like us. He replied that, yes, they
were bodies, but not like us nor like anything that we consider such,
because we call vulgarly a body that which can be touched; for the
rest, there was nothing in Nature that was not material,[41] and
although they were material themselves, when they wished to be seen by
us they were forced to take bodies such as our senses are capable of
perceiving.
[Footnote 41: This shows the disciple of Lucretius.]
I assured him that many in the world thought the stories told of
them were only an effect of the fancy of feeble-minded individuals,
seeing that they only appeared at night. He replied that, since they
were forced to build themselves hastily the bodies they had to make
use of, they often had only time enough to fit them for a single
sense, sometimes hearing, as the voices of Oracles; sometimes sight,
as Will-o'-the-Wisps and Spectres; sometimes touch, as Incubi and
Nightmares; and that this mass being only thickened air, the light
destroyed it with its heat just as we see it disperse a fog by
expanding it.
All these things he explained to me aroused in me the curiosity to
question him about his birth and death; if in the country of the Sun
the individual saw the day by the means of generation, and whether he
died through the disintegration of his mind or the breaking down of his
organs.
"There is too little connection", said he, "between your senses and
the explanation of these mysteries. You imagine that what you cannot
comprehend is spiritual or that it does not exist; the inference is
false, but it is a proof that the universe contains perhaps a million
things, to know which you would require a million different organs.
Thus, I conceive through my senses the cause of the loadstone's turning
to the north, the cause of the tides, and what an animal becomes after
death; but you cannot rise to these high conceptions because there
is nothing in you related to these miracles, any more than a child
born blind can imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colouring of a
picture, the tints of the rainbow; rather he will imagine them at one
time as something palpable, then as something to eat, then as a sound,
then as an odour. So if I tried to explain to you what I perceive
through senses which you lack you would conceive it as something which
can be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted, when it is nothing of
the kind."
He was at this point of his discourse when my mountebank saw the
company was growing weary of our jargon, for they could not understand
it and mistook it for an inarticulate grunting. He began to pull
heartily at my cord and made me gambol until the spectators had their
fill of mirth and vowed I was nearly as clever as the animals in their
country, and so went off to their homes.
The harshness of my master's bad treatment was softened by the visits
of this obliging demon; I could not converse with those who came to see
me, since they took me for an animal deeply rooted in the category of
brutes; I did not know their language, they did not know mine! Judge
then what relation there was between us.
You must know that two idioms are used in that country, one of which
serves the nobles while the other is peculiar to the people.
The language of the nobles is simply different tones not articulated,
very much like our music when no words have been added to it. Certainly
it is an invention altogether useful and agreeable, for when they are
tired of speaking, or when they disdain to prostitute their throats
to this usage, they take a lute or some other instrument, with whose
aid they communicate their thought as easily as by the voice; so that
sometimes fifteen or twenty of them may be met with debating a point
of theology or the difficulties of a law case in the most harmonious
concert that could tickle one's ears.[42]
[Footnote 42: See Appendix I.]
The second, which is used by the people, is carried out by movements
of the limbs, though perhaps not precisely as you imagine, for certain
parts of the body mean a whole speech. For example, the movement of
a finger, of a hand, of an ear, of a lip, of an arm, of a cheek,
will make singly a discourse or a sentence; others are only used
to designate words, such as a wrinkle in the forehead, different
shiverings of the muscles, turnings of the hands, stampings of the
foot, contortions of the arm, so that, as it is their custom to go
quite naked, when they talk their limbs (which are accustomed to
gesticulate their ideas) move so briskly that it does not seem a man
talking but a body trembling.
The demon came to visit me almost every day and his marvellous
conversation helped me to endure the miseries of captivity without
repining. One morning a man whom I did not know came into my lodging,
and having well stroked me for a long time, gently lifted me up under
the arm-pit; then, holding me with one hand lest I should be hurt,
cast me upon his back, where I found myself seated so softly and so
comfortably that although I was afflicted to find myself treated like
a beast I had no desire to escape. Moreover these four-footed men move
with a swiftness different from ours, since the heaviest of them can
catch a running deer.
I was vastly perturbed at having no news of my courteous demon and on
the evening of the first day's journey, after I had reached the inn, I
was walking in the courtyard waiting for supper when my carrier, whose
face was young and handsome, came up to me, laughing before my nose,
and cast his two forefeet around my neck. After I had gazed at him for
a while he said to me in French: "What! Do you not know your friend?"
I leave you to imagine what I then felt. My surprise was so great
that thereafter I imagined that the whole globe of the Moon, all that
happened to me there, everything that I saw there, were an enchantment.
The man-beast who had served me as a steed continued to speak in these
words: "You had promised that the favours I did you would never leave
your memory."
I protested that I had never seen him. At last he said: "I am that
demon of Socrates who entertained you during the time of your
captivity. As I had promised you, I left yesterday to inform the King
of your misfortune and I covered three hundred leagues in eighteen
hours, for I arrived at midday to await you...."
"But", I interrupted, "how can all this be, seeing that yesterday
you were extremely tall and to-day you are very short; yesterday you
had a weak broken voice and to-day it is strong and clear; in short,
yesterday you were a hoary old man and to-day you are a young man?
What! While in my country we travel from birth to death, do the animals
of this land go from death to birth; do they grow younger the older
they are?"
"When I had spoken to the Prince", said he, "and had received his order
to bring you to him, I felt the body I inhabited so worn out with
lassitude that all its organs refused their functions. I inquired the
way to the hospital, went there, and as soon as I entered the first
room found a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached
the body and feigning to have recognised movement in it I protested
to all present that he was not dead, that his disease was not even
dangerous, and without being perceived I skilfully breathed myself into
him. My old body immediately fell backwards; and I rose up in this
young one.[43] They exclaimed at the miracle, but without arguing with
any one I went off promptly to your mountebank, where I took you up."
[Footnote 43: This idea comes from Charles Sorel's _Berger
Extravagant_.]
He would have told me more but they came to fetch us for supper. My
conductor led me into a magnificently furnished room but I saw nothing
prepared to eat. Such a lack of meat when I was perishing of hunger
forced me to ask him where the table was laid. I did not hear what he
replied, for three or four young boys, the host's children, came up
to me at that instant and with great civility undressed me to the
shirt. This new ceremonial vastly astonished me, but I dared not ask
its reason of my handsome attendants; and when my guide asked how I
should like to begin I know not how I was able to reply with these two
words: "A soup". Immediately I smelt the odour of the most succulent
simmering that ever hit the nose of a rich sinner. I tried to get up
from my place to track down with my nose the source of this agreeable
vapour, but my guide prevented me: "Where are you going?" said he, "we
will take a walk soon, but this is the time to eat; finish your soup
and then we will have something else."
"But where the devil is the soup?" cried I in a rage. "Have you made a
wager to banter me all day?"
"I thought", he replied, "that you had seen at the town whence we came
either your master or someone else taking his meals; that is why I did
not tell you of their methods of eating in this country. But since
you are still ignorant of it, let me tell you that here they live on
nothing but vapour. The art of cookery here is to enclose in large,
specially moulded vessels the fumes which rise from meats and, having
collected several kinds and several tastes, according to the appetite
of those they entertain, they open the vessel which holds this odour
and then another and then another until the company is quite satisfied.
Unless you have already lived in this manner you will never believe
that the nose unassisted by the teeth and throat can perform the
office of the mouth in feeding a man; but I will make you see it by
experience."
He had scarcely finished his promise when I smelled successively as
they entered the room so many agreeable and nourishing vapours that
I felt myself completely satisfied in less than a half-quarter of an
hour. When we had risen he said: "This should not cause you a great
deal of surprise, since you cannot have lived so long without having
noticed that in your world cooks and pastry-cooks, who eat less than
people of other occupations, are nevertheless fatter than they are.
Whence is their fatness derived, unless it be from the smell of the
food that perpetually surrounds them, penetrates their bodies and
nourishes them? People in this world enjoy a more vigorous and less
interrupted health, because their food causes hardly any excrements,
which are the origin of almost all diseases. You were surprised perhaps
when they undressed you before the meal, because the custom is never
employed in your country, but here it is, and it is done in order that
the animal may imbibe the vapour more easily."
"Sir", said I, "what you say appears very probable and I myself
have just experienced something of it, but I must confess I cannot
de-brutalise myself so promptly, and I should be very glad to have a
solid morsel under my teeth."
He promised it, but only for the next day, because he said that to eat
so soon after a meal would give me indigestion. We continued talking
some time and then went up to our room to go to bed.
At the top of the staircase we were met by a man who gazed very
attentively upon us and then conducted me to a cabinet whose floor was
covered with orange flowers to the depth of three feet; and took my
demon into another filled with carnations and jasmine. Seeing that I
appeared amazed at this magnificence he told me this was the method of
making beds in that country. At last we each lay down in our chamber
and as soon as I was stretched out on my flowers I perceived by the
light of thirty large glow-worms enclosed in a crystal (for they use
no other candle) the three or four young boys who had undressed me at
supper, one of whom began to tickle my feet, another my thighs, another
my flanks, another my arms, so delicately and nicely that in less than
a moment I fell asleep.
Next morning my demon entered with the sun. "I have kept my word", said
he, "you shall break your fast more substantially than you supped last
night." At these words I got up and he led me by the hand to a place
behind the inn garden where one of the host's children awaited us with
a weapon in his hand very like one of our guns. He asked my guide if
I should like a dozen larks, because baboons (that is what he took me
for) fed on this meat. I had scarcely answered yes, when the sportsman
fired in the air and twenty or thirty well-roasted larks fell at our
feet. There! thought I at once, and we have a proverb in our world
about a land where the larks fall ready roasted! Doubtless someone who
had come from here.
"You have but to eat", said my demon, "they are skilful enough to mix
with their powder and shot a composition which kills, plucks, roasts
and seasons their game."
On his recommendation I picked up and ate some of them, and truly I had
never in my life tasted anything so delicious.
After breakfast we prepared to depart and with a thousand grimaces,
which they use to show their politeness, the host accepted a paper
from my demon. I asked him if this were a note of hand for the amount
of the bill. He answered, no, he owed him nothing, and that the paper
contained verses.
"Verses!" I answered, "are the tavern-keepers here so fond of rhymes?"
"'Tis the money of the country ", replied he, "and our expenses at this
place came to a sixain, which I have just given him. I was not afraid
of being short of money, for even though we feasted here for eight
days we should not spend a sonnet, and I have four on me, with nine
epigrams, two odes and an eclogue."
Ha! said I to myself, that is precisely the money which Sorel makes
Hortensius use in "Francion" I remember.[44] Doubtless he stole it from
here; but how the devil can he have learnt it? It must have been from
his mother, for I have heard it said that she was Lunatic.
[Footnote 44: Charles Sorel's _Histoire Comique de Francion_, 1626.]
I asked my demon then if these verses served always as money, as often
as they were copied out; he said they did not and continued thus: "When
an author has composed some verses he carries them to the mint, where
the sworn poets of the kingdom hold their sessions. There the verifying
officers test the pieces and if they are judged to be of a good alloy
they are estimated, not according to their weight, but according to
their wit, and so no one dies of hunger except the blockheads, and men
of wit live in perpetual good cheer."
I wondered in a kind of ecstasy at the judicious polity of that country
and he went on in this way: "There are other people who keep inns in a
very different way. When you leave them they ask of you, according to
your expenses, a note of hand for the Next World; and when they have it
they enter it in a tall ledger, which they call their account with God,
much in this way:
_Item_: The value of so many verses delivered on such a day by such
an one which God must repay me from the first funds that come in on
presentation of this note of hand.
When they feel themselves ill and in danger of dying they have these
registers torn into pieces and swallow them because they think that
unless they are digested God cannot read them."
This conversation did not prevent us from continuing our journey, that
is, my carrier went on all fours underneath me and I rode astride. I
will not particularise any further the adventures which delayed us
until we arrived at last at the King's residence. I was taken straight
to the Palace. The Nobles received me with much more moderate surprise
than the people had done when we passed through the streets, but their
conclusion was the same, to wit, that I was without doubt the female
of the Queen's little animal. My guide interpreted it thus, but he
himself did not understand the enigma and did not know what the Queen's
little animal was. We were soon enlightened on this point, for the King
some time after commanded him to be brought thither. About half an
hour afterwards a little man about my own size, walking on two legs,
came in, accompanied by a troupe of monkeys wearing ruffs and Spanish
slops. As soon as he saw me he accosted me with a "Criado de vouestra
merced"; and I replied to his courtesy in similar terms.[45] Alas!
they had no sooner seen us speak to each other than they all believed
their prejudice had been truth, and this meeting produced no other
result, for the opinion of the spectator most favourable to us was that
our conversation was merely that we were grunting with joy at being
coupled, and that a natural instinct made us hum. The little man told
me he was an European, a native of old Castile, that by means of birds
he had conveyed himself to the world of the Moon wherein we now were,
that he fell into the Queen's hands and she had taken him for a monkey,
because it happens they dress their monkeys in Spanish clothes, and
that when she found him dressed in this manner on his arrival, she had
not doubted he belonged to the species.
[Footnote 45: This Spaniard is introduced by Cyrano because in Godwin's
_Man in the Moon_, of which a French translation appeared in March
1648, one Gonzales reaches the Moon in a car drawn by gansas. See
Appendix I.]
"We must suppose", I replied, "that after having tried all other kinds
of clothes, they found none more ridiculous, and so they dressed
them in this fashion, since they only keep these animals to amuse
themselves."
"You do not understand", he said, "the dignity of our nation, since the
universe only produced men for the purpose of giving us slaves, and for
us Nature can only engender subjects of mirth."[46]
[Footnote 46: Meaning, I suppose, that everything which is not Spanish
is ridiculous.]
He then besought me to tell him how I had dared to rise to the Moon
in the machine of which I had spoken to him. I replied that this was
because he had taken away the birds on which I had intended to go. He
smiled at this jest and about a quarter of an hour afterwards the King
commanded his monkey-keeper to take us away, with strict orders to
make the Spaniard and me lie together to multiply our species in his
kingdom. The Prince's command was carried out in every point and I was
very glad of it because of the pleasure I took in having some one to
converse with during the solitude of my brutification. One day my male
(they took me for the female) told me that the real reason that had
obliged him to wander all over the earth and finally to abandon it for
the Moon, was that he could not find a single country where even the
imagination was free.
"Observe", said he, "unless you wear a square cap, a chaperon or a
cassock, whatever excellent things you may say, if they are against the
principles of these diplomaed doctors, you are an idiot, a madman or an
atheist. In my own country they tried to put me into the Inquisition
because I maintained to the very beard of these pig-headed pedants
that there is a void in Nature and that I knew no matter in the world
heavier than another."
I asked him with what probabilities he supported an opinion so little
received, and he replied: "To understand that, you must suppose there
is only one element; for although we see water, earth, air and fire
separate, we never find them so perfectly pure but that they are
mingled with each other. When, for example, you look at fire, it is not
fire, it is nothing but air greatly expanded; air is only very extended
water, and water is only melted earth; while the earth itself is
nothing but very contracted water. Thus, by examining matter seriously
you will find it is but one substance, which like an excellent actor
plays many parts in many kinds of dresses here below. Otherwise we
should have to admit as many elements as there are sorts of bodies. And
if you ask me why fire burns and water cools, seeing that they are the
same matter, I reply that this matter acts by sympathy according to the
disposition it is in at the time it acts. Fire, which is nothing but
earth still more expanded than it is when it makes air, tries to change
all it meets with into itself by sympathy. Thus, the heat of coal,
which is the most subtle fire and the most fit to penetrate a body,
glides between the pores of our mass, at first makes us expand, because
it is a new matter filling us and making us give off sweat; this sweat,
expanded by the fire, changes into vapour and becomes air; this air,
still further melted by the heat of the antiperistasis or of the globes
that are neighbours to it, is called fire, and the earth, abandoned by
the cold and by the damp which bind together all our parts, falls down
as earth. On the other hand, water, although it only differs from the
matter of fire in that it is more closely packed, does not burn us,
because as it is contracted it sympathetically requires the bodies it
meets to contract; so the cold we feel is nothing but the effect of our
flesh, which retires upon itself through the neighbourhood of earth or
water compelling it to resemble them. Hence dropsical patients, filled
with water, change into water all the food they take; and similarly
those who are bilious change into bile all the blood formed by their
liver. But if you suppose that there is only one element it is very
certain that all bodies, each according to its quality, incline equally
to the centre of the earth.
"But you may ask why gold, iron, metals, earth and wood fall more
rapidly to the centre than a sponge, if not because the last is filled
with air which tends naturally upwards! That is not the reason at
all and I reply to you in this way: Although a stone falls with more
rapidity than a feather, both have the same inclination to fall; but,
if the earth were pierced right through, a cannon-ball would fall more
rapidly to the centre than a bladder filled with air. The reason for
this is that this mass of metal is a great deal of earth squeezed into
a small space and that this air is a very little earth expanded into
a great deal of space; for all the particles of matter which reside
in this iron, interlocked as they are with each other, increase their
strength by union, because by being compact they form many fighting
against few, since a portion of air equal in size to the bullet is not
equal to it in quantity; and so, yielding under the burden of those
more numerous than itself and as impatient, it allows itself to be
broken through in order to give them free way.
"Not to prove this with a string of reasons: tell me truly how are we
wounded by a pike, a sword or a dagger if it is not that steel is a
matter whose particles are nearer together and more pressed against
each other than those of our flesh, whose pores and whose softness show
that it contains a very little matter spread through a wide space, and
that the iron point which pierces us is an almost innumerable quantity
of matter directed against a very little flesh, and so forces it to
yield to the stronger party, just as a compact squadron pierces a
whole line of battle which is widely extended? Why is a red-hot steel
ingot hotter than a burning block of wood, if it is not because the
ingot contains more fire in less space attached to all the particles
of the piece of metal than there is in a log, which is very spongy and
consequently contains a great deal of void; and, since void is simply
the absence of Being, it cannot be susceptible to the form of fire?
But, you will object, to me: 'You suppose a void as if you had proved
it, and that is the very matter we are disputing!' Well! I will prove
it to you, and although this difficulty is the sister of the Gordian
knot, my arms are strong enough to be its Alexander.
"Let the stupid vulgar who only think they are men because a Doctor has
told them so, answer me, I beg them. Admit there is only one matter, as
I think I have proved: how does it happen that it expands and contracts
according to its desire? How does it happen that a piece of earth by
continually condensing becomes a pebble? Have the particles of this
pebble entered into each other, in such a manner that where one grain
of sand was placed, there, in the very same point, lodges another grain
of sand? No, that cannot be, even according to their own principles,
since bodies do not penetrate each other; but this matter must have
drawn closer together and, if you will, have grown smaller by filling
up the void space of its habitation.
"To say that it is incomprehensible for there to be nothing in the
world and that we should be partly composed of nothing--eh! why not? Is
not the whole world enveloped in nothing? Since you admit this point,
confess that it is as easy for the world to have nothing inside it as
nothing outside.
"I see very well that you are about to ask me why water, restrained by
frost in a vase, bursts it, if not to prevent there being a void? But I
reply that this only happens because the air above, which tends to the
centre just as much as earth and water, meeting with a vacant lodging
on the high-road to this country, goes to take up its abode there; if
it finds the pores of this vessel, that is to say the roads which lead
to this void room, too narrow, too long and too tortuous, by breaking
the vase it satisfies its impatience to arrive more speedily at the
resting-place.
"But, without wasting my time in answering all their objections, I dare
to say that if there were no void there would be no movement, or we
must admit the penetration of bodies; for it would be too ridiculous
to believe that when a fly agitates a portion of air with its wing
this portion drives another before it, this other portion drives
another, and that thus the movement of a flea's little toe makes a bump
beyond the world. When they are at their wits' end they take refuge
in rarefaction; but, in good faith, when a body rarefies how can one
particle of the mass draw away from another particle without leaving
a void between them? Would it not have been necessary that these two
bodies, which have just separated, should have been at the same time
in the same place where this third was, and so that all three should
have penetrated each other? I am quite prepared for you to ask me why
we draw up water against its inclination through a tube, a syringe or a
pump; but I reply that the water is compelled and that it does not turn
from its road because of its fear of a void but because it is joined
with the air by an imperceptible link and so is lifted up when we lift
the air which holds it.
"This is not a thorny matter to understand for those who know the
perfect circle and delicate chain of the Elements; for if you consider
attentively the mud made by the marriage of earth and water you will
find that it is neither earth nor water but that it is the medium
of the contract of these two enemies; in the same way water and air
reciprocally send out a mist which leans to the humours of both to
procure their peace, and air reconciles itself with fire by a mediating
exhalation which unites them."
I think he would have gone on talking but they brought us our food,
and since we were hungry I shut my ears and he his mouth to open our
stomachs.
I remember that when we were philosophizing on another occasion, for
neither of us liked to converse of frivolous or low things, he said: "I
am sorry to see a wit like yours infected with vulgar errors; you must
know, in spite of the pedantry of Aristotle which rings to-day through
all the class-rooms of your France, that all is in all; that is to say
that in water, for example, there is fire, in fire there is water, in
air there is earth, and in earth there is air. Although this opinion
would make the _Scolares_ open their eyes as wide as salt-cellars, it
is easier to prove it than to get it accepted.
"First of all I ask them whether water does not engender fish. When
they deny it I shall order them to dig a ditch and to fill it with
syrup of water-jug which, if they like, they may pass through a sieve
to escape the objections of the blind and if after some time they
find no fish in it I will drink all the water they have put there;
but if, as I do not doubt, they do find fish there, it is a certain
proof that it contains salt and fire; consequently it is not a very
difficult enterprise to find water in fire. Let them select a fire the
most detached from matter, like comets, there is always a quantity of
water in it; for if the unctuous humour which engenders them, reduced
to sulphur by the heat of the antiperistasis which lights them, did
not find an obstacle to its violence in the damp cold which tempers
and combats it, it would be consumed in a flash. They will not deny
that there is now air in the earth, or else they have never heard of
the dreadful shakings which agitate the mountains of Sicily; moreover,
we see that the earth is porous down even to the grains of sand which
compose it. However, nobody has yet said that these hollows are filled
with void; it will therefore not be thought objectionable to say that
they contain air. It remains for me to prove that there is earth in the
air; but I scarcely deign to take the trouble, since you may convince
yourself of it as often as you see falling upon your heads those
legions of motes, so numerous that they stifle arithmetic.
"But let us pass from simple to composite bodies. They will supply
me with many more frequent subjects to prove that all things are in
all things; not that they change into each other as your Peripatetics
twitter, for I will maintain to their beards that first principles
mingle, separate and mingle once more; so that what has once been
created water by the wise Creator of the World will be so always; and I
do not advance any maxim that I do not prove, as they do.
"Take, I beseech you, a log or some other combustible matter and set
fire to it. When it is burnt up they will say that what was wood has
become fire. But I maintain the contrary, and say that there is no more
fire now when it is in flames than before a taper had been put to it;
but the fire which was hidden in the log, prevented by cold and damp
from expanding and acting, was supported by the foreign light, rallied
its forces against the moisture which stifled it and took possession
of the field occupied by its enemy. Thus it triumphs over its gaoler
and shows itself without impediment. Do you not see how the water
retreats by the two ends of the log, still hot and smoking from the
fight? The upper flame you see is the most subtle fire and the freest
from matter and therefore the most ready to return home; however, it
unites in a pyramid up to a certain height in order to break through
the thick dampness of the air resisting it. But as it mounts and frees
itself little by little from the violent company of its enemies, it
roves freely because it meets nothing hostile to its passage, and
this negligence is often the cause of a second prison, for the fire,
travelling separately, will lose itself sometimes in a cloud and if it
meets there with a sufficiently large number of other fires to make
head against the vapour they join together, they rumble, they thunder,
they lighten and the death of innocent creatures is often the effect
of the excited anger of dead things. If the fire is embarrassed by the
importunate crudities of the middle region and is not strong enough
to defend itself against them, it yields itself to the discretion of
the cloud which, being constrained by its weight to fall back upon the
earth, takes its prisoner with it and so this unhappy fire, enclosed in
a drop of water, may perhaps find itself at the foot of an oak, whose
animal fire will invite the poor wanderer to lodge with it. And thus it
returns to the same state it left a few days before.
"But let us look at the fate of the other elements which compose this
log. The air retreats to its quarters still confused with the vapour
because the angry fire sharply drove them out pell-mell. There it is
tossed by the winds like a bladder, gives breath to animals, fills
the void made by nature and perhaps will be enveloped in a drop of
dew, sucked in and digested by the thirsty leaves of the very tree
to which our fire has retired. The water, which the flame had driven
from its throne and the heat had raised to the cradle of the meteors,
will fall back as rain upon our oak as likely as upon another. And the
Earth, made ashes, cured of its sterility by the nourishing warmth of
a dung-hill upon which it has been cast or by the vegetable salt of
neighbouring plants or by the fertile water of rivers, perhaps will
also find itself beside this same oak, the natural heat of whose germ
will draw it up and make it a particle of the whole oak.
"In this manner all these four elements return to the same state
they had left some days earlier; and in the same way a man has in
him everything necessary to make up a tree, and there is in a tree
everything necessary to make up a man. Finally, in this way all things
are met with in all things, but we lack a Prometheus to draw from the
bosom of Nature and make sensible to us that which I wish to call
'primary matter'."
These are approximately the things with which we passed the time, and
truly this little Spaniard had a pretty wit. Our conversation took
place only at night, because from six o'clock in the morning until the
evening, the crowds of people who came to look at us in our lodging
prevented it. Some threw stones at us, some nuts, some grass; there
was no talk but of the King's beasts. They fed us every day at regular
hours and the King and Queen themselves often were pleased to touch
my belly to find out if I were not pregnant, for they burned with an
extraordinary desire to have a race of these little animals. I do not
know whether I was more attentive to their grimaces and intonations
than my male, but I learned to understand their language and to use it
a little. Immediately the news ran through the whole kingdom that there
had been found two wild men, smaller than others because of the poor
nourishment solitude had furnished us with, who from some defect in
their fathers' seed possessed fore-legs too weak to walk upon.
This belief would have taken root by circulating had not the priests of
the country opposed it, saying this was a horrible impiety to believe
that not only beasts but monsters were of their species.
"It is far more likely", proceeded the least impassioned, "that
our domestic animals should share the privilege of humanity and
consequently of immortality, since they are born in our land, than a
monstrous beast which says it was born somewhere in the Moon. Then
consider the difference to be noted between us and them: we walk on
four feet because God did not wish to confide so precious a thing to
a position less firm, He feared some accident might happen to man;
that is why He Himself took the trouble to set man upon four columns,
so that he should not fall, but disdaining to interfere in the
construction of these two beasts He abandoned them to the caprice of
Nature, who, not considering the loss of so slight a thing, set them
upon two feet only.
"The very birds", they said, "were not so badly treated as these, for
at least they have received feathers to make up for the weakness of
their feet and to cast themselves into the air when we turn them out of
our houses; but by taking two feet from these monsters Nature has put
them in the position of being unable to escape our justice.
"Moreover, observe how their heads are turned up towards Heaven! They
are placed in this position through the scarcity of all things which
God has imposed upon them, for this posture of supplication shows that
they seek Heaven to complain to Him who created them and to ask His
permission to make shift with our scraps. But we have our heads turned
downwards to contemplate the good things whereof we are lords and as
having nothing in Heaven for our happy condition to envy."
Every day in my lodging I heard the priests make up these or similar
tales. At length they so directed the people's conscience in the matter
that it was decreed I should at best be held for nothing more than a
plucked parrot; and they confirmed those already persuaded by the fact
that I had only two feet like a bird. I was put in a cage by a special
order of the upper council.
There the Queen's falconer came every day to whistle to me as we do
with starlings. I was happy in that my cage did not lack food; and from
the follies with which the spectators deafened my ears I learned to
speak like them.
When I understood the idiom sufficiently to express the greater part of
my conceptions I showed them how I could talk. Already in gatherings
people were speaking of nothing but the prettiness of my jests; and
the esteem for my wit grew to such a point that the Clergy were forced
to publish a decree forbidding any one to believe that I possessed
reason, with a very strict command to all persons of whatever rank and
condition they might be to believe that any intellectual thing I did
was only through instinct.
However, the definition of what I was divided the Town into two
factions; the party which took sides in my favour increased every day.
At length in spite of the anathema and the excommunication of the
Prophets who tried in this way to terrify the people, my supporters
demanded an assembly of the Estates of the realm to resolve this
religious hitch. It was a long time before they could agree on the
choice of judges, but the arbitrators pacified animosity by making the
judges consist of an equal number from each party.
They carried me openly to the court of justice, where I was severely
treated by the examiners. Among other things they asked me my
philosophy. In all good faith I showed them what I had formerly been
taught by my Master, but they had no difficulty in refuting me with
numerous reasons, which were in truth very convincing. When I found
myself wholly refuted, so that I could not reply, as a last refuge I
alleged the Principles of Aristotle, which were no more useful to me
than his Sophisms, for they showed me their falsity in a few words.
"Aristotle", said they, "fitted principles to his philosophy instead
of fitting his philosophy to principles. And at least he ought to have
proved these principles to be more reasonable than those of other
sects, which he could not do. For this reason the good man must not
complain if we agree to differ from him."
At last when they saw that I kept bawling this and nothing else, save
that they were not more learned than Aristotle, and that I had been
forbidden to argue with those who denied his Principles, they concluded
with one accord that I was not a man but perhaps some sort of ostrich,
seeing I carried my head upright like that bird; and so the falconer
was ordered to take me back to the cage. I passed my time amusingly
enough, for my possessing correctly their language was a cause that
the whole Court diverted itself by making me chatter. Among others the
Queen's ladies-in-waiting always thrust some scraps of food into my
basket, and the prettiest of them all conceived a certain friendship
for me. Once when we were alone I discovered to her the mysteries of
our religion and I discoursed principally of our bells and our relics;
she was so transported with joy that she vowed with tears in her eyes
that if ever I were able to fly back to our world she would gladly
follow me.
One day I woke up early with a start and saw her tapping against the
bars of my cage. "I have good news for you!" said she, "yesterday the
council declared for war against the great King [Image]; and I
hope, with the bustle of preparation and the departure of our Monarch
and his subjects, to find an opportunity to set you free."
"War!" I interrupted immediately, "do the Princes of this world quarrel
among themselves like those of ours? Tell me, I beseech you, how they
fight."
"The Umpires elected by the consent of both parties", she replied,
"fix the time allowed for arming, the time of marching, the number of
combatants, the day and place of the battle; all with such impartiality
that neither army has a single man more than the other. On each
side the maimed soldiers are enrolled in one company and on the day
of battle the Generals are careful to send them against the maimed
soldiers on the other side. The giants are opposed by the colossi, the
fencers by the nimble, the valiant by the courageous, the weak by the
feeble, the unhealthy by the sick, the robust by the strong; and if
someone should strike any but his prescribed enemy he is found guilty
of cowardice unless he can clear himself by showing it was a mistake.
After the battle they count the wounded, the dead and the prisoners,
for none is ever seen to run away. If the losses are equal on each side
they draw lots as to who shall be proclaimed the victor. But although
a King may have defeated his enemy in open war he has achieved little;
there are other less numerous armies of men of wit and learning, upon
whose disputes depends wholly the real triumph or servitude of States.
A man of learning is opposed to another, men of wit and judgment are
set against their like; and the triumph gained by a State in this way
is considered equal to three victories of brute force. When a nation is
proclaimed victorious, they break up the assembly and the conquering
people chooses for its King either their own or that of their enemies."
I could not forbear laughing at this scrupulous manner of making war
and as an example of a far stronger policy I alleged the customs of
our Europe, where the Monarch takes care to omit no opportunity of
conquest; and she answered me in this way:
"Tell me", said she, "do your Princes justify their arms by anything
save the right of force?"
"Yes indeed", replied I, "with the justice of their cause."
"Why then", she continued, "do not they choose arbitrators above
suspicion to reconcile them? And if there is as much right on the one
side as on the other let them stay as they were or let them play a
hundred up at piquet for the Town or Province about which they are
disputing. And yet, while they are the cause that more than four
millions of better men than themselves get broken heads, they are
in their cabinets joking over the circumstances of the massacre of
these poor boobies. But I am wrong to blame the courage of your brave
subjects; they do well to die for their country; 'tis an affair of
importance, a matter of being the vassal of a King who wears a ruff or
of a King who wears falling bands."
"But", I replied, "why all these circumstances in your manner of
fighting? Is it not enough for armies to be equal in numbers?"
"Your judgment is all astray", she replied. "On your faith now, do
you think that if you overcome your enemy in the field face to face,
that you have beaten him in fair warfare if you wear mail and he
does not? If he has only a dagger and you a rapier? Finally, if he
is one-armed and you have both your arms? Yet with all the equality
you recommend so much to your gladiators, they never fight on equal
terms; one will be tall, another short; one skilful, the other will
never have handled a sword; one will be strong, the other weak. And
even if these proportions are equalised, if they are equally tall,
equally nimble and equally strong, they will still not be on an equal
footing, for one of the two will perhaps be more courageous than the
other. And because a brutal fellow will not consider the peril, will
be bilious and will have more blood, will have a heart more set with
the qualities which make for courage (as if this were not an arm his
enemy does not possess, just like a sword!), he will rush violently
upon his adversary, terrify him and deprive of life a poor man who saw
the danger, whose vital heat was stifled in phlegm and whose heart
is too large to collect the spirits necessary to get rid of that ice
we call poltroonery. So you praise a man for having killed his enemy
when he had him at an advantage, and by praising his boldness you
praise him for a sin against Nature, since boldness tends to its own
destruction.[47]
[Footnote 47: This from so renowned a duellist and so brave a soldier
is worth noting.]
"You must know that a few years ago a Remonstrance was sent up to the
council of war, demanding a more circumspect and more conscientious
regulation of combats. The philosopher who sent up the notice spoke in
these words:
"'You imagine, gentlemen, that you have equalised two combatants
when you have chosen them both hardy, both tall, both active, both
courageous, but this still is not enough; the conqueror must win by
skill, by force or by chance. If it were by skill, he has doubtless
struck his adversary in a place he has not expected, or more quickly
than seemed likely; or, feigning to attack him on one side, he paid
him home on the other. This is finesse, deceiving, betraying. And
such finesse, such deceit, such treason should not contribute to the
fair fame of a true gentleman. If he has triumphed by force, will
you consider his enemy beaten because he has been overwhelmed? No,
doubtless; any more than you would say that a man had lost the victory
if he should be overwhelmed by the fall of a mountain, since it was not
in his power to gain it. Moreover he has not been overcome, because at
that moment he was not disposed to be able to resist the violence of
his adversary. And if he has beaten his enemy by chance, you should
crown Fortune, not him, for he has contributed nothing; and the loser
is no more to be blamed than a dice-player who sees eighteen thrown
when he has cast seventeen.'"
It was admitted that he was right, but that it was impossible in all
human probability to remedy it and that it was better to yield to
one small inconvenience than to give way to a thousand of greater
importance.
She did not say any more on that occasion, because she was afraid to
be found alone with me at so early an hour. In that country unchastity
is no crime; on the contrary, except for condemned criminals any
man may take any woman, and similarly a woman may cite a man before
the law-courts if he has refused her. But she dared not frequent me
publicly, according to her own account, because at the last sacrifice
the priests had declared that the women chiefly reported I was a man
to hide under this pretext the execrable desire which burned them to
mingle with beasts and to commit shamelessly sins against Nature with
me. For this reason I remained a long time without seeing her or any of
her sex.
Somebody must have re-lighted the quarrels about the definition of what
I was, for just as I was resigned to die in my cage they came for me
again to examine me. I was interrogated in the presence of a number of
courtiers on several points in physics, but I do not think my responses
were satisfactory; since the president of the court in a manner the
reverse of dogmatic gave me at length his opinions on the structure
of the world. They seemed to me ingenious and I should have found his
philosophy much more reasonable than ours had he not gone back to the
origin of the world, which he maintained was eternal. As soon as I
heard him support a fantasy so contrary to what faith teaches us, I
asked him what he could reply to the authority of Moses and that this
great patriarch expressly declares that God created the world in six
days. Instead of answering me the ignorant fellow only laughed. I could
not prevent myself from saying then that since he took this attitude I
began to think their world was only a Moon.
"But", said they all, "you see here earth, forests, rivers, seas; what
is all that?"
"No matter", I replied, "Aristotle asserts that it is only the Moon;
and if you had asserted the contrary in the classes where I made my
studies, you would have been hissed."
At this there was a great shout of laughter. No need to ask whether it
were the result of their ignorance! And I was taken back to my cage.
The priests were told, however, that I had dared to say the Moon whence
I came was a World and theirs was only a Moon. They believed this
furnished them with a sufficient pretext for having me condemned to the
water (which is their method of exterminating atheists); and with this
purpose they went in a body to complain to the King, who promised them
justice. It was ordered that I should be interrogated once more.
For the third time I was taken out of my cage and the Great Pontiff
himself spoke against me. I do not remember his speech, because I was
too frightened to receive the expressions of the voice without disorder
and also because in declaiming he made use of an instrument whose noise
deafened me; it was a trumpet which he had chosen on purpose so that
the violence of its martial tone should heat up their minds for my
death and by this emotion prevent reason from performing its office; as
in our own armies, where the clamour of trumpets and drums prevents the
soldier from reflecting on the importance of his life.
When he had spoken, I got up to defend my cause, but I was freed from
this trouble by the occurrence you are about to hear. As I opened my
mouth, a man who had forced his way with great difficulty through the
crowd fell at the King's feet and for a long time lay on his back. This
action did not surprise me; I had long known that they assumed this
posture when they desired to discourse in public. I simply pocketed my
speech and here is the one we had from him:
"Just judges, hear me! You cannot condemn this Man, this Monkey or this
Parrot for having said that the Moon is a World whence he came. If
he is a man; even though he did not come from the Moon, every man is
free and is he not free to imagine what he wishes? What! Can you force
him to have no fancies but yours? You may easily compel him to say he
believes the Moon is not a World, nevertheless he will not believe it;
for, in order to believe something, there must be presented to his
imagination certain possibilities leaning rather to the Yes than to
the No of this thing. So unless you furnish him with this probability
or unless it spontaneously offers itself to his mind he may say he
believes it, but for all that he will not believe it.
"I have now to prove to you that he should not be condemned if you put
him in the category of beasts. Admitted that he is an animal without
reason--then what reason have you yourselves to accuse him for having
sinned against reason? He has said that the Moon is a World. Well,
brute beasts act only by Nature's instinct; therefore it is Nature says
it, not he. To believe that this wise Nature who made the Moon and this
World does not know herself what it is, while you, who know nothing
save what you get from her, should know it more certainly, would be
very ridiculous. But even if passion should make you abandon your first
principles and you should suppose that Nature does not direct animals,
blush at least at the uneasiness caused you by the whimsies of a beast.
Truly, gentlemen, if you met a man of ripe age who devoted himself
to policing an ant-hill, giving a blow to one ant who had made his
companion fall, imprisoning another for stealing a grain of corn from
his neighbour, prosecuting another for abandoning its eggs, would you
not consider such a man senseless to attend to things too much beneath
him and to desire to subject to reason animals which do not use it?
Venerable Pontiffs, what should you call the interest that you take in
the whimsies of this little animal? Just judges, I have spoken."
As soon as he had finished a loud music of applause echoed through the
hall; and after the opinions had been discussed for a long quarter of
an hour, the King pronounced the following sentence:
"That henceforth I should be considered a man; as such set at liberty,
and that the punishment of being drowned should be modified into making
a 'shameful amends' (for there is no 'honourable amends' in that
land), in which amends I should publicly disavow having taught that the
Moon was a World, and this on account of the scandal the novelty of the
opinion might have caused the souls of the weaker brethren."
When this sentence was pronounced I was taken out of the Palace. As a
mark of ignominy I was dressed very magnificently; I was borne along on
the seat of a superb chariot; and I was drawn by four Princes, who were
attached to the pole and at every crossroads in the town I was obliged
to declare as follows:
"People, I declare to you that this Moon is not a Moon, but a World;
and that World is not a World but a Moon. For your priests think good
that you should believe this."
After I had cried the same thing in the five principal squares of the
city, I perceived my defender holding out his hand to help me to get
down. I was vastly surprised to recognise him when I looked in his
face, for he was my demon. We embraced each other for an hour.
"Come away home with me", said he, "for if you return to Court you will
be frowned upon after a shameful amends. Moreover I must tell you that
you would still be with the Monkeys, like your friend the Spaniard,
if I had not published abroad the vigour and strength of your wit
and secured in your favour the protection of the nobles against the
prophets."
I had barely finished thanking him when we reached his lodging. Before
our meal he told me of the wheels he had set in motion to force the
priests to let me be heard, in spite of all the specious scruples with
which they had wheedled the people's conscience. We sat before a large
fire, because the weather was cold, and I think he was going on to
tell me what he had done during the time I had not seen him, when they
came to inform us that supper was ready.
"I have invited", he went on, "two professors from the academy of
this town to eat with us this evening. I will bring them round to the
subject of the philosophy taught in this world. You will also see my
host's son. I have never met a young man so full of wit and he would
be a second Socrates if he could regulate his knowledge and not stifle
in vice the grace with which God continually visits him and cease to
affect impiety out of mere ostentation. I have taken up my lodging here
to find some occasion for instructing him."
He was silent as if to give me an opportunity of speaking in my
turn; then he made a sign that they should divest me of the shameful
ornaments with which I was still brilliant. Almost at the same time the
two professors we were waiting for entered and we all four went off to
the dining-room, where we found the young man he had spoken of already
eating. They made him profound bows and treated him with a respect as
deep as that of a slave for his lord. I asked my demon the reason of
this, and he replied that it was on account of his age, because in that
world the old render every deference and honour to the young. And more:
the fathers obey their children, as soon as the latter have attained
the age of reason in the opinion of the Senate of philosophers.
"You are surprised", he continued, "at a custom so contrary to that
of your country? But there is nothing contrary to right reason in it
for, tell me on your conscience, when a warm young fellow is most
apt to imagine, to judge and to execute, is he not more capable of
governing a family than an infirm man of sixty? The poor dullard, whose
imagination is frozen by the snow of sixty winters, acts from the
experience of fortunate successes, yet it was not he but his fortune
which made them so, against all the rules and the whole management of
human prudence.
"As to judgment he has just as little, although the common opinion of
your world makes it a prerogative of old age. To remove this error, it
must be known that what in an old man is called prudence is simply a
panic apprehension, a mad fear of undertaking anything, which becomes
an obsession. And so, my son, when he has not risked a danger by
which a young man has been ruined, it was not because he foresaw the
catastrophe but because he lacked fire to kindle those noble ardours
which make us dare; and in that young man boldness was, as it were,
a pledge of the success of his plan, because that spirit which gives
promptitude and facility of execution is precisely that which urged him
to undertake it.
"As to his carrying things out, I should be wronging your wit did I
labour to convince it by proofs. You know that youth alone is fit for
action; and if you are not fully persuaded of this, tell me, I beg you,
when you respect a brave man is it not because he can avenge you upon
your enemies or your oppressors? Why then should you still consider
him such, except from habit, when a battalion of seventy Januaries
has frozen his blood and killed with cold all the noble enthusiasms
which inflame young persons in the cause of justice? When you defer
to the strong man is it not in order that he may be obliged to you
for a victory which you could not dispute? Why then should you submit
to him, when idleness has melted his muscles, weakened his arteries,
evaporated his spirits and sucked the marrow from his bones?
"If you adore a woman, is it not because of her beauty? Why then
continue your genuflections when old age has made her a phantom
menacing the living with death? In fine, when you honour a witty man
it is because through the liveliness of his genius he grasps a tangled
affair and unravels it, because he delights the most distinguished
assembly with his talk, because he digests the sciences into a single
thought, and a noble soul will never form a more violent desire than
to resemble him; and yet you continue to pay homage to him when his
outworn organs render his head imbecile and heavy and his silence in
company makes him rather like the statue of a Household God than a man
capable of reason. Resolve yourself, my son, it is better that young
men should be given the control of families than old men. Certainly,
you would be very weak to think that Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas,
Alexander and Caesar, who all died before they were forty, were persons
to whom one would owe no more than ordinary courtesies, while bringing
incense to a doting old fool simply because the Sun had ninety times
looked upon his harvest.
"'But', you will say, 'all the laws of our world are careful to repeat
this respect which we owe to the aged.' It is true. But all who
introduced these laws were old men and they were afraid the young men
would dispossess them of the authority they had usurped; and so, like
the legislators of false religions, they made a mystery of what they
could not prove.
"'Yes but,' you will say, 'this old man is my father and Heaven
promises me a long life if I honour him.'
"My son, if your father commands nothing contrary to the inspirations
of the Most High, I grant it. If not; tread upon the belly of the
father who engendered you, stamp on the bosom of the mother who
conceived you, for I see no likelihood that your supposing this
cowardly respect wrenched from your weakness by vicious parents would
be agreeable to Heaven will lengthen the thread of your life.
"What! That doffing your hat, which so tickles and nourishes your
father's pride, will it break an abscess you have in your side, will
it renew your radical moisture, will it cure a rapier wound in your
stomach, will it disperse a stone in your bladder? If this is so,
doctors are grievously wrong. Instead of the infernal potions with
which they poison men's lives, let them prescribe for smallpox with
'three congees fasting', four 'humble thanks' after dinner and twelve
'good night, father and mother', before going to bed. You will retort
that without him you would not be at all. It is true, but he himself
would never have been without your grandfather, nor your grandfather
without your great-grandfather, and without you your father could not
have a grandson. When Nature brought him forth it was on condition that
he should return that which she lent him; so when he begot you he gave
you nothing, he merely paid a debt! Moreover I should very much like to
know if your parents were thinking of you when they begot you? Alas,
not at all! And yet you think yourself obliged to them for a present
they made you without thinking!
"What, because your father was so lascivious he could not resist the
charms of some baggage, because he made a bargain to satisfy his desire
and you were the masonry which resulted from their puddling, you are
to revere this sensual fellow as one of the seven wise men of Greece?
What, because a miser purchased the rich goods of his wife by means of
a child, must that child only speak to him on its knees? In this way
your father acted well when he was bawdy and the other when he drove
a hard bargain, for otherwise neither of you children would ever have
been; but I should like to know whether he would not have pulled the
trigger just the same, if he had been certain that his pistol would
miss fire? Good God! What the people in your world can be made to
believe.
"My son, your body alone comes from your mortal architect, your soul
came from Heaven and might just as well have been sheathed in some
other scabbard. Your father might have been born your son as you
were born his. How do you know even that he did not prevent you from
inheriting a crown? Perhaps your spirit set out from Heaven with the
purpose of animating the King of the Romans in the Empress's womb; on
the way it chanced to meet your embryo and to shorten the journey took
up its abode there. No, no, God would not have blotted you from the sum
He had made of men if your father had died as a little boy. But who
knows whether you might not have been to-day the work of some valiant
captain who would have shared with you his glory as well as his goods!
So you are perhaps no more beholden to your father for the life he gave
you than you would be to a pirate who had put you in irons because he
fed you. And suppose he had begotten you a King--a present loses its
merit when it is made without consulting the person who receives it.
Caesar was given death; it was given likewise to Cassius; but Cassius
was under an obligation to the slave from whom he obtained it, but not
Caesar to his murderers because they forced him to take it. When your
father embraced your mother did he consult your wishes? Did he ask you
if you thought it good to see this century or to wait for another? If
you were content to be the son of a fool or if you had the ambition
to proceed from an honest man? Alas! in a matter which concerned you
alone, you were the only person whose opinion was not consulted!
Perhaps if you had then been enclosed somewhere in the womb of Nature's
ideas and it had been in your power to control your birth, you might
have said to Fate: 'My dear lady, take someone else's life spindle. I
have been in nothingness for a very long time and I prefer to remain
another hundred years without existing than to exist to-day and to
repent it to-morrow.' However you had to endure it; you might whimper
as you would to return to the long black house from which you had been
torn, they simply pretended to think you were asking to suckle.
"My son, these are approximately the reasons for the respect which
fathers give their children. I know I have leaned to the children's
side more than justice asks and that I have argued in their favour a
little against my conscience. But I desired to correct that insolent
pride with which fathers insult over the weakness of their offspring,
and therefore I was obliged to act like those who straighten a crooked
tree; they pull it to the other side so that between the two twistings
it grows straight again. In the same way I have made the fathers pay
that tyrannical deference they had usurped from others and I took from
them much which is due them, so that hereafter they should be content
with what they really deserve. I know my apology will have shocked all
old men, but let them remember that they were sons before they were
fathers and that I must have spoken to their advantage too, since they
were not found under a gooseberry bush. But whatever happens, even if
my enemies attack me, I shall be safe because I have served all men and
injured only half of them."
With these words he ceased speaking and our host's son began as follows:
"Permit me", said he, "since by your care I am informed of the Origin,
History, Customs and Philosophy of this little man's world, to add
something to what you have said and to prove that children are under no
obligation to their fathers for being begotten because their fathers
were conscientiously obliged to beget them.
"The narrowest Philosophy of their world admits that it is more
desirable to die than not to have been, because one must have lived in
order to die. Well, if I do not give being to this nothing, I place it
in a worse state than death, and in not producing it I am more guilty
than if I killed it. You would think, my little man, you had committed
an unpardonable parricide if you had throttled your son. Truly, it
would be an enormity; however it is more execrable not to give being
to that which could receive it, for the child you deprive of light
has nevertheless had the satisfaction of enjoying it a certain time.
Moreover we know that it is only deprived of light for a few centuries;
but there are forty poor little nothings, which you might make into
forty good soldiers for your King, and you maliciously prevent them
from seeing the daylight, letting them grow corrupt in your loins at
the risk of being stifled by an apoplexy.
"Do not answer me with panegyrics of virginity. This virtue is only a
smoke, for all the respect with which it is commonly idolised is, even
among you, merely an advice, not to kill, but to refrain from making,
one's son; and hence to make him more unfortunate than a dead man. It
is a commandment; but since in the world whence you come chastity is
considered so preferable to carnal propagation I marvel that God did
not cause you to be born like mushrooms from the dew of May, or, at
least, like crocodiles from thick mud heated by the sun. Yet it is
only by accident that He sends eunuchs among you and He does not tear
the genitals from your monks, your priests or your cardinals. You will
say these were bestowed on them by Nature. Yes, but He is Nature's
Master and if He had recognised that this piece was harmful to their
salvation He would have ordered them to cut it off, as by the old law
He commanded the Jews to cut off their foreskins. But these fancies are
too ridiculous. On your honour, is there any part of your body more
sacred or more profane than another? Why should I be a sin when I touch
my centre-piece and not when I touch my ear or my heel? Is it because
there is a tickling sensation? Why then I should not purge myself in
the privy, for that cannot be done without some sort of pleasure; and
pious men should not raise themselves to the contemplation of God,
since thereby they enjoy a great pleasure in the imagination. Truly,
seeing how much the religion of your country is contrary to Nature and
how jealous it is of man's enjoyments, I am surprised your priests have
not made it a crime to scratch oneself, on account of the agreeable
sensation one feels from it. On the other hand I have noticed that
far-seeing Nature has made all great, valiant and witty persons lean
towards the delicate pleasures of love, as, for example, Samson, David,
Hercules, Caesar, Hannibal and Charlemagne. Was this done for them to
reap this organ of pleasure with a blow from a sickle? Alas, even in
a tub Nature found out and debauched Diogenes, thin, ugly, and lousy;
and forced him to make the breath that cooled his carrots into sighs
for Lais. Doubtless Nature acted in this way for fear lest honest men
should cease in the world. Let us conclude from this that your father
was conscientiously obliged to set you free to the light and, when he
imagines you are greatly obliged to him for his having made you by
tickling himself, he actually has only given you what an ordinary bull
gives his calves ten times every day for his amusement."
"You are wrong", interrupted my demon, "to try to regulate God's
wisdom. It is true that He has forbidden us excess in this pleasure,
but how do you know that He has not so willed it in order that the
difficulties we find in compassing this passion may fit us for the
glory He is preparing for us? How do you know that it was not to
sharpen appetite by forbidding it? How do you know that He did not
foresee that if youth gave itself up to the impetuosities of the flesh,
too frequent enjoyment would enfeeble their seed and bring about the
end of the world at the grandsons of the first man? How do you know He
did not wish to prevent too many hungry generations from finding the
fertility of the earth insufficient for their needs? Finally, how do
you know He has not willed to act against all appearance of reason in
order to reward fully those who have believed in His word against all
appearance of reason?"
It seemed to me that this reply did not satisfy our young host, for
he shook his head two or three times; but our mutual instructor
was silent, because the meal was about to be carried in. We
stretched ourselves out upon very soft mattresses covered with wide
embroideries, where the vapours came to us as they had done before at
the inn. A young servant took the elder of our two philosophers and
led him into another little room. "Come back to us here", cried my
instructor, "as soon as you have eaten." He promised to do so.
This fantasy of eating alone gave me the curiosity to ask the reason.
"He does not taste", said he, "the odour of meat or even of herbs
unless they have died naturally, because he thinks them capable of
pain."
"I am not greatly surprised", I replied, "that he should abstain from
flesh and everything which has a sensitive life. In our world the
Pythagoreans and even certain holy Anchorites observed this regime. But
it seems to me altogether ridiculous not to cut a cabbage, for example,
for fear of hurting it."
"For my part", replied my demon, "I see a good deal of probability in
his opinion. Is not the cabbage you speak of as much a creation of God
as yourself? Have you not both equally God and want for father and
mother? Has not God's intellect been occupied from all eternity with
its birth as well as yours? Moreover it seems He has provided more
necessarily for the birth of vegetable than of reasonable life, since
He has committed the generation of man to the caprice of his father,
who can beget or not beget at his pleasure. But God has not treated the
cabbage with such rigour, for He seems to have been more concerned lest
the race of cabbages should perish than the race of men, and instead of
permitting the father the option of begetting the son He forces them
willy-nilly to give birth to others. And while men can at most beget
a score in their lifetime, cabbages produce four hundred thousand a
head. And to say that God loves man more than a cabbage is to tickle
ourselves to make ourselves laugh; He is incapable of passion and
therefore cannot love or hate anybody; and if He were capable of love
He would rather feel tenderness for the cabbage you are holding (which
cannot offend Him) than for a man when He already has before His eyes
the wrongs the man is fated to commit. Add to this that a man cannot be
born without sin, for he is a part of the first man who rendered him
guilty, but we know very well that the first cabbage did not offend
its Creator in the Earthly Paradise. Will it be said that we are made
in the image of the Sovereign Being and that cabbages are not? Suppose
that were true, by polluting in ourselves the soul whereby we resembled
Him we have effaced the resemblance, for nothing is more contrary to
God than sin. Then if our soul is no longer His portrait, we no more
resemble Him through our hands, our feet, our mouth, our forehead and
ears than a cabbage through its leaves, its flowers, its stalk, its
heart and its head. If this poor plant could speak when you cut it do
you not think it would say:
"'Man, my dear brother, what have I done to you to merit death? I grow
only in your gardens, I am never found in wild places where I should
live safely; I scorn to be the work of any hands but yours and I have
scarcely left them when I lift myself from the ground to return to
them. I spread out, I hold out my arms to you, I offer you the seeds my
children, and to reward my courtesy you have my head cut off!'
"This is what a cabbage would say if it could express itself, and,
because it cannot complain, does that mean that we have the right to
do it all the ill it cannot prevent? If I find a wretch in fetters am
I guiltless if I kill him, merely because he cannot defend himself?
On the contrary, my cruelty is rendered worse by his weakness; however
poor, however lacking in all advantages this hapless cabbage may be, it
does not merit death on that account. What! Of all the goods of life
it has none but that of vegetating and we deprive it of this? The sin
of murdering a man is not so great as to cut a cabbage and to deprive
it of life, because one day the man will live again while the cabbage
has no other life to hope for. By killing a cabbage you annihilate its
soul; but by killing a man you simply make him change his domicile. And
I go further. Since God, the common Father of all things, cherishes
equally all His works, is it not reasonable that He should have shared
His benefits equally between us and plants? True, we were born first,
but in God's family there is no right of primogeniture. If then
cabbages did not share with us the fief of immortality, doubtless they
received some other advantage, the briefness of whose existence is
compensated for by its grandeur. This may be an universal intellect,
a perfect knowledge of all things in their causes; for this reason it
may be that the wise Contriver did not fashion them organs like ours,
whose effect is only a simple, weak and often deceitful reasoning, but
gave them organs that are stronger, more numerous and more skilfully
elaborated to serve the purposes of their speculative conversations?
Perhaps you will ask me why they have never communicated these great
thoughts to us? But tell me, have you ever been taught by the Angels
any more than by them? Since there is no proportion, no relation and
no harmony between man's imbecile faculties and those of these divine
creatures, these intellectual cabbages may try their best to make us
understand the hidden cause of all miraculous events, we still lack
senses capable of perceiving these fine points.
"Moses, the greatest of all philosophers, since according to what you
say he gathered his knowledge of Nature from the source of Nature
itself, indicated this truth when he spoke of the Tree of Knowledge.
Under this enigma he wished to teach us that plants possess perfect
philosophy. Remember then, O proudest of all animals, that although
the cabbage you cut says not a word, it thinks none the less. The poor
vegetable has no organs like ours to howl, to wriggle and to weep, but
it has others to complain of the trick we play upon it, to draw down
upon us the vengeance of Heaven. And if you ask me how I know that
cabbages have these fine thoughts I ask you how you know that they do
not have them? And how do you know that they do not say at night when
they close up, in imitation of you: 'Master Curly-cabbage, I am your
most humble servant, Savoy-Cabbage.'"
He was at this point of his discourse when the young man who had
carried off our philosopher brought him back. "What! Already dined?"
exclaimed my demon. He answered that he had, except for dessert, as the
Physionome had permitted him to taste ours. Our young host did not wait
for me to ask him the explanation of this mystery.
"I perceive", said he, "that this manner of living astonishes you.
Know then that although health is regulated more carelessly in your
world, the regime in this is not to be scorned. In every house there
is a Physionome supported by the state who is approximately what would
be called with you a doctor, except that he only treats healthy people
and that he decides upon the different methods of treating us from the
proportion, shape and symmetry of our limbs, from the features of the
face, the colour of the flesh, the delicacy of the skin, the agility of
the whole body, the sound of the voice, the complexion, the strength
and hardness of the hair. Did you not notice just now a rather short
man who gazed at you so long? He was the Physionome of this house.
Be sure that he has varied the fumes of your dinner according to his
observation of your appearance. Notice how far from our beds he placed
the mattress for you to lie on. No doubt he decided your constitution
was very different from ours, since he was afraid the odour which flows
from these little taps under your nose should spread to us or that ours
should smoke in your direction. To-night you will see he chooses the
flowers for your bed with the same precautions."
While he was speaking I signed to my host to try to bring these
philosophers on to speaking about some part of the science which they
professed. He was too much my friend not to create an opportunity at
once. I will not tell you the talk or the requests which were the
ambassador to this treaty, the transition from the ridiculous to the
serious was too imperceptible to be imitated. The last-comer of these
doctors, after touching on other matters continued thus:
"It remains for me to prove to you that there are infinite worlds in
an infinite world. Conceive, then, the Universe as a large animal,
the stars (which are Worlds) as other animals within it, which in
turn serve as worlds to other creatures, like ourselves, horses and
elephants; in our turn we are also the worlds of certain yet smaller
creatures, like boils, lice, worms, and mites. And these are the earth
of other imperceptibles, just as we appear a great world to these
little things. Perhaps our flesh, our blood and our vital principles
are nothing but a texture of little animals holding together, lending
us movement from their own and blindly allowing our will to drive them
like a coachman, yet drive us too and all together produce that action
we call life. Tell me, I beseech you, is it very hard to believe that
a louse takes your body for a World, and that when one of them has
travelled from one of your ears to the other, his companions should say
of him that he has been to the ends of the world or that he has passed
from one pole to the other? Yes, no doubt this little nation takes your
hair for the forests of its country, the pores full of moisture for
fountains, pimples for lakes and ponds, abscesses for seas, fluxions
for deluges; and when you comb your hair backwards and forwards they
take this movement for the ebb and flow of the ocean. Does not itching
prove what I say? Is the mite which produces it anything but one of
these little animals which has detached itself from civil society to
set itself up as a tyrant in its country? If you ask me how it is
that they are larger than other little imperceptibles, I ask you why
elephants are larger than we are, and Irishmen than Spaniards? As to
the breaking-out and the scabs, whose cause you do not know, they must
happen either from the corruption of the bodies of enemies massacred
by these little giants, or because the plague produced by the scarcity
of food which these rebels have devoured has left heaps of bodies
decaying in the country, or because the tyrant, having driven away from
him his companions, whose bodies stopped up the pores of our body,
has thus opened a passage to the moisture which has become corrupted
by extravasation from the sphere of the circulation of our blood.
Perhaps you will ask me why one mite produces a hundred others. That
is not difficult to understand, for, as one revolt awakens another,
so each of these little creatures, urged by the bad example of their
rebellious companions, aspires to rule, and kindles everywhere war,
slaughter and famine. But, you will say, some persons are much less
subject to itch than others, yet each of us is equally filled with
these animals if, as you declare, they make life. It is true, as we
perceive, that phlegmatic subjects are less liable to the itch than
those of a bilious temperament, because this people sympathises with
the climate it inhabits and is more sluggish in a cold body than
another which is heated by the temperature of its region, ferments,
moves about and cannot remain in one place. Thus, a bilious man is
more delicate than a phlegmatic, because he is stimulated in many more
parts, and as the soul is only the action of these little beasts, he
is able to feel in every place where these cattle are moving, while
the phlegmatic is only hot enough to make them act in a few places.
And to prove this universal mitedom you have only to consider how the
blood flows to a gash when you are wounded. Your doctors say that it
is guided by far-seeing Nature, who wishes to succour damaged parts.
But this is chimerical. For there would have to be besides Soul and
Spirit a third intellectual substance in us with its own functions and
organs. It is much more probable that these little animals, feeling
themselves attacked, send to their neighbours for help; they pour in
from all sides: the country cannot contain so many people, and so
they die stifled in the throng, or of hunger. This mortality happens
when the abscess is ripe. To show that these animals of life are then
extinguished, notice that corrupted flesh becomes insensible; and if
cupping, which is ordered for the purpose of averting the fluxion, is
successful, the reason is that these little animals have had heavy
casualties in trying to close this opening, and therefore refuse to
assist their allies, having only a mean strength to defend themselves."
He ceased speaking and when the second philosopher perceived our eyes
were directed upon his and were urging him to speak in his turn, he
said:
"Men, I see you are anxious to teach this little animal, who resembles
us, something of the science we profess. I am at present dictating a
treatise which I should be very glad to show him because of the light
it throws upon the understanding of our physics. It is an explanation
of the eternal origin of the world, but I am in a hurry to work my
bellows; for to-morrow without fail the Town moves off. You will excuse
me this time if I promise that as soon as the Town arrives at its
destination, I will satisfy you."
At these words the host's son called for his father, and when he came
the company asked him the time; the goodman answered that it was eight
o'clock. His son then said in a rage:
"Hey! Come hither, varlet, did I not order you to warn us at seven? You
know that the houses are going to-morrow, that the walls have already
left, and yet your idleness even locks up your mouth."
"Sir", replied the goodman, "it has just been announced, while you were
at table, that it is strictly forbidden to start until after to-morrow."
"No matter", replied he, lending him a buffet, "you should obey
blindly, not try to understand my orders, but simply remember what I
have bidden you. Quick, go and get your effigy."
When he had brought it, the young man seized it by the arm and whipped
it for a long quarter of an hour.
"Now, rascal", he continued, "as a punishment for your disobedience you
shall be a laughing stock to everybody for the rest of the day and so
I order you to walk on two feet only all day."
The poor old man went out very mournfully and his son continued:
"Gentlemen, I beseech you to excuse the rogueries of this hot-head.
I hoped to make something good of him, but he takes advantage of my
kindness. For my part I think the rogue will be the death of me; indeed
on more than ten occasions I have been on the point of giving him my
malediction."
Although I bit my lips I had great difficulty to keep myself from
laughing at this world upside down. To break off this burlesque
pedagogy, which no doubt would have made me burst forth in the end, I
begged him to tell me what he meant by the journey of the Town he had
just spoken of, whether the houses and the walls could move. He replied:
"My dear friend, our cities are divided into the mobile and the
sedentary. The mobile, like that in which we are now, are constructed
as follows: the architect builds each palace, as you see, of very light
wood and inserts four wheels underneath it. In the thickness of one of
the walls he places large and numerous bellows, whose nozzles pass in
a horizontal line through the upper story from one gable to the other.
When it is desired to move the town somewhere (for we change our air at
every season), each one hangs out a number of large sails from one side
of his house in front of the bellows; then he winds up a spring to make
them play and in less than eight days the continuous blasts vomited
by these windy monsters against the sails carry their houses, if they
wish, more than a hundred leagues.
"The architecture of the second kind, which we call sedentary, is as
follows: the houses are almost like your towers, except that they are
made of wood and that in the middle they have a large strong screw
which goes from the cellar to the roof to raise or lower them at will.
Well, the earth underneath is hollowed out as deep as the building
is high, and the whole thing is constructed in this manner so that
when the frosts begin to fall cold from the sky, they can lower their
houses to the bottom of the hole by turning them; and then they cover
the tower and the hollow part about it with large skins and so shelter
themselves from the inclemency of the air. But as soon as the soft
breath of Spring makes the air milder, they return to the daylight by
means of the large screw of which I spoke."
I think he wished to stop speaking there, but I began thus:
"Faith, sir, I should never have thought so expert a mason could be a
philosopher, did I not have you as witness. For this reason, since we
are not going to-day, you will have plenty of leisure to explain to us
this eternal origin of the world with which you entertained us just
now. In recompense, I promise you that as soon as I return to the Moon,
whence my instructor"--I pointed to my demon--"will prove to you that I
came, I will disseminate your fame by relating the fine things you tell
me. I see that you laugh at this promise, because you do not believe
the Moon is a world and still less that I am one of its inhabitants.
But I can assure you that the people of that World take this one for a
Moon and will laugh at me when I say their Moon is a World, that it has
fields and inhabitants."
He only replied by a smile, and then he began to speak as follows:
"When we try to go back to the origin of this Great All we are forced
to run into three or four absurdities, and so it is reasonable to take
the path which makes us stumble least. The first obstacle that stops
us is the Eternity of the World. Men's minds are not strong enough to
conceive it and, because they are not able to imagine that so vast, so
beautiful, so well regulated an Universe could have made itself, they
take refuge in Creation. But, like one who plunges into a river for
fear of being wet with rain, they run from the arms of a dwarf to the
pity of a giant; and they do not even escape the difficulty, for they
give to God the eternity they took from the world because they could
not understand it. As if it were easier to imagine it in the one than
in the other! This absurdity, then, or this giant of which I spoke, is
Creation; for, tell me truly, has it ever been conceived how something
could be made from nothing? Alas! There are such infinite differences
between Nothing and one single atom that the acutest brain could not
penetrate them. To escape this inexplicable labyrinth you must admit a
Matter co-eternal with God, and then it is unnecessary to admit a God,
since the World could have existed without Him. But, you will say, even
if I grant you this Eternal Matter, how did this chaos become order of
itself? Well, I shall explain it to you.
"My little Animal, after you have mentally separated each little
visible body into an infinity of little invisible bodies, you are to
imagine that the infinite Universe is composed of nothing but these
infinite atoms which are very solid, very incorruptible, and very
simple. Some are cubes, some parallelograms, some angular, some round,
some pointed, some pyramidal, some hexagonal, some oval, and all act
differently according to their shape. And to prove this, place a very
round ivory ball upon a very smooth surface; and at the slightest
movement you give it, it will be a half-quarter of an hour before it
stops; to which I add that if it were as perfectly round as some of the
atoms of which I speak, it would never stop. Then if art is capable
of inclining a body to perpetual motion, why should we not believe
that Nature can do it? It is the same with other shapes; one, like the
square, demands perpetual rest; others, a movement sideways; others,
a half-movement like palpitation. When the round, whose nature is to
move, joins with the pyramidal, it perhaps makes what we call fire,
because fire not only moves without resting but pierces and penetrates
easily. Moreover, fire produces different effects according to the size
and quantity of the angles where the round shape is joined; the fire of
pepper is different from the fire of sugar, the fire of sugar from that
of cinnamon, the fire of cinnamon from that of cloves, and this in turn
from the fire of a faggot. Well then, fire, which is the constructor
and destructor of the parts and of the whole of the Universe, gathers
into an oak the quantity of shapes necessary for the composition of
that oak. But, you will say, how could mere chance collect in one place
all the things necessary to produce this oak? I reply that it is not
extraordinary that matter so placed should make an oak, but it would
have been very much more marvellous if an oak had not been formed when
matter was thus disposed. Had there been a little less of certain
shapes, it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder-tree,
heather or moss; a little more of certain other shapes and it would
have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in a shell, a worm, a fly, a
frog, a sparrow, a monkey, a man. When you throw three dice on the
table and they all turn up twos; or three, four, five; or two sixes
and a one; do you say: 'What a miracle! each die has turned up the same
number, when so many other numbers might be turned up; what a miracle!
Three dice have turned up three successive numbers; what a miracle! Two
sixes and the opposite of the other six has turned up!' I am certain
that a man of wit like you would not make these exclamations, for
since there are only a certain quantity of numbers on the dice, it is
impossible but that one of them should turn up. You are surprised that
this matter, mixed up pell-mell by chance, should have built up a man,
since so many things are necessary to the construction of his being.
But you do not know that this matter, moving towards the design of a
man, has stopped a hundred million times on the way to form sometimes a
stone, sometimes lead, sometimes coral, sometimes a flower, sometimes
a comet, according to the excess or deficiency of certain shapes
necessary or unnecessary to compose a man. It is not marvellous that
an infinite quantity of matter changing and moving continually should
have met together to make the few animals, vegetables and minerals
which we see, any more than it is marvellous for a royal pair to turn
up in a hundred throws of the dice; and it is impossible but that
something should be made from this movement. This thing will always be
wondered at by a scatterbrain who will not comprehend how nearly it
was not made at all. When the large river [Image] turns a mill,
moves the works of a clock, and the little rivulet [Image] does
nothing but run and sometimes overflow, you will not say the river has
intelligence, because you know it has met with things so placed as to
cause all these masterpieces. If a mill had not been placed in its
path, it would not have ground the corn; if it had not met the clock it
would not have marked the hours; and if the rivulet I spoke of had met
the same things it would have performed the same miracles. It is the
same with fire, which moves by itself; for when it found organs proper
for the agitation necessary to reason, it reasoned; when it found those
proper to feel only, it felt; when it found those proper to vegetation,
it vegetated. And to prove this, tear out the eyes of a man who is
enabled to see by this fire or this soul, and he will cease to see,
just as our river will not mark the hours if the clock is destroyed.
"In fine, these first and indivisible atoms make a circle upon which
the most embarrassing difficulties of physics roll without difficulty.
Even the operation of the senses, which nobody yet has been able to
understand, I explain very easily with these little bodies. Let us
begin with sight, which, as the most incomprehensible, deserves our
first attention. As I suppose, the coverings of the eye, whose openings
are like those of glass, transmit the fire-dust we call visual rays,
which is stopped by some opaque matter making it rebound; for this
fire-dust meets on the way the image of the object which repulses
it and, as this image is simply an infinite number of little bodies
continually thrown off in equal superficies from the subject looked at,
the image thrusts back the rays to our eyes.
"You will not fail to object to me that glass is an opaque and
closely-packed body; yet instead of throwing back these other little
bodies it allows them to pierce it. But I reply that the pores of glass
are made in the same shape as these atoms of fire which pass through
it; and just as a wheat-sieve is not fit to sift oats, nor an oat-sieve
to sift wheat, so a deal box thin enough to transmit sound is not
penetrable by sight and a piece of transparent crystal which allows
itself to be pierced by sight is not penetrable by hearing."
I could not prevent myself from interrupting: "But how do you explain
by these principles, sir, the fact that we are reflected in a mirror?"
"It is very easy", he replied, "you must suppose that the rays of
our eyes pass through the glass and meet behind it a non-diaphanous
body which casts them off; they return the way they came and they
find spread out upon the mirror the little bodies that move in
equal superficies from our own and carry them back to our eyes. Our
imagination, which is hotter than the other faculties of the soul,
attracts the most subtle of them, with which it makes a reduced
portrait.
"The operation of hearing is no more difficult to understand. To be
more succinct, let us consider it only in harmony. Suppose then a
lute touched by the hands of a master of the art. You will ask me
how it happens that I perceive a thing I do not see, so far from me?
Do sponges go out of my ears to suck up this music and bring it to
me? Or does this lute player beget in my head another little player
with another little lute, who has been ordered to sing me the same
airs? No. This miracle is caused by the vibrating chord striking the
little bodies which compose the air and so driving them into my brain
and gently piercing it with these little corporeal nothings. When
the string is stretched, the sound is high, because it drives the
atoms more vigorously; and the organ so penetrated gives the fantasy
sufficient of them to make its picture. If there is not enough, our
memory does not complete its image and we are forced to repeat the
same sound to it, so that for example it may take from the materials
given it by the strains of a saraband enough to complete the portrait
of that saraband. But this operation is almost nothing. The wonderful
thing is that by this means we are moved sometimes to joy, sometimes to
rage, sometimes to pity, sometimes to reflection, sometimes to pain.
This happens, I imagine, when the movement received by these little
bodies meets within us other little bodies moving in the same way or,
on account of their shape, capable of the same motion. The new-comers
excite their hosts to move with them and so, when a violent tune
meets the fire of our blood (which is disposed to the same movement)
it incites this fire to thrust its way out. This is what we call the
ardour of courage. If a sound is gentler and has only strength enough
to raise a slighter, more wavering flame (because the matter is more
volatile), it moves along the nerves, membranes and channels of our
flesh and excites the tickling we call joy. The ebullition of the other
passions happens in the same way according to whether the little bodies
are thrown against us more or less violently, whether they receive
movement by meeting other vibrations, and according to what they find
to move within us.
"The demonstration of touch is not more difficult. There is a perpetual
emission of little bodies from all palpable matter; the more we touch
it the more they are evaporated, because we squeeze them out of the
object we handle like water from a sponge when we compress it. Hard
bodies report to the organ their solidity; supple bodies, their
softness; the rough, their harshness; the burning, their heat; the
frozen, their cold. And as a proof of this, observe that hands hardened
by labour are not so sensitive in discerning by the touch, and this
is because of the thickness of the callus, which is neither porous nor
animated and therefore transmits with great difficulty these fumes of
matter. Some will desire to know where the organ of touch resides. For
my part, I think it extends over all the superficies of our mass, since
it happens through the agency of our nerves; and our skin is merely an
imperceptible and continuous texture of nerves. I imagine, however,
that the nearer to the head the limb with which we touch, the sooner we
perceive. You may make the experiment as follows: if we close our eyes
and touch something with the hand we discover what it is immediately,
but if on the contrary we touch it with the foot we are some time in
finding out what it is. The reason for this is that our nerves, whose
matter is no more compact than that of our skin (which is everywhere
pitted with little holes), lose many of these little atoms on the way
through the small channels of their texture before the atoms reach the
brain, the end of their journey.
"It remains for me to prove that smell and taste are caused also by
the agency of these same little bodies. Tell me, then, when I taste a
fruit, is it not through the moisture of my mouth melting it? Admit
then that since there are different salts in a pear, which by being
dissolved are split up into little bodies differing in shape from those
making the taste of a plum, they must pierce our palate in a different
way; just as the gash made by a pike piercing me is unlike that which
I endure from a pistol-bullet, and as a pistol-bullet causes me a pain
different from that of a steel arrow-head.
"I have nothing to say about smell, since even your philosophers admit
that it takes place through a continual emission of little bodies cast
off from their mass which strike our noses as they pass.
"On this principle I will now explain to you the creation, the harmony
and the influence of the celestial globes with the immutable variety of
meteors."
He was about to continue when our old host entered and turned
our philosopher's thoughts toward departure. He brought with him
crystals filled with glow-worms to lighten the room, but these little
fire-insects lose much of their light when they are not freshly
gathered and as these were ten days old they hardly shone at all. My
demon did not wait for the company to be inconvenienced by this; he
went up to his room and returned immediately with two fire balls, so
brilliant that we were all surprised he did not burn his fingers.
"These incombustible torches", said he, "will serve us better than
your clusters of worms. They are sun-rays which I have purged of their
heat; otherwise the corrosive qualities of its fire would have dazzled
and hurt your sight. I have extracted the light and shut it in these
transparent balls I am holding. This should not be a matter of great
surprise to you; I was born in the Sun and so it is no more difficult
for me to condense the rays which are the dust of that world than for
you to collect the dust or atoms which are the pulverised earth of this
world."
When we had finished praising this child of the Sun, it was late, and
the young host sent his father home with the two philosophers, with
a dozen balls of glow-worms hanging from his four legs. The rest of
us, that is to say, the young host, my Instructor and I, went to bed
by order of the Physionome. This time he put me in a room of violets
and lilies and had me tickled in the usual way to send me to sleep.
The next morning about nine o'clock my demon came in and told me he
had just returned from the palace, whence he had been sent for by
[Image], one of the Queen's waiting-women. She had inquired
after me and said she still persisted in keeping her word, which is to
say that she would gladly follow me if I would take her with me to the
other World.
"I was greatly edified", he continued, "when I found that the principal
motive for her journey was directed towards making herself a Christian.
I have promised to help her design with all my ability and for this
purpose to invent a machine capable of holding three or four persons,
in which you can rise up together. From to-day onwards I shall apply
myself seriously to the execution of this project. To amuse you during
my absence here is a book which I brought from my native land. It is
called _A Voyage to the Sun_. I am also giving you another, which I
rate more highly, the _Great Works of the Philosophers_, composed
by one of the greatest Wits of the Sun. He proves in it that all
things are true and shows the way to unite physically the truths of
each contradiction; for example, that white is black and black is
white, that you can be and not be at the same time, that there can
be a mountain without a valley, that nothing is something and that
all things which exist do not exist. But notice that he proves these
unheard-of paradoxes without any sophistry or captious reasoning.
When you are tired of reading you can take a walk or converse with
your companion, our young host. His mind has many charms; but what
displeases me in him is his impiety. If he scandalizes you or shakes
your faith by his reasoning do not fail to come at once and tell them
to me; I will resolve the difficulties for you. Another would tell
you to leave his company directly he began to philosophize on these
matters, but he is extremely vain and I am certain he would take your
flight for a defeat and would imagine your belief to be contrary to
reason if you refused to listen to his reasons. Remember to live free."
With this phrase he left me, for in that country it is the method of
leave-taking; and, in the same way, "Good day," or "Your servant, sir",
is expressed by the compliment: "Sage, love me, since I love you."
He had scarcely left me when I began to examine attentively my books.
The boxes, that is to say their covers, seemed to me admirable for
their richness; one was carved from a single diamond incomparably more
brilliant than ours, the second appeared to be a monstrous pearl cleft
in two. My demon had translated these books into the language of that
world; but as I have not yet spoken of their printing, I will explain
the construction of these two volumes.
At the opening of the box I found something in metal almost similar
to our clocks, filled with an infinite number of little springs and
imperceptible machines. It is a book indeed, but a miraculous book
without pages or letters; in fine, it is a book to learn from which
eyes are useless, only ears are needed. When someone wishes to read
he winds up the machine with a large number of all sorts of keys;
then he turns the pointer towards the chapter he wishes to hear, and
immediately, as if from a man's mouth or a musical instrument, this
machine gives out all the distinct and different sounds which serve as
the expression of speech between the noble Moon-dwellers.[48]
[Footnote 48: The likeness to a gramophone is obvious.]
When I had reflected on this miraculous invention in book-making I
was no longer surprised that the young men of that country possessed
more knowledge at sixteen or eighteen than grey-beards in our World.
Since they know how to read as soon as they speak, they are never
without reading. Indoors, out of doors, in town, travelling, on foot,
or on horseback, they can have in their pocket or hanging from their
saddle-bows as many as thirty of these books, and they have only to
wind up a spring to hear a chapter, or several chapters, if they are in
the mood to hear a whole book. In this way you have continually about
you all great men, living or dead, and you hear them viva voce.
This present occupied me for more than an hour, and then hanging them
upon myself like earrings I went out to walk in the town. I had not
passed out of the street which ran opposite our house when towards
the other end I met a large number of mournful people. Four of them
carried on their shoulders a sort of coffin wrapped in black. I asked
a bystander what was the meaning of this procession so similar to a
funeral in my own country. He replied that the wicked [Image],
whose name was expressed among the people by a blow on the right knee,
had been convicted of envy and ingratitude: yesterday he had died and
the Parliament had condemned him more than twenty years ago to die a
natural death in his bed and to be buried after his death. I began to
laugh at this reply and he asked me: "Why?"
"You surprise me", I replied, "by telling me that a long life, a
peaceful death and a pompous burial which in our World are signs of
benediction, serve in this as an exemplary punishment."
"What! You consider burial a mark of benediction?" retorted this man.
"On your honour now, can you conceive anything more terrible than a
corpse moving under swarms of worms, at the mercy of toads which gnaw
its cheeks; in fine, the plague dressed in a man's body. Good God! The
mere thought that even when dead my face should be wrapped in a cloth
and I should have five feet of earth on my mouth makes it difficult
for me to breathe! That wretch you see carried there, in addition to
the infamy of being cast into a pit, was condemned to have his funeral
accompanied by a hundred and fifty of his friends, and as a punishment
to them for having loved a man who was envious and ungrateful they were
bidden to appear at his burial with mournful faces. Had it not been
for the mercy of the judges who imputed his crimes in part to his lack
of intelligence, his friends would have been commanded to weep. Except
for criminals every one here is burned. And this is a very decent and a
very reasonable custom, for we think that fire separates the pure from
the impure. Moreover, its heat draws to it by sympathy that natural
heat which composed the soul and gives it the power to rise continually
until it reaches some star, the earth of people more immaterial than
we and more intellectual, because their temperament must correspond to
and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit. This radical
flame, being rectified still more by the subtlety of that world's
elements, finally composes one of the citizens of that burning country.
"However, this is not our best method of burial. When one of our
philosophers comes to an age where he feels his mind grow weak and the
ice of years impede the movements of his soul, he gathers his friends
together for a sumptuous banquet. Then he puts before them the motives
which have made him resolve to take leave of Nature, the small hope
he has of being able to add anything to his good actions: they either
grant him the favour, that is they order him to die, or they severely
command him to live. When the majority have placed the disposition of
his life in his hands, he announces the day and place to his dearest
friends. They purge themselves and fast for twenty-four hours. When
they come to the sage's house, they sacrifice to the Sun and enter the
room where the hero awaits them lying upon a ceremonial bed. Each one
in turn flies to embrace him. When it comes to his best friend, the
friend kisses him tenderly, leans upon his stomach, joins mouth to
mouth, and with his right hand, which he keeps free, bathes a dagger in
his heart. The Lover does not remove his lips from those of his Beloved
until he feels he is dead. He then withdraws the steel from his breast,
places his mouth on the wound, and drinks his blood and continues to
suck until he can swallow no more. Another succeeds him immediately and
they carry the first to a bed; when the second is satiated he is taken
away to a bed and gives place to a third. Finally, when they are all
satiated, after about four or five hours, they bring to each a girl of
about sixteen or seventeen. During the next three or four days they
enjoy the pleasures of love and they are fed exclusively on the dead
man's flesh, which they eat raw, so that if anything is born from these
embraces they may be almost sure it is their friend who lives again."
I did not give this man the opportunity of discoursing further, for
I left him there and continued my walk. Although I cut it short, the
time I spent on the peculiarities of the sights and in visiting certain
districts of the town made me arrive more than two hours after dinner
was ready. They asked me why I came so late.
"It is not my fault", I replied to the cook, who was complaining of it,
"several times in the street I asked what time it was, but they only
answered by opening the mouth, clenching the teeth and writhing the
face askew."
"What!" cried everybody, "you did not know they were telling you the
time that way?"
"Faith", I replied, "they might show their great noses to the Sun all
they would before I should have learnt it."
"'Tis a convenience", said they, "which permits them to dispense with a
watch. With their teeth they make so exact a dial that when they wish
to tell someone the time they simply open their lips and the shadow of
their nose falling upon them marks the hour as if upon a dial. Now, in
order that you may know why every one in this land has a large nose,
learn that as soon as a woman is delivered the midwife carries the
child to the Prior of the Seminary. And, at the end of a year his nose
is measured before the assembly of experts by the Syndic, and if by
this measure it is found too short, the child is reputed a Snub-nose
and handed over to the priests, who castrate him. You will perhaps ask
the reason of this barbarity and how it happens that we, among whom
virginity is a crime, establish continence by force? Learn then that
we act in this way from thirty centuries of observation showing that
a large nose is a sign over our door that says, 'Here lodges a witty,
prudent, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man', and that a
small nose is the sign-post of the opposite vices. That is why we make
eunuchs of our snub-nosed children, for the Republic prefers to have
no children from them than children like them."
He was still talking when a man came in completely naked. I immediately
sat down and put on my hat to do him honour, for in that country these
are marks of the greatest respect one can show a man.
"The Kingdom", said he, "desires that you will advertise the
magistrates before leaving for your country because a mathematician has
just promised the council that if, when you reach your world, you will
construct a certain machine which he will show you corresponding to
another which he will have ready here, he will draw your world to him
and join it to our globe."
As soon as he was gone I asked the young host: "I beg you will tell me
what is meant by that bronze, shaped like our parts of shame, which
hung from that man's belt? During the time that I lived at the court in
a cage I saw quantities of them, but as I was almost always surrounded
by the Queen's waiting-women I feared I should be lacking in respect to
their sex and rank if I directed the conversation to so homely a matter
in their presence."
He replied: "Here the females no more than the males would be so
ungrateful as to blush at the sight of that which made them; the
virgins are not ashamed to respect upon us, in memory of their mother
Nature, the one thing which bears her name. Know then that the scarf
with which this man is honoured and upon which hangs like a medal the
shape of a virile member, is the symbol of a gentleman and the mark
which distinguishes a noble from a commoner."
I protest this paradox seemed to me so extravagant that I could not
keep from laughing.
"This seems to me a most extraordinary custom", said I to my young
host, "since in our world to wear a sword is the mark of nobility."
He was not moved by this but exclaimed: "My little man, the nobles
in your world are mad to parade an instrument which is the mark of a
hangman, which is only forged for our destruction and is indeed the
sworn enemy of everything that lives! And just as mad on the contrary
to hide a member without which we should be in the category of things
that are not, the Prometheus of every animal and the indefatigable
repairer of Nature's weaknesses! Woe to the country where the marks
of generation are ignominious and where those of destruction are
honourable! You call that member, 'the parts of shame', as if there
were anything more glorious than to give life and anything more
infamous than to take it away."
During this discourse we continued to dine and as soon as we arose from
our beds we went into the garden to take the air. The diversity and the
beauty of the place delayed our conversation for some time. But since
the noblest desire which then moved me was to convert to our religion
a soul so uplifted above the vulgar mob, I exhorted him a thousand
times not to smirch with matter the fair genius with which Heaven had
endowed him, to draw out of the throng of animals a spirit capable of
the Beatific Vision, in fine, to think seriously of uniting some day
his immortality with pleasure rather than with pain.
"What!" replied he, with a peal of laughter, "you think your soul
immortal to the exclusion of that of beasts? My dear friend, without
exaggeration your pride is very insolent! And, I beseech you, whence
do you deduce this immortality to the prejudice of the Beasts? Is it
because we are gifted with reason and they not? To begin with, I deny
that and whenever you please I will prove to you that they reason like
ourselves. But even if it were true that reason has been granted us
as a prerogative and that it was a privilege reserved to our species
alone, does that mean that God must enrich man with immortality when
He has already squandered reason upon him? I suppose I should give,
in that case, a _pistole_ to a beggar because I gave him a _crown_
yesterday? You yourself see the falsity of the argument and that, on
the contrary, if I am just, I ought to give a _crown_ to another rather
than a _pistole_ to the first, since the other has had nothing from
me. We must conclude from this, my dear friend, that God, who is a
thousand times more just than we are, will not have given everything
to some and nothing to others. To allege as an example the case of the
eldest sons in your world, whose share engulfs almost all the property
of the family, is simply a weakness of fathers, who are desirous of
perpetuating their names and fear they may be lost or dissipated by
poverty. But God is not capable of error, and has been careful not to
commit one so great; then, since there is neither before nor after
in God's eternity, with him the younger sons are no younger than the
elder."
I do not dissimulate that this reason shook me.
"Permit me", said I, "to break off upon this matter, for I do not feel
myself strong enough to reply to you. I shall go seek a solution of
this difficulty from our mutual Instructor."
Without waiting for his reply I immediately went to the room of
this able demon, and waiving any preliminaries I put before him the
objections to the immortality of our souls which I had just heard, and
this is what he replied:
"My son, this young hot-head is desirous of persuading you that
it is unlikely man's soul should be immortal because God, who has
called Himself the common Father of all beings, would be unjust if He
had favoured one species and abandoned generally all the others to
annihilation or misfortune. It is true these reasons glitter a little
at a distance. Although I might ask him how he knows that what is just
to us is also just to God, how he knows that God measures with our
measuring-rod, how he knows that our laws and customs, instituted only
to remedy our own disorders, serve also to cut out pieces from the
omnipotence of God; I will pass over all these things together with all
that has been so divinely answered on this point by the fathers of your
Church and I will discover to you a mystery not yet revealed.
"My son, you know that a tree is made from earth, a pig from a tree
and a man from a pig. May we not then believe, since all creatures in
Nature tend to become more perfect, that they aspire to become men,
whose essence is the result of the finest and best imagined mixture in
the world and the sole link between the life of brutes and of angels?
Only a pedant would deny that these metamorphoses occur. Do we not see
that an apple-tree sucks up and digests the surrounding turf by means
of the heat of its germ as if through its mouth; that a pig devours its
fruit and thereby converts it into a part of itself; and that a man
by eating this pig reheats this dead flesh, joins it to himself, and
so causes this animal to live again in a more noble species? Thus the
Great Pontiff upon whose head you see a tiara was a bunch of grass in
my garden sixty years ago. Since God is the common Father of all His
creatures and should love them all equally, is it not most credible
that by a metempsychosis more reasonable than that of the Pythagoreans
all sensible life, all vegetable life, in fine, all matter, will pass
through man and then the great day of Judgment will come, to which the
prophets direct the secrets of their philosophy?"
Fully satisfied I returned to the garden and began to repeat to my
companion what our Master had taught me, when the Physionome arrived
to take us to dinner and to the dormitory. I shall not particularize
these, because I ate and went to bed as on the preceding day.
The next morning as soon as I was awake I went to arouse my antagonist.
"'Tis as great a miracle", said I when I reached him, "to find a great
wit like yours buried in sleep, as to see fire without movement."
He was annoyed by this clumsy compliment. "But", cried he in a
passionate rage, "will you never free your mouth as well as your reason
from these fabulous expressions of miracles? Such words disgrace the
name of philosopher. Since the wise man sees nothing in the world
which he does not understand or which he considers incapable of being
understood, he ought to abominate all these expressions like miracles,
prodigies, supernatural events, invented by the stupid to excuse the
weaknesses of their minds."
I then felt conscientiously obliged to say something to disabuse him.
"Although you do not believe in miracles", I replied, "they do not
cease to occur, and many of them. I have seen them with my own eyes. I
have seen more than twenty sick people miraculously cured."
"You say", he interrupted, "that these people were cured miraculously,
but you do not know that the power of the imagination is able to combat
all maladies, because there is a certain natural balsam extended
through our bodies containing all the qualities contrary to all those
of every disease that attacks us. Our imagination is warmed by the pain
and seeks in its place the specific remedy to oppose the venom, and
so cures us. For this reason the ablest doctor in our world advises a
patient rather to take an ignorant doctor whom he thinks very skilful
than to take a very skilful doctor whom he thinks ignorant, because
he believes that our imagination works for our health and when only
slightly aided by remedies is capable of curing us, but that the most
powerful remedies are too weak when not applied by the imagination! You
are surprised that the first men in your world lived so many centuries
without having any knowledge of medicine? Their constitution was strong
and this universal balm had not been dissipated by the drugs with
which your doctors undermine you. To become convalescent they had only
to desire strongly and to imagine they were cured; immediately their
clear, vigorous and taut imagination plunged into this vital oil,
applied the active to the passive and almost in a twinkling they were
as well as formerly. Even to-day these astonishing cures continue,
but the populace attributes them to a miracle. For my part, I do not
believe in a miracle at all and my reason is that it is more easy for
all these talkers to be wrong than for the thing to happen. Let me
ask them this: A man has a fever and he has been cured. It is clear
that during his illness he wished very ardently to recover his health
and so made vows; it necessarily followed, since he was ill, that he
should die, that he should remain ill or that he should get better. If
he had died they would have said God had rewarded him for his pains;
they might have maliciously equivocated by saying that He had cured the
sick man of all his ills according to his prayers. If his infirmity
had persisted they would have said he lacked faith; but because he
recovered it is a visible miracle! Is it not far more likely that his
fantasy, excited by a violent desire for health, achieved this end? I
admit that many of these gentlemen who make vows recover; but how many
more do we see who have perished miserably with their vows?"
"But at least", I replied, "if what you say of this balsam is true, it
is a proof that our soul is reasonable, since without making use of
our reason and without leaning on the support of our will it knows of
itself how to apply the active to the passive as if it were outside
us. Well, if it is reasonable when it is separated from us we must
necessarily conclude that it is spiritual; and if you admit it is
spiritual I conclude that it is immortal, since death only happens to
animals through those changes of form whereof matter alone is capable."
The young man then sat up in bed and making me sit down also, spoke in
much these terms:
"I am not surprised that the souls of beasts (which are corporeal)
should die, since they are probably only a harmony of the
four qualities, the strength of the blood, a relationship of
well-proportioned organs; but I am very surprised that our incorporeal,
intellectual and immortal soul should be constrained to leave us for
the same reasons that make an ox perish. Has the soul made an agreement
with our body that, when the body receives a sword thrust in the heart,
a leaden bullet in the brain, a musket shot through the trunk, it
will abandon immediately its ruined house? But the soul often breaks
this contract, for some die of a wound which others escape; and so
every soul must make a separate bargain with its body. Truly this
soul which, as they make us believe, is so clever, is very foolish
to leave its lodging when it sees that by leaving this place it will
find its apartment marked out for it in Hell. And if this soul were
spiritual and reasonable by itself, as they say, if it were as capable
of intelligence when separated from our body as it is when invested by
the body, how is it that those born blind, with all the advantages of
this intellectual soul, are not able to imagine what sight is? Why do
the deaf not hear? Is it because they are not yet deprived of all their
senses by death? What! I cannot then make use of my right hand because
I have a left as well? To prove that the soul cannot act without
senses although it is spiritual, they allege the case of a painter who
cannot make a picture without brushes. Yes, but that is not to say
that when a painter, who cannot work without brushes, has lost his
colours, his pencils, and his canvases as well, he can then do better.
On the contrary, the more obstacles are opposed to his work the more
impossible it will be for him to paint. However, they maintain that
this soul, which can only act imperfectly when it has lost one of its
tools in the course of life, can work perfectly when it has lost them
all after our death. If they repeat to us that the soul does not need
these instruments, I shall repeat to them that they ought to whip the
blind who pretend they cannot see."
"But", said I, "if our soul dies, as I see you wish to deduce, the
resurrection you expect would be only a chimera, for God would have to
recreate our souls and that would not be resurrection."
He interrupted me and shook his head.
"Hey! Faith!" cried he, "who has deluded you with that fairy-tale?
What! You? What! I? What! My maid-servant be resurrected?"
"This is not an amusing tale", I replied, "it is an indubitable truth
which I will prove to you."
"And I", said he, "will prove to you the contrary. To begin with,
suppose that you ate a Mohammedan; you convert him consequently into
your own substance! Is it not true that when you have digested this
Mohammedan he is changed partly into flesh, partly into blood, partly
into seed? You embrace your wife and with the seed drawn entirely from
this Mohammedan's body you cast the mould of a pretty little Christian.
I ask; will the Mohammedan have his body at the resurrection? If the
earth yields it up to him, the little Christian will not have his body,
since it is only a part of the Mohammedan's. If you tell me that the
Christian will have his, God will have to take from the Mohammedan that
which the little Christian only received from the Mohammedan's body.
And so inevitably one or the other will be without a body! You will
reply perhaps that God will reproduce from matter a body to furnish
the one who is without a body? Yes, but another difficulty stops us.
Suppose the damned Mohammedan is resurrected and God gives him a new
body, because the Christian has stolen his old one, since the body
alone does not make the man, any more than the soul alone, but the
two joined together in one person, and since the soul and the body
each departed from the man whole, if God then makes the Mohammedan
another body, it is no longer the same individual. So God damns a man
who is not the man who has merited Hell. One body has whored, it has
criminally abused all the senses and, to punish this body, God casts
into the fire another, which is virgin and pure, and has never lent
its organs to the performance of the slightest crime. And what is even
more ridiculous is that this body will have deserved both Hell and
Paradise; for, in so far as it is Mohammedan, it must be damned, and
in so far as it is Christian, it must be saved. Thus God cannot put it
in Paradise without being unjust and rewarding with glory instead of
with the damnation it deserved as Mohammedan; and He cannot cast it
into Hell without being unjust and rewarding with eternal death instead
of the blessedness it deserved as Christian. Then, if He wishes to be
just, He must both save and damn this man eternally."
"I have nothing to reply", I answered, "to your sophistic arguments
against the resurrection; God has said it and God cannot lie."
"Not so fast", he retorted, "you are still at 'God has said'; you must
first prove there is a God, which for my part I wholly deny."
"I shall not waste my time", said I, "by repeating to you the obvious
demonstrations used by philosophers to prove it; I should have to
reiterate all that has ever been written by reasonable men. I simply
ask you what harm there is in believing it; I am assured you cannot
discover any. Then if nothing can be derived from it but what is
useful, why do you not accept it? If there is a God, and you do not
believe in Him, you will not only be mistaken but you will have
disobeyed the precept which bids you believe in Him; and if there is no
God, you will be no better off than we!"
"On the contrary", he replied, "I shall be better off than you, for
if there is no God, you and I will be equal. But if, on the contrary,
there is a God, I shall not have offended against something which I
believed did not exist, since to sin one must either know or will. Do
you not see that even a rather foolish man would not think that a
porter had injured him if the porter had done it accidentally, or had
taken him for someone else, or if he had been drunk? How much more then
should God, who is wholly steadfast, forbear to grow angry with us
for not having known Him since He Himself has refused us the means of
knowing Him. On your honour now, little animal, if belief in God were
so necessary to us, if it were a matter of our eternity, would not God
Himself have inculcated in us all a light as clear as that of the Sun
which hides itself from no one? To feign that He plays hide-and-seek
with men, says like children, 'Cuckoo, there he is!' that is to say
sometimes hides Himself, sometimes shows Himself, disguises Himself to
some and reveals Himself to others--that is to make oneself a God who
is either silly or malicious, for if I have come to know Him through
the strength of my genius, the merit is His and not mine, since He
might have given me an imbecile soul or imbecile organs which would
have made me incapable of knowing Him. And, on the contrary, if He
gave me a mind incapable of understanding Him, it is not my fault but
His, since He could have given me a mind so keen that I should have
comprehended Him."
These ridiculous and devilish opinions made me shudder from head to
foot. I began to look at this man with a little more attention and I
was startled to notice in his face something indefinably frightful
which I had not yet perceived. His eyes were small and deep-set, his
complexion swarthy, his mouth large, his chin hairy, his nails black. O
God! thought I at once, this wretch will be damned after this life and
he may even be the anti-Christ so much spoken of in our World.
I did not wish to let him know what I thought, because of the esteem
I had for his wit, and truly the favourable aspects of Nature towards
his cradle had made me conceive some friendship for him. Yet I could
not so wholly contain myself but that I broke out into imprecations
which menaced him with a bad end. But, throwing back my anger at me, he
exclaimed: "Yes, by death...." I do not know what he meant to say but
at this moment there was a knock at the door of our room and a large,
black, hairy man came in. He approached us, seized the blasphemer
by the middle and carried him off up the chimney. My pity for this
wretch's fate obliged me to clasp him in order to drag him from the
Ethiopian's claws, but he was so powerful that he carried us off both
and in a moment we were up among the clouds. I was obliged to grasp him
tightly now, not from love of my neighbour but from fear of falling.
After passing I know not how many days in travelling through the sky,
without knowing what would become of me, I saw I was approaching our
world. Already I could distinguish Asia from Europe and Europe from
Africa. And now I was so near that I could not lift my eyes beyond
Italy, when my heart told me that this Devil was no doubt carrying my
host to Hell, body and soul, and that he was passing by way of our
earth, because Hell is in its centre. I wholly forgot this thought and
all that had happened to me since the Devil had been our carriage,
through the fear I was cast into by the sight of a flaming mountain
which I almost touched. The sight of this burning spectacle made me
cry out "Jesus Maria!" I had scarcely finished the last letter when I
found myself lying upon the grass at the top of a little hill with two
or three shepherds around me reciting litanies and speaking to me in
Italian.
"Oh!" cried I, "praised be God! At last I have found Christians in the
world of the Moon. Tell me, my friends, in what province of your world
I am now?"
"In Italy", they replied.
"What", I interrupted, "is there an Italy in the world of the Moon
also?"
I had still reflected so little on this accident that I had not yet
perceived they were speaking to me in Italian and that I was replying
in the same tongue.
When I was altogether disabused and nothing further prevented me from
recognising that I was once more in this world, I let myself be taken
where these peasants wished to lead me. But I had not arrived at the
gates of ----, when all the dogs in the town came rushing upon me
and had not my fear caused me to rush into a house and shut the door
against them I should infallibly have been devoured.
A quarter of an hour afterwards, while I was resting in this house, all
the dogs of the Kingdom I verily believe could be heard in a turmoil
outside. All kinds from the bulldog to the lapdog could be seen howling
with a most terrible fury as if they were keeping the anniversary of
their first Adam.
This adventure caused no little surprise to all people who saw it;
but as soon as I had directed my reflections upon this circumstance,
I imagined at once that these animals were infuriated with me because
of the world whence I came. "For", said I to myself, "since they are
accustomed to bay the Moon on account of the pain she causes them from
so far, no doubt they would have thrown themselves upon me because I
smell of the Moon, whose odour annoys them."
I exposed myself to the Sun stark-naked on a terrace, to cleanse myself
from this bad air. I dried myself some four or five hours, at the end
of which I went down and the dogs no longer smelling the influence
which had made me their enemy all returned home.
At the port I inquired when a ship would leave for France and when I
was embarked my mind was wholly occupied in ruminating on the wonders
of my voyage. A thousand times I admired the providence of God, which
had placed those naturally impious men in a situation where they could
not corrupt His chosen, and had punished them for their pride by giving
them up to their own self-conceit. And I do not doubt that so far He
has put off sending someone who preached them the Gospel, because He
knew they would abuse the occasion and that this resistance would only
serve to make them merit a harsher punishment in the next world.
[Illustration: _Frontispiece to Lovell's expurgated edition._]
VOYAGE TO THE SUN
At last our vessel reached Toulon harbour, and after returning thanks
to the winds and stars for a prosperous voyage, we embraced on the
wharf and said farewell. In my case, because money was among the
fabulous stories of the World of the Moon whence I came and I had
practically lost all memory of it, the skipper paid himself for my
passage with the honour of having carried in his ship a man fallen from
the sky. Nothing then prevented me from proceeding to Toulouse to a
friend's house. I was burning to see him, for the joy I hoped to give
him with the recital of my adventures. I shall not be so troublesome as
to relate here all that happened on the way; I grew tired, I rested, I
was thirsty, I was hungry, I drank, and I ate among twenty or thirty
dogs which made up his pack.[49] Although I was in a very bad state,
thin and swarthy with sunburn, he did not fail to recognise me. In a
transport of joy he flung himself on my neck, kissed me more than a
hundred times, and trembling with pleasure led me into his house, where
as soon as his tears gave place to his voice he exclaimed:
"At least we live and shall live, in spite of all the accidents by
which Fortune has shaken our lives. But, Good Gods! it is not true then
that you were burned in Canada in the great firework display you had
invented? And yet two or three people worthy of credit among those who
brought me this sad news swore they had seen and touched the wooden
Bird in which you were carried off. They told me that unluckily you
had got into it at the moment it was fired and that the impetus of the
rockets burning all around carried you so high you were lost to sight.
And they vowed you were so completely consumed that when the machine
fell back only a few of your ashes were found."
[Footnote 49: Something seems to have been omitted in this sentence.]
"Those ashes", I replied, "sir, were those of the fire-works
themselves, for the fire did not hurt me in the least. The rockets were
fastened on outside and consequently their heat could not trouble me.
You know that as soon as the powder was exhausted, the swift ascent of
the rockets ceased to raise the machine, which then fell to the ground.
I saw it fall and when I expected nothing but to fall with it, I was
surprised to feel myself rising towards the Moon. But I must explain to
you the cause of an effect which you will take for a miracle.... The
day of this accident I had rubbed all my body with marrow on account of
certain bruises. But the Moon was then waning and at that period draws
up marrow; it absorbed so gluttonously the marrow rubbed on my flesh,
especially when my box rose above the middle region, where there were
no intervening clouds to weaken its influence, that my body followed
the attraction; and I protest it continued to suck me up so long that
at last I reached that world we call the Moon."
I then related at length all the details of my voyage and Monsieur de
Colignac was so ravished at hearing such extraordinary things that he
implored me to set them down in writing. I enjoy repose and therefore
resisted him for a long time, because of the visits such a publication
would probably have attracted; but at length, shamed by the reproaches
he continued to attack me with, I resolved at last to satisfy him. I
therefore took pen in hand and as soon as I finished a sheet he went to
Toulouse to vaunt it in the best company, for he was more anxious for
my reputation than his own; he was considered one of the greatest minds
of his century[50] and by making himself the indefatigable echo of my
praises he made me known to everyone. Already, without having seen me,
the engravers had cut my portrait and from every square the town echoed
with pedlars shouting at the top of their voices from hoarse throats:
"Portrait of the author of _The Voyage to the Moon_." Among those who
read my book were numerous ignoramuses who turned over its pages. To
counterfeit great wits they applauded like the others and clapped their
hands at every word, for fear of a mistake, exclaiming joyously "How
excellent he is!" at all the passages they did not understand. But
superstition disguised as conscience, whose teeth are very sharp under
a fool's shirt, so gnawed at their hearts that they preferred rather
to give up the reputation of philosophers (which suited them like
ill-fitting clothes) than to have to answer for it at the Judgment Day.
[Footnote 50: Cyrano had the true coterie spirit towards his friends.
Compare his description of poor, drunken, gambling Tristan in _The
Moon_.]
This was the other side of the question and each was then in a hurry
to recant. The work they had so highly prized was now simply a
_pot-pourri_ of ridiculous stories, a mass of disconnected fragments, a
collection of fairy tales to lull children to sleep; and those ignorant
even of syntax condemned the author to carry a candle to Saint
Mathurin.[51] This contest of opinion between the men of wit and the
idiots increased its reputation. Very soon manuscript copies were being
sold secretly.[52] Everyone, in and out of society, from the gentleman
to the monk, bought the book and the women even took sides. Each family
was divided and the interested in this quarrel went so far that the
town was divided into two factions, the Lunar and the Anti-Lunar.
[Footnote 51: Patron of madmen.]
[Footnote 52: It is thought _The Moon_ circulated in MS. before
publication; this explains the entry in Marolles's memoirs.]
We were still engaged in the skirmishes of the battle when one morning
there came into Colignac's room nine or ten grey-beards in long robes,
who spoke to him as follows:
"Sir, you know that there is not one among us who is not your relative,
your kin or your friend, and consequently that anything shameful which
happens to you falls equally upon us. And yet we are credibly informed
that you shelter a sorcerer in your house."
"A sorcerer!" cried Colignac, "Good Gods! Tell me his name. I will
deliver him into your hands; but we must take care this is not a
calumny."
"How now, sir", interrupted one of the most venerable of them, "is
there any _parlement_ so competent in the matter of sorcerers as ours?
But, my dear nephew, not to keep you any longer in suspense, the
sorcerer we accuse is the author of _The Voyage to the Moon_; he cannot
deny that he is the greatest magician in Europe after what he has
admitted himself. Why! he could only have gone to the Moon with the aid
of ... I dare not name the beast; and, tell me, what was his object in
going to the Moon?"
"Well asked", interrupted another, "he went to take part in a Witches'
Sabbath, which no doubt was held that day; and, indeed, you may see
he grew acquainted with the demon of Socrates. After this are you
surprised that, as he says himself, the Devil should have brought him
back to this world? But however that may be, so many Moons, so many
chimneys, so many travels through the air are worth nothing, nothing at
all I say; and between you and me"--at these words he placed his mouth
nearer my friend's ear--"I never saw a sorcerer but had dealings with
the Moon."
After these worthy sentiments they were silent and Colignac was so
astounded at their common extravagance that he could not say a word.
Seeing this, a venerable blockhead who had not spoken said:
"You see, cousin, we know where the shoe pinches. The magician is a
person you love, but have no fear, things will go easily with respect
to you. You have only to deliver him into our hands, and out of love
for you we pledge our honour to have him burned without scandal."
At these words Colignac could no longer restrain himself, although he
was thrusting his fists into his ribs; he burst out laughing, which
offended in no little degree the gentlemen, his relatives, to such an
extent that it was out of his power to reply to a single point of their
speech except by Ha! Ha! Ha! or Ho! Ho! Ho! so that our gentlemen,
mightily scandalized, went off so affronted that they were still
enraged when they reached Toulouse. When they had gone I drew Colignac
aside into his study and as soon as I had shut the door I said:
"Count, it seems to me these hairy ambassadors are a kind of shaggy
comets; I apprehend that the noise they broke out with is the thunder
of the storm set in motion before falling. Although their accusation
is ridiculous, and doubtless the result of their stupidity, I shall be
none the less dead when a dozen men of wit who have seen me grilled
observe that my judges are fools. All their arguments proving my
innocence will not resuscitate me and my ashes will remain as cold in
a grave as in a drain. For this reason, subject to your approval, I
should be very happy to yield to the temptation which suggests to me
that I leave nothing but my portrait in this province; for it would be
doubly annoying to die for something in which I have not the slightest
belief."
Colignac had scarcely the patience to wait for me to end before he
replied. First of all he bantered me; but when he saw I took the matter
seriously, he exclaimed with a troubled countenance:
"'Sdeath! They shall not touch the hem of your cloak until I, my
friends, my vassals and all who respect me have perished. My house
is so strong it cannot be carried without artillery; it is very
advantageously placed and well covered on the flanks. But I am mad to
guard against parchment thunders."
"Sometimes", I replied, "they are more dangerous than the thunders of
the middle region."
Thereafter, however, we spoke of nothing but our amusements. One day we
hunted, another day we took a walk, sometimes we received visitors and
sometimes we went to see others; in fine, we abandoned each amusement
before that amusement could bore us.
A neighbour of Colignac's, the Marquis de Cussan, a man who understood
the good things of life, was usually in our company and we went from
Colignac to Cussan and returned from Cussan to Colignac to render
the places we stayed at more agreeable by change. Those innocent
pleasures of which the body is capable are only a slight part of those
the mind takes in study and conversation, whereof we lacked none; and
our libraries, united like our minds, brought all the learned into
our society. We mingled reading with conversation, conversation with
good cheer, and that with fishing or hunting, when we went out; in
a word we enjoyed, so to speak, both ourselves and all that is most
agreeably produced by Nature for our use; we placed no limits to our
desires save those of reason. Meanwhile my reputation, the enemy of
my repose, circulated among the neighbouring villages and even the
towns of the province; everyone, attracted by these rumours, found
some pretext for visiting the Seigneur to see the sorcerer. When I
went out of the castle the children and women and even the men looked
upon me as upon the Devil, above all the parson of Colignac,[53] who
either from malice or ignorance was secretly the worst of my enemies.
This man was apparently simple and his gross, almost childish mind
was infinitely amusing in its _naïvetés_, but he was actually very
malicious. He was vindictive to the point of madness; a backbiter,
excelling even a Norman; and so able a trickster that trickery was
his ruling passion. After a long law-suit against his Seigneur, whom
he hated the more for having successfully resisted his attacks, he
grew afraid of his resentment and to avoid it desired to change his
benefice; but either he had changed his plan or he had simply deferred
it to avenge himself on Colignac in my person, while he remained on the
estate; for he tried to persuade us he had changed his mind although
his frequent expeditions to Toulouse made us suspect the contrary.
He circulated a thousand ridiculous tales of my sorceries, and the
voice of this malicious man joined with those of simple and ignorant
people caused my name to be held in execration; I was spoken of as no
other than a new Cornelius Agrippa, and we learned that there had even
been an information lodged against me at the suit of the _Curé_, who
had been tutor to his children. We were informed of this by several
persons friendly to Colignac and the Marquis; and although this
ignorant whimsey of a whole countryside was a matter of surprise and
merriment to us, I could not fail to be apprehensive in secret when I
considered more narrowly the unpleasant results which might follow upon
this error. Doubtless this apprehension was inspired in me by my good
genius, who enlightened my reason with all these perceptions to make me
see the precipice towards which I was falling; and, not content with
this tacit warning, showed itself still more decidedly in my favour.
[Footnote 53: Note that Cyrano's worst persecutor in this _Voyage to
the Earth_ is a country parson. See Introduction.]
One of the most disagreeable nights I had ever spent followed one of
the most agreeable days we had had at Colignac. I got up at dawn and
to throw off the apprehensions and clouds which still oppressed my
mind, I went into the garden where the green leaves, the flowers and
fruits, Art and Nature, enchanted the soul through the eyes. At the
same moment I perceived the Marquis walking alone in a large path which
cut the grass-plot in two. His step was slow and his face thoughtful.
I was very surprised to see him up so early, contrary to his custom,
and I increased my pace to ask him the reason. He replied that he had
been disturbed by some disagreeable dreams, which had forced him to
come out earlier than usual to get rid in the daylight of a trouble
the night had caused him. I confessed to him that a similar difficulty
had prevented me from sleeping, and I was about to relate it to him in
detail, but just as I opened my mouth we perceived Colignac walking
rapidly round the corner of the hedge at an angle to ours. He exclaimed
as he perceived us:
"You see a man who has just escaped the most horrible visions, the
sight of which might turn one's brain. I barely took the time to put on
my doublet when I went down to tell you about them, but neither of you
was in his room; and so I ran down to the garden, supposing you would
be there."
The poor gentleman was indeed almost out of breath, and as soon as he
had recovered it we begged him to get rid of a thing, which, however
light in one sense, does not fail to weigh heavily in another.
"That is my purpose", he replied, "but first of all let us sit down."
A jasmine-covered summer-house suitably offered us its freshness and
its seats; we retired to it and when everyone was comfortably seated
Colignac went on as follows:
"You must know that after fitful dozing, during which I felt myself
greatly troubled, I fell into another doze about dawn and dreamed that
my dear guest there was between the Marquis and myself, who held him
closely embraced, when a great black monster, composed of nothing but
heads, suddenly came to tear him from us. I even think the monster
was going to cast him into a fire kindled near-by; for it held him
suspended already over the flames. But a girl like that Muse we call
Euterpē threw herself before the knees of a woman whom she besought to
save him. This woman had the deportment and attributes used by our
painters to represent Nature. She had scarcely had time to hear the
request of her follower when she exclaimed in astonishment: 'Alas!
He is one of my friends!' Immediately she put to her mouth a kind
of trumpet and blew so hard through the tube under my dear guest's
feet that she made him fly up into the sky and so saved him from the
cruelties of the hundred-headed monster. I think I shouted after him
for a long time and besought him not to go away without me, but an
infinite number of little round angels calling themselves children of
the dawn bore me up to the same country towards which he seemed to
have flown, and showed me things I shall not repeat to you because I
consider them too ridiculous."
We begged him not to refrain from telling us.
"I imagined", he continued, "that I was in the Sun and that the Sun was
a world. I should not yet be disabused had it not been for the neighing
of my horse, which woke me and made me see I was in bed."
When the Marquis saw that Colignac had finished he said: "And what was
your dream, Monsieur Drycona?"[54]
[Footnote 54: Drycona = D. Cyrano.]
"Although mine was uncommon", I replied, "I consider it a mere empty
tale. I am bilious and melancholy and so, ever since I have been in the
world, my dreams have always been of caverns and fire. In my youth it
seemed to me when I slept that I became very light and sped up to the
clouds to avoid the rage of a band of assassins pursuing me; but after
a very long and very vigorous effort and after flying over many walls
I always met one at the foot of which I never failed to be stopped,
worn out with the strain; or else I imagined I flew straight up and
when I had swum with my arms for a long time in the sky I always found
myself near land and, contrary to all reason, without my seeming to
become either weary or heavy, my enemies had only to stretch out their
hands to seize me by the foot and to draw me to them. Ever since I
can remember all the dreams I have had have been like these, except
last night, when, after flying as usual for a long time and often
escaping from my persecutors, I seemed at last to lose sight of them
and to continue my journey with a body delivered from all weight under
a clear, very bright sky until I reached a Palace composed of heat
and light. No doubt I should have noticed many other things, but my
excitement in flying had brought me so near the edge of the bed that
I fell down beside it, with my naked belly on the floor and my eyes
wide open. This, gentlemen, was the whole of my dream, which I consider
to be simply the effect of the two qualities which predominate in my
temperament; for although this dream differs a little from those which
usually happen to me, in that I flew up to the sky without falling
back, I attribute this alteration to the diffusion of my blood by the
joy of our pleasures yesterday, and since this was more extensive
than usual it penetrated the melancholy and by uplifting it took from
it that weight which before made me fall. But, after all, this is a
science in which little can be discovered."
"Faith!" said Cussan, "you are right; it is a _pot-pourri_ of
everything we think of when we are awake, a monstrous chimera, an
assembly of confused mixtures, presented to us in disorder by our fancy
which in sleep is no longer guided by reason, and yet by twisting
them about we always think we shall squeeze out their true sense and
derive a knowledge of the future from dreams as from oracles; but, on
my faith, I see no resemblance between them, except that dreams like
oracles cannot be understood. However, you may judge the value of all
other dreams from mine, which is not in the least extraordinary. But,
without torturing my brain with explanations of these dark enigmas,
I will explain their mystic sense to you in two words: and they are,
that Colignac is a place where we have bad dreams and in my opinion we
should try to have better ones at Cussan."
"Let us go then", said the count, "since this mar-feast so wills it."
We agreed to go off that very day. I begged them to set out before me,
because I wished to take some books with me since we had agreed to stay
there a month. They assented and were in the saddle immediately after
breakfast. Meanwhile, I made up a bundle of books which I imagined were
not in the library at Cussan, placed them on a mule and set off about
three o'clock, mounted on a good trotting horse. I advanced slowly
in order to be near my little library and to enrich my soul at more
leisure with the gifts of sight.
Hearken now to a surprising adventure. I had proceeded more than four
leagues when I came to a piece of country I felt certain I had seen
somewhere else. I urged my memory so much to tell me how it was I knew
this landscape that the presence of the objects excited their images
and I remembered that this was precisely the place I had seen in a
dream the night before. This curious coincidence would have occupied
my attention for a longer time had I not been roused by a strange
apparition. A spectre--at least I took him for one--appeared before
me in the middle of the road and seized my horse by the bridle. This
phantom's height was enormous and from the little I could see of his
eyes their expression was depressed and coarse. I cannot say whether
he was ugly or handsome; a long gown made from the leaves of a book of
plain-song covered him down to his nails and his face was hidden by a
card on which was written the _In principio_.
The first words spoken by the phantom were as follows: "Satanus
Diabolas", cried he in terror, "I conjure you by the great living
God...."
At these words he hesitated. He continued to repeat his "great living
God" and with a troubled visage sought for his pastor to give him the
cue for the rest; but when he perceived that his pastor did not appear,
no matter in what direction he turned his eyes, he was seized with such
fearful trembling that half his teeth fell out with chattering and
two-thirds of the music which covered him fell off like curl-papers. He
then turned to me and said with a look neither rough nor gentle, from
which I perceived his mind was unable to resolve whether it would be
better to grow irritated or calmer:
"Ho!" said he, "Satanus Diabolas, By _Sangué_! I conjure you in the
name of God and of Master Saint John not to oppose me, for if you stir
hand or foot, Devil take me if I don't pull your guts out!"
I began to pull my horse's bridle away from him, but I was so
suffocated with laughter that I had no strength left. Add to this that
about fifty villagers emerged from behind a hedge grovelling on their
knees and making themselves hoarse by singing _Kyrie Eleison_. When
they came near, four of the strongest dipped their hands in a holy
water stoop brought on purpose by the servant of the vicarage and
seized me by the collar. I was scarcely arrested when Messire Jean[55]
appeared and devoutly taking out his stole bound me in it, whereupon a
mob of women and children sewed me into a great cloth in spite of my
resistance and I was soon so bound up that only my head was visible.
In this plight they carried me to Toulouse as if they had been taking
me to my grave. At one time one of them would exclaim that there would
have been a famine if I had not been captured, because when they met me
I was assuredly about to cast a spell upon the corn; at another time
I heard another complaining that the sheep-pox had begun in his fold
on a Sunday, when I had tapped him on the shoulder as he came out from
vespers. But above all I was tickled with a desire to laugh in spite
of my disaster by the terrified scream of a young peasant girl at her
betrothed, otherwise the Phantom, who had taken my horse (for you must
know the lout was already astride it) and was spurring it as boldly as
if it were his own.
[Footnote 55: Cyrano's eleventh satirical letter is addressed to
Messire Jean; in the MS. of the Bibl. Nat. its title is _Apotheosis of
an Ecclesiastical Buffoon_.]
"Wretch!" howled his beloved, "are you wall-eyed? Don't you see the
magician's horse is blacker than coal--it is the Devil in person to
carry you off to a Witches' Sabbath!"
Our peasant fell back in terror over the crupper and my horse took to
the fields. They debated as to whether they should seize the mule and
decided that they would. They undid the packet and the first volume
they opened chanced to be the _Physics_ of _Monsieur Descartes_. When
they perceived all the circles by which this philosopher has traced
the movement of each planet, they all with one voice bawled out that
these were the magic circles I drew to call up Beelzebub. The man who
held the book dropped it in terror and unfortunately as it fell it
opened at the page on which the action of the magnet is explained; I
say unfortunately, because at the place I speak of there is a drawing
of this metallic stone where the little bodies which detach themselves
from its mass to seize the iron are represented as arms. Hardly had
one of these fellows perceived it when I heard him roar out that this
was the toad they found in the trough of his cousin Fiacre's stable
when his horses died. At this, those who had appeared the most excited
sheathed their hands in their bosoms or regloved them in their pockets.
Messire Jean, for his part, bawled at the top of his voice not to
touch anything, that all these books were a sorcerer's and the mule a
Satan. The terrified mob then allowed the mule to go off in peace. But
I noticed master _Curé's_ servant, Mathurine, driving him towards the
parsonage stable to make sure the beast should not pollute the dead
men's grass in the graveyard.
It was quite seven o'clock at night when we reached a small town, where
to repose me they dragged me into a gaol; for the reader would not
believe me if I said they buried me in a hole. And yet that is so true
that in one pirouette I visited the whole of it. In fine, anyone who
saw me there would have taken me for a lighted candle under a chimney.
Before my gaoler threw me into this cavern I said:
"If you give me this stony garment as a suit it is too large, but if as
a grave it is too narrow. There the days can only be counted by nights
and of my five senses only two are left me, smell and touch; one to let
me smell the stinks of my prison and the other to make it palpable.
Truly, I confess to you, I should think I were damned if I did not
know that there are no innocent folk in hell."
At the word "innocent" the gaoler burst out laughing. "Faith!" said he,
"you are one of our people, I see. I have never had anyone under lock
and key who was not innocent."
After other compliments of this nature the fellow took the trouble
to search me, I know not for what purpose, but from the diligence he
displayed in it I conjecture it was for my own good. His researches
were fruitless, because I had slipped my gold into my boots during
the battle of _Diabolas_, but when after a very close examination he
remained with hands as empty as before, I was as near dying of fear as
he of despite.
"Ho! Body o' me!" cried he, foaming at the mouth, "I saw he was a
warlock at first glance, he is penniless as the devil. Away, comrade,
take good heed to your conscience."
He had scarcely finished these words when I heard the peal of a bunch
of keys from which he was selecting those of my cell. His back was
turned and so, for fear he should avenge himself on me for the failure
of his search, I nimbly drew three _pistoles_ from their hiding-place,
and said to him:
"Master Gaoler, here is a _pistole_; I pray you bring me some food, for
I have had nothing to eat for eleven hours."
He received it most graciously and vowed that my misfortune touched his
heart. When I saw I had softened his bosom I went on:
"And here is another to compensate for the trouble I am ashamed of
giving you."
He opened his ears, his heart and his hand; and, counting him out
three instead of two, I added that by the third I begged him to send
one of his men to keep me company, because the unhappy are bound to
dread solitude. Ravished by my prodigality, he promised me everything,
embraced my knees, declaimed against the Law, said he perceived now I
had enemies, but that I should come out of it all with honour, that I
should keep up my courage and, in short, he pledged himself I should
be free before three days had passed. I thanked him most gravely for
his courtesy and, after he had nearly strangled me with a thousand
embraces, this dear friend locked and double-locked the door.
I remained alone and very melancholy, my body hunched up on a bundle
of crumbled straw, which was not yet so small but that more than fifty
rats were still gnawing it. The roof, the walls and the floor were
composed of six tombstones so that, having death above, beneath and
about me, I might be in no doubt of my interment. The cold slime of
slugs and the sticky venom of toads dripped on to my face; the lice had
teeth longer than their bodies. I saw myself tormented by the stone,
which though external was none the less painful. In fine, I think I
needed only a wife and a broken pot to play the part of Job.
Nevertheless I overcame there the duration of two very difficult hours
when the noise of twelve dozen keys added to that of the bolts on my
door drew me from the consideration of my miseries. Following upon this
clatter a stalwart knave appeared in the light of a lamp. He set down
an earthen pot between my legs.
"There, there!" said he, "comfort yourself, that's cabbage soup, and
when it is ... in sooth 'tis our good dame's own soup; and faith!
there's not a drop of fat lost, as they say."
So speaking he thrust his five fingers down to the bottom of the pot
to invite me to do likewise. I laboured after his example, for fear of
discontenting him, and with a joyful eye--
"_Morguiene!_" cried he, "you are a lad of mettle! They say you have
detractors, _jerniguay!_ they are traitors; ay, _testiguay!_ they are
traitors. Hey! Let them come and see. Well, well, so it is, dancers
always move."
This rusticity filled my throat twice or thrice with laughter, but I
was fortunate enough to choke it back. I saw that Fortune seemed to
offer me a chance of freedom through this clodhopper and therefore
it seemed to me very necessary to cultivate his favour; for, as to
escaping by other means--the architect who built my prison made several
entrances but forgot to make a way out. These divers considerations led
me to sound him as follows:
"My dear friend, you are poor, are you not?"
"Alas! sir", the clown replied, "if you came from the fortune-teller's
you could not hit the mark more surely."
"Here, then", I went on, "take this _pistole_."
I found his hand so trembled, when I put the _pistole_ in it, that
he could scarce shut it. This beginning seemed to me of evil omen,
but I soon discovered from the fervour of his thanks that he was only
trembling with joy, and therefore I went on:
"If you were the man to share in the accomplishment of a vow I have
made, twenty _pistoles_ (as well as your soul's salvation) would be
as much yours as your hat; for you must know that about a quarter of
an hour since, just before you arrived, an angel appeared to me and
promised to make known the justice of my cause, provided that I go
to-morrow to have Mass said for Our Lady of this town at the high
altar. I tried to excuse myself because I am too narrowly warded,
but the angel answered that there would come to me a man, sent by
the gaoler to keep me company, and I had only to bid this man in the
angel's name convey me to church and bring me back to prison; I am to
warn him to be secret and to obey without question on pain of dying
within the year; and if he doubts my word I am to tell him for a token
that he is a Member of the Scapulary." The reader must be informed that
I had noticed a scapulary through the opening of his shirt and this at
once suggested to me the whole fabric of the apparition.
"Ay, ay, master", said he, "I'll do what the angel bids us, but it must
be nine o'clock, because our gaffer will be at Toulouse then for the
betrothal of his son to the daughter of the hangman. Marry, the hangman
has a name as well as a louse; they say her father will give her crowns
enough for a king's ransom for her wedding. She's rich and beautiful,
but such bits never fall to a poor man. Alas, good master, you must
know...."
I failed not to cut him short at this point; for by this induction
I foresaw a long series of cock-and-bull stories. Well, when we had
worked out our plot, the knave took leave of me. Next morning he was
there to disinter me precisely at the hour promised. I left my clothes
in the prison and wrapped myself in rags; we had agreed upon this the
night before as a means of disguise. As soon as we were in the air I
did not forget to count him out his twenty _pistoles_. He looked at
them hard, with his eyes almost starting.
"They are gold and unclipped", said I, "on my word."
"Hey, sir", he replied, "'tisn't of that I'm thinking, but I'm thinking
big Macé's house is for sale, with the meadow and the vineyard. I can
get it for two hundred _francs_, but it will take a week to knock up
the bargain and I beseech you, good master, if it is your will and
pleasure, not to let your _pistoles_ change into oak leaves until big
Macé holds them well and truly counted in his chest."
The knave's rusticity made me laugh. However, we continued on our way
to church and soon arrived there. Some time afterwards High Mass began,
but as soon as I saw my gaoler rise in his turn for the offertory,
I traversed the nave in three steps and in as many more nimbly lost
myself in an unfrequented alley. Out of the many thoughts which then
agitated my mind I chose that of reaching Toulouse, from which this
town was only half a league distant, with the purpose of taking post.
I soon reached the suburbs; but I was so ashamed to see that everyone
was looking at me that I was put out of countenance. Their astonishment
was caused by my appearance; for I was but a novice in beggary and my
rags were arranged so fantastically, my gait was so unsuitable to my
clothes, that I seemed rather a masquer than a beggar, and in addition
I passed people quickly, with my eyes on the ground, asking no alms.
Finally I realised that to be the object of so general a curiosity
exposed me to dangerous consequences and, overcoming my repugnance,
I held out my hand as soon as I perceived someone looking at me. I
even besought the charity of those who did not look at me; but observe
how often by adding too many precautions to a plan in which Fortune
will have her share we ruin it by irritating her vanity. I make this
reflection on my adventure here; for seeing a man dressed as a small
shopkeeper with his back turned to me, I said to him as I plucked his
sleeve:
"Sir, if compassion can touch...."
I had not begun the word which was to follow when the man turned his
head. Gods! How he changed! And O ye Gods, how I changed! The man was
my gaoler. We were both struck with amazement to see each other where
we were. I was the sole object of his eyes, he filled the whole of my
sight. Finally our own interests, although so different, drew us both
from the surprise into which we were plunged.
"Ah! Wretch that I am", cried the gaoler, "shall I be caught thus?"
This ambiguous word "caught" immediately suggested to me the following
stratagem:
"Help, gentlemen, help in the name of the Law!" cried I as loud as
I could screech. "This thief has stolen the Countess of Mousseaux's
jewels--I have been seeking him a year. Gentlemen", I continued warmly,
"a hundred _pistoles_ to the man who arrests him!"
I had scarcely uttered these words ere a party of the mob fell upon
the poor amazed devil. The astonishment into which he was cast by my
impudence, joined with his supposition that I could only have escaped
from my cell by penetrating the unbroken wall like a hand of glory, so
staggered him that for a time he was beyond himself. At last he came to
himself and the first words he used to disabuse the crowd were to take
care not to mistake he was a man of honour. He was undoubtedly about
to reveal the mystery, but a dozen fruit-women, lackeys and chairmen,
desirous to serve me for my money, closed his mouth with their punches.
And as they supposed their reward would be measured out according to
the extent they outraged this poor dupe, each pressed in to earn it
with foot or hand.
"Hear the man of honour!" howled the mob, "yet he could not prevent
himself from saying he was caught, as soon as he saw the gentleman."
The cream of the comedy was that my gaoler was in his best clothes,
he was ashamed to admit he was the Hangman's assistant and was afraid
he would be worse beaten if he admitted it. For my part I took to my
heels during the hottest of the scuffle. I entrusted my safety to my
legs and they would soon have brought me off happily but, unluckily,
the looks which everybody once more turned on me, threw me afresh into
my former fears. If the sight of a hundred rags, which danced around
me like a maypole-dance of the rabble, caused some gaper to stare at
me, straightway I apprehended that he read upon my forehead that I was
a prisoner at large. If a saunterer put out his hand from beneath his
cloak, I imagined a catchpole stretching out his hand to arrest me. If
I noticed another striding along without lifting his eyes upon me I was
convinced he was pretending not to see me in order to grasp me from the
rear. If I saw a tradesman enter his shop I said: "He is taking down
his halberd." If I passed through a district more crowded than usual
I thought, "So many people have not met here without a purpose." If
another part was deserted, "They are watching for me here." Was there
some impediment to my flight, "They have barricaded the streets to
surround me." At last my fear debauched my reason and I imagined every
man was an archer, every word "arrest" and every noise the unendurable
creaking of the bolts in my late prison.
Hag-ridden by this panic terror I resolved to beg once more, in order
to pass through the remainder of the town to the posting station
without suspicion, but as I feared my voice might be recognized, I
added to the exercise of begging the device of counterfeiting dumbness.
I therefore went up to those who, as I perceived, were looking at me;
then I pointed a finger above my chin, then above my mouth and gaped
it wide with an inarticulate cry to make it understood by my grimace
that a poor mute was asking alms. Sometimes I was charitably given an
eleemosynary shrug; sometimes I felt some oddment thrust into my hand;
and sometimes I heard women say that it might well be that I had been
martyrized in this way in Turkey. In short I learned that begging is a
large book which teaches us the manners of people far more cheaply than
all those great voyages of Columbus and Magellan.
This device nevertheless failed to weary the obstinacy of my fate or
to win over its evil disposition; yet what other course could I adopt?
For, in crossing a town like Toulouse, where my engraving had made me
familiar even to the fish-wives, dressed as I was in rags as motley
as Harlequin's, was it not probable that I should be observed and
immediately recognized? And that the counter-spell to this danger was
to play the beggar, whose part is played by all manner of faces? And
even if this ruse were not devised with all the necessary caution, I
still think that amid so many unhappy circumstances I showed strong
judgment by not losing my head entirely.
I continued thus on my way when on a sudden I found myself obliged to
return on my steps; for my venerable gaoler, with some dozen archers
of his acquaintance, who had delivered him from the hands of the
rabble, were up in arms and patrolling the whole town in search of
me, and unhappily crossed my path. As soon as they saw me with their
lynx eyes with one accord they rushed upon me full speed and I fled
away at the top of mine. I was so sharply pursued that every moment my
liberty felt at my neck the breath of the tyrants who would oppress
it; but it seemed the air they puffed out as they ran behind me blew
me before them. At last Heaven or fear gave me a space of four or five
turnings in front of them. My pursuers lost track and scent of me and
I lost the sight and turmoil of this troublesome chase. Certainly
those who have not experienced similar agonies at first hand will
hardly understand with what joy I trembled when I found I had escaped.
But since my safety demanded all my attention, I resolved to employ
most carefully the time which would elapse before they caught up with
me. I daubed my face, rubbed my hair with dust, put off my doublet,
loosened my breeches, threw my hat in a ventilator; then I spread out
my handkerchief on the pavement with a little stone at each corner,
like those who are sick of the plague, lay beside it with my belly on
the ground and began to groan very grievously in a piteous tone. I
had scarcely done this when I heard the noise of this hoarse-throated
populace long before the sound of their feet; but I had enough
self-control to remain in the same position in the hope of not being
recognized; in this I was not deceived, for they all took me to be
plague-smitten and passed me very nimbly, holding their noses and most
of them throwing a farthing into my handkerchief.
The storm over, I went down an alley, put on my clothes again and
abandoned myself to Fortune once more, but I had run so hard she
was weary of following me. I suppose this was the case: the glorious
Goddess was not accustomed to walk so quickly, and as I went through
squares and crossroads, through and across streets, to conceal my way
the better, she let me fall blindly into the hands of the archers who
were pursuing me. At meeting me they uttered so furious a yell that I
was deafened. They seemed to think they had not enough arms to arrest
me, so they used their teeth and even then were not sure they had me;
one dragged me along by the hair, another by the collar, while the more
temperate went through my pockets. This search was more successful than
that in the prison; they found the rest of my gold.
While these charitable physicians were occupied in curing the dropsy
of my purse, a great clamour arose; the whole square echoed with the
words "Kill, kill!" and at the same time I saw the glitter of swords.
The gentlemen who were haling me along exclaimed that these were the
Grand Provost's archers who wanted to rob them of their prey. "But",
said they to me, dragging me harder than ever, "beware of falling into
their hands, you will be condemned in twenty-four hours and the King
himself cannot save you." At last, however, they grew apprehensive as
the scuffle involved them and they abandoned me so completely that I
was standing alone in the middle of the street while the aggressors
dispatched everyone they met.
I leave you to imagine whether I took to my heels, I who had reason
to fear both parties equally. In a little time I drew away from the
hubbub, but as I was asking the way to the posting station, a torrent
of people running from the brawl dashed into my street. I was unable
to resist the crowd, so I went with it, and growing angry at so much
running I reached at length a small very dark door into which I rushed
pell-mell with other fugitives. We bolted it behind us and when
everyone had recovered breath one of the group said:
"Comrades, if you will take my advice, we shall go through the two
gates and hold firm in the prison-yard."
These terrible words hit my ears with so astounding a pain that I
thought I should fall dead on the spot. Alas! I perceived immediately,
but too late, that instead of escaping to a refuge as I had thought, I
had merely cast myself into prison, so impossible is it for any man to
escape the influence of his star. I looked at this man more attentively
and I saw he was one of the archers who had so long pursued me. A
cold sweat rose to my forehead and I became pale and ready to swoon.
Those who saw me so ill were moved by compassion and called for water;
everyone drew near to help me, unhappily that accursed archer was one
of the first and he no sooner cast his eyes upon me than he recognised
me. He made a sign to his companions and at the same time greeted me
with a "I take you prisoner in the King's name." They had not far to go
to my cell.
I remained in the lower prison until evening, when each of the warders,
one after the other, by means of an exact and critical examination
of all the parts of my face drew my picture on the canvas of his
memory.[56]
[Footnote 56: Mr Pickwick in the Fleet, "sitting for his portrait"!]
As seven o'clock struck, the noise of a bunch of keys gave the signal
for bed. I was asked if I wished to be shown into the one-pistole room;
I replied with a nod. "The money then!" replied my guide. I knew I
was in a place where I should have to swallow many more insults. I
therefore prayed him, if his courtesy could not bring him to trust me
until the morning, to ask the gaoler from me to return the money which
had been taken from me.
"Ho! By my faith", responded the rascal, "our master has a stout heart,
he never returns anything. Do you think your lovely nose.... Hey, off
with you, into the black dungeons!"
With these words he showed me the way with a savage blow from his bunch
of keys, whose weight overthrew me and tumbled me from top to bottom of
a dark flight of stairs down to the foot of a door which stopped me; I
should not have known it was one without the sparks from the shock with
which I struck it, for I had lost my eyes, they remained at the top of
the stairs in the shape of a candle held twenty-four steps above me
by my hangman of a warder. This man came down gradually, opened some
thirty large locks, undid as many bolts, pushed the door a little and
with a blow of his knee hurled me into this hole, whose horrors I had
not time to see, he closed the door so quickly. I was standing in mud
up to the knees. If I tried to reach the side I sank up to the waist.
The awful croaking of frogs as they squatted in the mud made me long to
be deaf; I felt lizards wandering along my thighs and snakes twining
about my neck; I perceived one by the sombre glow of its glinting
eye-balls darting a three-pronged tongue from its venom-blackened
throat, while its brusque movement made it seem like a thunderbolt with
the look of the eyes for the flash.
I am completely unable to express the remainder; it surpasses all
belief and I dare not attempt to recollect it, so much do I fear that
my present certainty of having escaped this prison may turn out to be
a dream from which I shall awake. The hand on the dial of the great
tower pointed to ten before anyone knocked at my tomb, but about that
time when the anguish of a bitter grief began to grip my heart and to
disturb that equilibrium which makes life, I heard a voice bidding me
grasp a rod that was held out to me. After groping for some time in
obscurity to find it I touched the end, grasped it with emotion, and my
gaoler, pulling it towards him, fished me out of the bog. I suspected
my affairs had taken a turn for the better, because he offered me
profound civilities, only spoke to me with his head uncovered and told
me that five or six people of quality were waiting in the courtyard
to see me. This savage brute who had shut me in the dungeon I have
described had the impudence to accost me. Having kissed my hands, with
one knee on the ground, he plucked out with one paw a quantity of slugs
which had stuck in my hair and with the other he pulled off a great
heap of leeches which masked my face. After this exquisite courtesy he
said:
"You will at least remember, good master, the care and trouble taken of
you by fat Nicholas. Pardi, even if it had been for the King, it isn't
to be grudged you."
Enraged by the rogue's effrontery, I made a sign that I would remember.
By a thousand terrifying windings I reached the light at last and then
the courtyard, where as soon as I entered I was grasped by two men I
could not recognize, because they threw themselves on me at once and
each kept his face pressed against mine. For some time I did not know
who they were, but when their transports of friendship were a little
abated I recognised my dear Colignac and the brave Marquis. Colignac
had his arm in a sling and Cussan was the first to emerge from his
ecstasy.
"Alas!" said he, "we should never have suspected such a disaster, had
it not been for your horse and the mule which arrived last night at
the gates of my house; their breast-pieces, their saddle, girths and
their cruppers were all broken, which made us anticipate something of
your misfortune. We got to horse at once and had ridden but two or
three leagues towards Colignac, when the whole countryside, alarmed
by the accident, described to us what had happened. We galloped off
immediately to the town where you were imprisoned, but learning there
that you had escaped and hearing a rumour that you had gone in the
direction of Toulouse, we came on at full speed with the servants we
had with us. The first person whom we asked for news of you said you
had been recaptured. We turned our horses towards this prison, but
other people assured us you had vanished from the hands of the police.
And as we pushed on we heard the bourgeois relating to each other the
story that you had become invisible. At length by continually making
inquiries we learned that after you had been taken, lost and retaken
I know not how many times, you were being carried to prison in the
Large Tower. We intercepted your archers and with a good fortune more
apparent than real we met them, attacked them, fought them and put them
to flight, but we failed to learn even from the wounded we had captured
what had become of you, until this morning, when we were informed that
you had blindly come to prison of your own accord for safety. Colignac
is wounded in several places, but very slightly. For the rest, we have
arranged for you to be lodged in the best room here. Since you like
fresh air we have furnished a little room for you alone at the top of
the Large Tower, where the terrace will serve you as a balcony; your
eyes at least will be at liberty, in spite of the body which confines
them."
"Ah! My dear Drycona", cried the Count, taking his turn to speak, "we
were very unlucky not to have taken you with us when we left Colignac.
Through a blind depression whose cause I did not know, my heart
warned me of something terrible; but no matter, I have friends, you
are innocent and in any case I know how men die with glory. One thing
alone troubles me. That rascal whom I designed to feel the first blows
of my vengeance (you may easily divine I am speaking of my _Curé_) is
no longer in a condition to feel them; the wretch has given up the
ghost. This is how he died. He and his servant were running to drive
your horse into his stable when the animal, with a fidelity increased
perhaps by the secret enlightenment of instinct, began to plunge so
successfully that in three kicks with which that brute's head came
in contact he rendered his benefice vacant. No doubt you fail to
understand the reasons for the madman's hatred; I will tell you them.
Know then, to begin with, that this holy man, Norman by race and a
pettifogger by trade, cast his eyes upon the curacy of Colignac, and in
spite of all my efforts to retain the possessor in his just rights, the
scoundrel wheedled the judges so well that in spite of everything he
became our parson.
"At the end of a year he sued me also, because he claimed that I should
pay tithes. It was in vain to show him that from time immemorial my
land was exempt, he continued his suit and lost it, but in the course
of the proceedings he brought up so many other incidents that a swarm
of more than twenty law-suits grew out of the first and are now hung
up, thanks to your horse, whose hoof was harder than M. Jean's head.
That is all I can conjecture of our parson's giddiness. But observe
with what foresight he governed his madness. I have just been informed
that when he took into his head this unhappy design of getting you into
prison, he secretly exchanged the curacy of Colignac for another in his
own district, whither he meant to retire as soon as you were taken.
His servant even said that when he saw your horse near his stable he
murmured to himself that it would help to take him somewhere he was not
expected to be."
After this, Colignac warned me to be on my guard against the visits and
offers which a very powerful personage (whom he named) might make me,
and told me that it was through this person's influence Messire Jean
had won the case about his benefice, and that this person of quality
had acted on his behalf to repay the services rendered by the good
priest, when he was an usher, to his son at school.
"And so", Colignac went on, "since it is very difficult to go to law
without bitterness and without there remaining in the mind a certain
enmity which never wholly disappears, although we have been reconciled
he is always secretly looking for opportunities to thwart me. But, no
matter, I have more relatives in the law than he, and I have plenty of
friends, and at the worst we can secure the intervention of the King."
After Colignac had finished, they both attempted to console me, but it
was by means of so tender a grief that my own was increased. At this
moment the gaoler returned to tell us that the room was ready.
"Let us go and look at it", said Cussan. He started off and we followed
him. I found it well fitted up.
"There is nothing else I want", said I, "except books."
Colignac promised to send me next day all that I marked on a list.
When we had looked about and had recognised from the height of the
Tower, from the flat-bottomed moat which surrounded it and from the
whole arrangement of my room that it was an enterprise beyond human
power to rescue me, my two friends gazed upon each other, then turned
their eyes upon me and began to weep. But suddenly, as if our grief had
moved Heaven, a rapid joy took possession of my soul; joy brought hope,
hope brought secret insight which dazzled my reason as with a powerful
emotion against my will which seemed ridiculous even to me.
"Go", said I, "go and wait for me at Colignac, I shall be there in
three days; and send me all the mathematical instruments I usually
work with; moreover, you will find in a large box a number of crystal
glasses cut in different ways, do not forget them; but I had better
specify in writing the things I need."
They took the note I wrote for them without being able to discover my
intention. After which I sent them away. When they had gone I could do
nothing but reflect on how to carry out the things I had determined
upon and I was still reflecting in the morning, when I was presented in
their name with everything I had marked on the list. One of Colignac's
footmen told me that his master had not been seen since the day before
and that nobody knew what had become of him. This did not distress
me, for it occurred to me at once that he might have gone to Court
to solicit my release; and therefore without troubling myself I took
my work in hand. For eight days I hammered, I planed, I glued and at
last constructed the machine I am about to describe to you. It was a
large very light box which shut very exactly. It was about six feet
high and about three wide in each direction. This box had holes in the
bottom, and over the roof, which was also pierced, I placed a crystal
vessel with similar holes made globe shape but very large, whose neck
terminated exactly at and fitted in the opening I had made in the
top. The vessel was expressly made with several angles, in the shape
of an icosahedron, so that as each facet was convex and concave my
globe produced the effect of a burning mirror. Neither the gaoler nor
the warders ever came into the room without finding me occupied with
this work; but they were not surprised, on account of all the pleasant
mechanical pieces they saw in the room, of which I called myself the
inventor. Among other things there were a wind-clock, an artificial
eye to see by night and a sphere where the stars follow the movement
they have in the sky. All this convinced them that the machine I was
working at was a similar curiosity and the money with which Colignac
had greased their palm made them go gently in many difficult occasions.
It was nine o'clock in the morning. My gaoler had gone down and the
sky was overcast when I exposed this machine on the summit of the
Tower, that is to say in the most open portion of my terrace; it
closed so exactly that not a single grain of air could slip in except
through the two openings. I had fitted inside a small, very light
plank which served me as a seat. All being arranged in this way I shut
myself up inside and remained there nearly an hour, waiting until it
pleased Fortune to command me. When the Sun emerged from the clouds
and began to shine on my machine the transparent icosahedron received
the treasures of the sun through its facets and transmitted the light
through the globe into my cell; and since this splendour was weakened,
because the rays could not reach me without being several times broken,
this strength of tempered light converted my shrine into a little sky
of purple enamelled with gold.
[Illustration: _The Flight to the Sun._]
I was admiring in an ecstasy the beauty of so mingled a colouring when
suddenly I felt my entrails stirred in the same way a man feels them
stir when he is lifted up by a pulley. I was about to open the door to
find out the cause of this sensation, but, as I was stretching out my
hand, I looked through the hole in the floor of my box and saw my Tower
already far below me; and my little castle in the air thrusting upwards
against my feet showed me in a twinkling Toulouse disappearing into the
earth. This prodigy surprised me, not because of the suddenness of the
flight, but because of the terrible emotion of the human reason at the
success of a design which had appalled me even in the imagination. The
rest did not surprise me, because I had foreseen that the void which
would occur in the icosahedron through the sun's rays uniting by way of
the concave glasses would attract a furious abundance of air to fill
it, which would lift up my box, and in proportion as I rose up the
horrible wind which rushed through the hole could not reach the roof
except by passing furiously through the machine and thereby lifting it
up. Although my plan had been thought out with great care, I was
wrong in one particular, through my not having placed sufficient faith
in the power of my mirrors. I had placed around the box a little sail
easily moved by a string, which I held in my hand and which passed
through the glass globe; I had supposed that when I was in the air I
could make use of as much wind as was needed to carry me to Colignac;
but in a twinkling the sun, beating perpendicularly and obliquely upon
the burning mirrors of the icosahedron, bore me up so high that I
lost sight of Toulouse. This caused me drop the string and very soon
after I saw through one of the windows I had made in the four sides of
the machine my little sail torn off and flying away in the grip of a
whirlwind.
I remember that in less than an hour I found myself above the middle
region. I perceived this by noticing that it rained and hailed
beneath me. I shall be asked perhaps how it happened that there was
wind--without which my box could not rise--in a part of the sky which
is free from meteors; but if you will hearken to me, I will satisfy
this objection. I have told you that the sun beat vigorously upon my
concave mirrors, and uniting its rays in the middle of the globe drove
out with ardour through the upper vent the air inside; the globe became
a vacuum and, since Nature abhors a vacuum, she made it draw up air
through the lower opening to fill itself. If it lost a great deal it
gained as much; and in this way we should not be surprised that in a
space above the middle region of the winds I should continue to rise,
because the ether became wind through the furious speed with which it
rushed through to prevent a vacuum and consequently was bound to force
up my machine continually.
I was scarcely troubled with hunger at all, except when I traversed
this middle region; for certainly the coldness of the climate made
me see it at a distance. I say "at a distance," because I drank a
few drops from a bottle of essence I always carried with me and this
forbade it to approach. During the remainder of my journey I was not in
the least attacked by it; on the contrary, the nearer I came to this
flaming world the stronger I felt. I found my face was a little hot and
gayer than usual; my hands appeared of an agreeable vermilion colour
and an unsuspected gladness flowing with my blood took me completely
out of myself.
I remember that as I reflected on this adventure I reasoned once in
this way: "Hunger no doubt cannot attack me, because this pain is
simply Nature's instinct, warning animals to repair with food the
losses of their substance; and to-day the pure, continuous and close
irradiation of the sun causes me to take in more radical heat than I
lose and therefore Nature no longer gives me a desire which would be
useless." I objected to these reasons that, since the composition which
makes life consists not only in natural heat, but in radical moisture,
to which this fire must be attached as flame to the oil of a lamp,
the rays alone of that brasier of life could not make the soul unless
they met with some unctuous matter to fix them. But I vanquished this
difficulty immediately, after I had taken notice that in our bodies
the radical moisture and the natural heat are the same thing; for,
that which is called moisture either in animals or in the Sun--that
great soul of the world--is merely a flow of sparks more continuous
on account of their mobility; and that which is called heat is a
mist of atoms of fire, which appear less liberated because of their
interruption; but even if the radical moisture and the radical heat
were two distinct things, it is certain that the moisture would not be
necessary in order to live so near the Sun; for, since this moisture
serves the living only to grasp the heat, which would evaporate too
quickly and would not feed them soon enough, I could not lack it in a
region where more of these little bodies of flame which made life were
united to my being than were detached from it.
Another thing may cause astonishment, and that is why as I approached
this burning globe I was not consumed, since I had almost reached the
full activity of its sphere. This is the reason: properly speaking it
is not the fire itself which burns, but a grosser matter which the fire
thrusts hither and thither by the vehemence of its mobile nature; and
that powder of sparkles which I call fire, moving of itself, finds all
this action possible from the roundness of its atoms; for they caress,
heat or burn according to the shape of the bodies they draw with them.
Thus, straw does not send out so hot a flame as wood; wood burns with
less violence than iron, and the reason for this is that the fire of
iron, wood and straw, although it is the same fire, nevertheless acts
differently, according to the diversity of the bodies it moves; that is
why in straw the fire (that almost spiritual dust) is less corrosive,
because it is hindered by a soft body only; in wood, whose substance is
more compact, it enters more harshly; and in iron, whose mass is almost
entirely solid and bound together with angular parts, it penetrates
and consumes what is cast upon it in a flash. All these observations
are so familiar that no one will be surprised that I approached the
sun without being burned, because that which burns is not fire, but
the matter to which it is attached, and because the Sun's fire cannot
be mingled with any matter. Do we not experience ourselves that joy,
which is a fire, because it only moves an aery blood, whose very loose
particles slide gently against the membranes of our flesh, caresses
us and creates I know not what blind pleasure, and that this pleasure
or rather this first step of pain, not going so far as to menace the
animal with death, but making him feel his good constitution by a
natural instinct, causes a movement in our minds which we call joy?
Fever, which has entirely contrary effects, is a fire just as much as
joy, but it is a fire enveloped in a body whose grains are horny, such
as black bile or melancholy, and this fire darting its hooked points
everywhere, its mobile nature carries it, pierces, cuts, flays and
produces by this violent agitation what is called the burning of fever.
But this chain of proofs is quite useless; the commonest experiments
are sufficient to convince the most obstinate. I have no time to lose,
I must think of myself; like Phaethon, I am in the midst of a career,
where I cannot turn back, and in which if I make one false step all
Nature together cannot help me.
I perceived very distinctly, as I had formerly suspected in travelling
to the Moon, that it is indeed the Earth which turns about the Sun
from East to West, and not the Sun which turns about the Earth; for
I saw in succession France, the foot of the boot of Italy, then the
Mediterranean, then Greece, then the Bosphorus, the Euxine Sea, Persia,
the Indies, China and finally Japan pass across the hole of my box, and
some hours after my elevation the whole South Sea passed by and left in
its place the Continent of America. I clearly distinguished all these
revolutions and I even remember that a long time afterwards I again saw
Europe moving up once more on the scene, but I could not distinguish
the different States, because my elevation was now too high. On my way
I passed, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, several worlds
like ours and I felt myself deflected whenever I reached the spheres of
their activity. However, the rapid vigour of my upward flight overcame
these attractions.
I passed near the Moon, which at that time was between the Sun and
the Earth, and I left Venus on the right hand. As touching this star,
the old Astronomy has so preached that the planets are spheres which
turn around the Earth that modern Astronomy dare not doubt it. And
yet I noticed that as long as Venus appeared on this side of the
Sun, around which she turns, I saw her as a crescent; but as she
continued her orbit I noticed that in proportion as she passed behind
the Sun the horns drew together and her black belly became golden.
This alternation of light and darkness showed very plainly that the
planets, like the Moon and the Earth, are globes without light of their
own and are only capable of reflecting what they borrow. Moreover,
as I continued to rise, I made the same observation in the case of
Mercury. I also noticed that all these worlds have other little worlds
moving about them. Musing afterwards on the causes of the construction
of this great Universe I have supposed that at the disentangling of
chaos, after God had created matter, like bodies were joined to like
bodies, through that unknown principle of love, whereby we see that
everything seeks its like. Particles formed in a certain way joined
together and that made the air; others, whose shape perhaps gave them
a circular movement, gathered together and composed the globes we call
planets, which, accumulated in the round shape we see, because of
that inclination to spin on their poles to which their shape forces
them; and also they cause those lesser orbs, which are met with in the
sphere of their activity, to turn likewise, since these evaporate from
their mass and move in their flight on a similar course. That is why
Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have been forced
to spin and roll all together around the Sun. It is quite possible to
imagine that these globes may formerly have been Suns, since, in spite
of its present extinction, the Earth still retains sufficient heat
to cause the Moon to turn about through the circular movement of the
bodies which are detached from its mass, and Jupiter has enough to turn
four. But in the course of time, owing to the continual emission of
the little bodies which make heat and light, these Suns have lost so
much of their heat and light that they remain a cold, dark and almost
impotent residuum. We even discover that the spots in the Sun, which
were not perceived by the Ancients, increase from day to day. How do we
know that this is not a crust forming on its outer surface, that its
mass grows fainter as the light abandons it and that, when all these
mobile bodies abandon it, it will not become an opaque globe like the
Earth?[57] There are very distant centuries beyond which there appears
no vestige of the human race; perhaps the Earth was formerly a Sun
peopled with animals fitted for the climate, which had produced them,
and perhaps these animals were the demons whereof Antiquity relates
so many examples. Why not? Might it not be that these animals still
inhabited the Earth for a time after its extinction and that the change
in their globe did not destroy their whole race at once? In fact, their
life lasted until the time of Augustus, according to Plutarch. It even
appears that the sacred and prophetic Testament of our first Patriarchs
meant to lead us by the hand to this truth; for, before man is spoken
of, we read of the revolt of the Angels. This sequence of time observed
by the Scriptures is perhaps a half-proof that Angels inhabited the
Earth before us and that these proud beings, who had dwelt in our World
since it was a Sun, disdaining to continue there perhaps when it was
extinguished and knowing that God had placed His throne in the Sun,
dared to undertake to occupy it? But God, desirous of punishing their
insolence, drove them out of the Earth and to occupy their vacant place
created man less perfect but therefore less proud.
[Footnote 57: These ideas and speculations are remarkable for 1650.]
At the end of about four months' travelling, at least as nearly as
can be calculated, when there is no night to distinguish one day from
another, I reached one of those little Worlds which fly around the Sun,
called by Mathematicians "Spots". There my mirrors did not collect
so much heat on account of the intervening clouds; consequently the
air did not drive my cabin with so much vigour and there was only
sufficient wind to break my fall and set me down on the point of a very
high mountain, where I gently landed.
I leave you to imagine the joy I felt at seeing my feet on a solid
floor after having played the part of a bird so long. Words indeed are
too weak to express the happiness with which I trembled when at last
I perceived my head crowned with the light of the Heavens. Yet this
ecstasy did not so transport me but that I remembered as I left my box
to cover its top with my shirt before going away from it, because if
the air became serene, as was very probable, I apprehended the Sun
would relight my mirrors and I should lose my house.
By way of gorges, which traces of water showed had been hollowed out
by its action, I reached the plain, where I could scarcely walk on
account of the thickness of the soil with which the earth was fat;
nevertheless, after walking for some time I reached a quagmire, where I
met a little man entirely naked sitting on a stone to repose himself.
I do not remember if I spoke the first or if he questioned me; but it
is fresh in my memory, as if I had just heard him, that he discoursed
to me for three long hours in a language which I know I had never
heard before, which bore no relation to any in this world, yet which
I understood more quickly and more intelligibly than my nurse's. He
explained to me, when I inquired about so marvellous a thing, that in
the sciences there is one Truth, outside which one is always distant
from what is easy; that the more distant an idiom is from this truth
the further it is below one's conception and the less easy it is to
understand.
"In the same way", he continued, "this Truth is never met with in
music but that the uplifted soul immediately moves blindly towards it.
We do not see it, but we feel that Nature sees it; and without being
able to understand how it is we are absorbed, it does not fail to
delight us and yet we cannot tell where it is. It is just the same with
languages; whoever hits upon this Truth of letters, words and sequence
in expressing himself can never fall below his conception; his speech
is always equal to his thought; and it is because you do not possess
this perfect idiom that you hesitate, and do not know what order or
what words can express what you imagine."
I told him that the first man in our world had indubitably made use of
this mother-tongue, because every name he had imposed upon every thing
declared its essence. He interrupted me and continued:
"It is not merely needed to express all the mind conceives, but without
it one cannot be understood by all. Since this idiom is the instinct or
the voice of Nature, it ought to be intelligible to everything which
lives under Nature's jurisdiction; and so if you understand it you can
communicate and speak all your thoughts to beasts and the beasts all
their thoughts to you, because it is the very language of Nature by
which she makes herself understood by all animals. Therefore you should
not be surprised by the ease with which you understand the meaning of
a language that never before sounded in your hearing. When I speak,
your soul meets in every one of my words that Truth it gropes for; and
although your soul's reason does not understand it, the soul has in it
Nature which cannot fail to understand this language."
"Ah! without doubt", I cried, "it was by means of this energetic idiom
that our first Father of old talked with the animals and was understood
by them; domination over all kinds had been given him and they obeyed
him, because he made them obey in a language which was known to them;
and this mother-tongue, being now lost, they no longer come to us when
we call them as formerly, because they no longer understand us."
The little man did not appear as if he were going to reply to me but,
taking up the thread of his discourse, he was about to continue when I
interrupted him once more. I asked him in what world we were breathing,
if it were thickly inhabited and by what sort of government order was
maintained.
"I will reveal to you", he replied, "secrets which are not known in
your climate. Look carefully at the ground on which we walk; a little
while ago it was a confused and disordered mass, a chaos of intricate
matter, a black and slimy dross thrown off by the Sun. After it had
mingled, pressed and made compact these numerous clouds of atoms by the
vigour of the rays still cast forth; after, I say, a long and powerful
maturation had separated in this ball the most contrary bodies and
united the most similar, this mass was so provoked by heat and sweated
so much that it caused a deluge, which covered it more than forty days;
for that space of time was fully needed by so much water to flow into
the lowest and most sloping parts of our globe.
"From these united torrents of water was formed the sea, whose salt
still proves that it must be a mass of sweat, since all sweat is salt.
Following upon the retreat of the waters there remained on this earth
a fat and fertile mud, and when the Sun shone upon it it rose like a
blister, which cannot cast out its germ on account of the cold. It
then received another maturation and this maturation rectified and
perfected it by a more exact mixture and thereby the germ, which was
only able hitherto to vegetate, was rendered capable of sentience.
But the waters, which had settled so long on the mud, had chilled it
too much and the pimple did not burst; and so the Sun heated it up
once more. After the third digestion this womb was so heated that
the cold no longer made an obstacle to its delivery: it opened and
brought forth a man who has retained in his liver (which is the seat
of the vegetative soul and the place of first maturation) the power of
multiplying; in his heart (which is the seat of activity and the place
of the second maturation) vital power: and in the brain (which is the
seat of the intellect and the place of the third maturation) the power
of reasoning. Otherwise, why should we be longer in the belly of our
mothers than all other animals, if it were not that our embryo must
receive three distinct maturations to form the three distinct faculties
of our soul, and beasts only two, to form their two powers? I know
that the horse is only completed by ten, twelve or fourteen months
in the belly of a mare; but since its constitution is so contrary to
that which makes us men, since it is never born except in those months
(notice!) which are entirely hostile to our birth, when we remain in
the womb beyond the normal time, it is not surprising that Nature needs
a longer time for the delivery of a mare than of a woman.[58]
[Footnote 58: This sentence is so obscure that I do not understand it
either in French or English.]
"Yes, but, someone will say, the horse remains longer in its mother's
belly than we do and consequently it receives either more perfect or
more numerous maturations!
"I reply that it does not follow; for without relying on the
observations on the energy of numbers made by so many learned men
proving that, since all matter is in movement, certain beings are
completed in a certain revolution of days and destroyed in another,
and without strengthening myself with the proofs, whereby they deduce
(after explaining the cause of all these movements) that the number
nine is the most perfect; I shall content myself by replying that the
germ of man is hotter and so the Sun fashions and completes more organs
in him in nine months than it sketches out in a year in that of a colt.
And it cannot be doubted that a horse is much colder than a man, since
this animal only dies of a swollen spleen or other diseases which
proceed from melancholy.
"Nevertheless, you will say, in our world we never see a man engendered
from mud and produced in this fashion.
"I am sure that your world is now too heated; for as soon as the Sun
attracts a germ from the Earth it does not meet that cold damp or, to
put it better, that certain period of a completed movement which forces
it to several maturations, and so it immediately forms a vegetable;
or if two maturations take place, the second has no time to complete
itself perfectly and so it only brings forth an insect: thus, I have
noticed that the monkey, which like us carries its young nearly nine
months, resembles us in so many ways that many naturalists do not
distinguish the species from us; and the reason is that their seed is
tempered much like ours and during this time has almost been able to
complete the three digestions.
"You will undoubtedly ask me from whom I derive the story I have just
told you: you will tell me that I cannot have learnt it from those
who were not there. It is true that I was the only person there and,
consequently, I cannot bear witness to it because it happened before I
was born. That is true; but learn that, in a region so near the Sun as
ours, souls are filled with fire and are clearer, more subtle and more
penetrating than those of other animals in more distant spheres. Now,
since even in your world there were prophets whose minds when heated by
a vigorous enthusiasm presaged the future, it is not impossible that
in this world, so much nearer the Sun and consequently so much more
luminous than yours, some odour of the past should reach a powerful
genius, that his mobile reason should move backwards as well as
forwards and that it should be able to reach a cause by effects, seeing
that it can reach effects by a cause."
In this way he finished what he was saying; but after a still more
private conversation in which he revealed to me very hidden secrets
(one part of which I shall keep silent, while the rest has escaped
my memory) he told me that not three weeks before a lump of earth
impregnated by the Sun had brought him forth.
"Look at that tumour."
He then pointed out to me something on the mud swollen like a molehill.
"It is", said he, "a boil or, to speak more correctly, a womb which for
the last nine months has held the embryo of one of my brothers. I am
waiting here for the purpose of acting as his midwife."
He would have gone on had he not perceived the earth palpitating around
this clay sod. This, together with the size of the pimple, caused him
to judge that the earth was in labour and that this motion was already
the effort of the pains of delivery. He left me at once to run to it;
and I went off to look for my cabin.
I climbed up the mountain, whence I had descended, and reached its
top with some exertion. You may conceive my distress when I found my
machine was not where I had left it. I was already sighing for its loss
when I saw it fluttering a long way off. I rushed after it at top speed
as fast as my legs permitted, and indeed it was an agreeable pastime to
contemplate this new method of hunting; for, sometimes when I almost
had my hand upon it there would be a slight increase of heat in the
glass ball, which drew up the air with more force, and, as this air
became swifter, lifted my box above me and made me jump after it like
a cat at the hook where it sees a hare hanging. If my shirt had not
remained on the roof, and thereby intercepted the force of the mirrors,
the box would have gone off on its travels alone.
But to what end do I refresh the memory of an adventure which I cannot
recollect now except with a pain such as I then felt? It suffices to
know that the box bounded, ran and flew, and that I leaped, walked
and strode, until at last I saw it fall at the foot of a very tall
mountain. It would very likely have led me further if the shadow of
this proud swelling of the earth, which darkened the sky far into the
plain, had not spread half a league of darkness around it; for when
my box reached these shadows, its glass no sooner felt the coolness
than it ceased to create a vacuum, with wind through the hole, and
consequently there was no impulse to sustain it; in so much that it
fell and would have been broken into a thousand pieces had not the pool
into which it fell happily yielded under its weight. I drew it from the
water, repaired what was disorganized, and then grasping it with all
my strength, carried it to the top of a hill which was close at hand.
There, I spread out my shirt around the globe, but I could not clothe
it, because the mirrors at once began their office and I perceived my
cabin already wriggling to fly. I had only time to step nimbly in and
to shut myself up as before.
The sphere of our World appeared to me no more than a planet about the
size the Moon appears to us; and, as I continued to rise, it lessened
first into a star, then into a spark and then into nothing; this
luminous point grew so fine, to equalize itself with that which ended
the last ray of my sight, that finally it merged into the colour of the
sky. Some may perhaps be astonished that I was not overtaken by sleep
during this long voyage; but, since sleep is only produced by the soft
exhalation of meats evaporating from the stomach to the brain or by a
need felt by Nature to knit up our soul in order to repair during rest
the spirits consumed by labour, I had no need to sleep, seeing that
I did not eat and that the Sun gave me much more radical heat than I
expended. However, I continued to rise and as I approached that burning
world I felt a certain joy flowing in my blood, which rectified it
and passed into the soul. From time to time I looked up to admire the
brightness of the tints which shone in my little crystal dome; and I
still remember that as I directed my eyes towards the glass ball I felt
with a start something heavy fly out from all the parts of my body. A
whirlwind of very thick and almost palpable smoke suffocated my glass
with darkness; I stood up to examine this darkness which blinded me
and I saw no vessel, no mirrors, no glass, no covering to my cabin. I
looked down to see what was making my masterpiece fall in ruins, but in
its place and in place of the four sides and the floor I found nothing
but the sky about me. What terrified me still more was to feel some
invisible obstacle repulsing my arms when I tried to extend them, as if
the air had been petrified. It came into my mind then that I had risen
so high I must have reached the part of the firmament which certain
philosophers and some astronomers have said is solid.
I began to feel I should remain enshrined there, but the horror which
overwhelmed me at the strangeness of this accident was increased by
those which followed; for, as my sight ranged here and there, it
fell on my breast and, instead of stopping at the outer surface of my
body, passed through it; then a moment afterwards I perceived that
I was looking backwards with hardly any interlapse. As if my body
had become nothing but an organ of sight I felt my flesh, purged of
its opacity, carry objects to my eyes, and my eyes to objects by its
means. At last, after striking a thousand times without seeing them,
the roof, the floor and the walls of my chair, I understood that my
cabin and I had become transparent, owing to some secret necessity of
light at its source. Although it was diaphanous I might still have
perceived it, since we clearly perceive glass, crystal and diamonds,
which are also diaphanous; but I imagine that in a region so near the
Sun that luminary purges bodies much more perfectly of their opacity by
arranging the imperceptible channels of matter straighter than in our
world, where its strength is almost exhausted by so long a journey and
is scarcely capable of transpiring its light into precious stones; yet
on account of the interior equality of their superficies it causes them
to cast back through their glasses (as if through little eyes) either
the green of emeralds, the scarlet of rubies or the violet of amethysts
as the different pores of the stone, whether straighter or more
sinuous, extinguish or rekindle this enfeebled light by the quantity
of the reflections. One difficulty may embarrass the reader, which
is how I could see myself and yet not see my box, since I had become
as diaphanous as it was. To this I reply that the Sun doubtless acts
differently upon living than upon inanimate bodies, since no portion of
my flesh, of my bones, or of my entrails lost its natural colour though
they were transparent; on the contrary, my lungs preserved their soft
delicacy in an incarnadine red; my heart, still vermilion, swung easily
between the systole and the diastole; my liver seemed to burn in a
fiery purple and heating the air I breathed continued the circulation
of my blood; in short, I saw, touched and smelt myself the same and yet
I was not the same.
While I considered this metamorphosis my journey grew continually
shorter, but at that time much more slow on account of the serenity
of the ether, which grew rarefied the nearer I approached the source
of the daylight; for, since at this stage matter is very subtle on
account of the great amount of void with which it is filled, and since
this matter is consequently very idle because of the void which is not
active, the air, as it passed through the hole of my box, could only
produce a little wind barely able to sustain me.
I never think of the malicious caprices of Fortune, who continued to
oppose the success of my enterprise with such obstinacy, but I wonder
how it was my brain was not turned. But hearken now a miracle, which
future ages will find it difficult to believe. Shut up in a transparent
box, of which I had lost sight, with my movement so slackened that I
did well not to fall back, in a state where all that the whole machine
of the world encloses was powerless to aid me, I was reduced to the
height of extreme misfortune; yet, just as when we are dying we are
inwardly moved to desire to embrace those who gave us our being, so
did I lift my eyes to the Sun, our common father. This ardour of my
will not only bore up my body, but hurled it toward the thing which
it desired to embrace. My body thrust on my box and in this fashion I
continued my journey. As soon as I perceived this I stiffened all the
faculties of my soul with more attention than ever to attach them in
the imagination to what attracted me, but the efforts of my will forced
me against the roof in spite of myself and the weight of my cabin on my
head so incommoded me that finally the burden forced me to grope for
its invisible door. Fortunately I found it, opened it and threw myself
outside; but that natural apprehension of falling, which all animals
have when they find themselves supported by nothing, made me stretch
out my arm suddenly to catch hold of it. I was only guided by Nature,
which cannot reason, and therefore Fortune, her enemy, maliciously
thrust my hand against the crystal roof. Alas! What a thunder-clap
it was in my ears when I heard the noise of the icosahedron breaking
into fragments! So great a disorder, so great a misfortune, so great
a terror are beyond all expression. The mirrors attracted no more
air, for there was no more vacuum; the air ceased to become a wind
by hastening to fill it; the wind ceased to urge my box upwards; in
short, soon after this breakage I saw it falling far across the vast
fields of the world and in that region it regained the opaque darkness
it had exhaled. Since the energetic strength of the light diminished
there, the box eagerly rejoined the dark density which was, as it were,
essential to it, just as we see souls long after their separation
return to seek their bodies, and, in trying to rejoin them, wander
about their sepulchres for a hundred years. I surmise that it lost its
transparency in this way, for I saw it afterwards in Poland in the same
state as it was when I first entered it. I have since learned that
it fell in the Kingdom of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; that a
Portuguese merchant bought it from the islander who found it and that,
passing from hand to hand, it came into the possession of the Polish
engineer who now flies in it.[59]
[Footnote 59: It has been held that this refers to the "flying dragon"
experimented with by Buratini at Warsaw in 1648. The evidence that
Cyrano himself had visited Poland is very flimsy.]
Thus suspended in the airy regions of the sky, filled with
consternation at the death I expected by my fall, I turned my sad eyes
to the Sun, as I have already told you. My sight carried my thought
with it and my looks fixedly attached to its globe marked out a way
whose traces were followed by my will to lift my body there. This
vigorous bound of my soul will not be incomprehensible to any one who
will consider the most simple effects of our will; it is well known,
for example, that when I wish to leap, my will, borne up by my fantasy,
raises the whole microcosm and tries to carry it to the point desired,
and if it does not always reach this, the reason is that the principles
of Nature, which are universal, prevail over individuals, and, since
the power of will is peculiar to sentient things and that of falling to
the centre is common to all matter, my leap is forced to end when its
mass, having conquered the insolence of the will which surprised it,
draws near the point to which it tends.
I shall say nothing more of what happened on the rest of my journey for
fear of taking as long to tell it as to make it; let it suffice that
at the end of twenty-two months I landed very happily upon the great
plains of the day. This land is like burning snow-flakes, so luminous
is it. Yet it is an incredible thing which I have never been able to
understand whether, after my box fell, I rose to or descended upon the
Sun. I only remember that when I arrived there I walked lightly upon
it; I only touched the ground by a point and I often rolled like a
ball without finding it any more uncomfortable to walk with my head
than with my feet. Although my legs were sometimes turned towards the
sky and my shoulders towards the ground, I felt as naturally placed in
this position as if my legs had been upon the ground and my shoulders
towards the sky. On whatever part of my body I placed myself, on the
belly, on the back, on an elbow, on an ear, I found myself upright. By
this I perceived that the Sun is a world which has no centre and that,
since I was far outside the active sphere of our world and all those I
had met with, it was consequently impossible that I should still weigh,
since weight is only the attraction of a centre within the sphere of
its activity.
The respect with which I printed my steps upon this luminous country
suspended for a time my burning ardour to continue my voyage. I felt
myself ashamed to walk upon the daylight; my astonished body was
desirous of support from my eyes and since this transparent land which
they penetrated could not support them, my instinct, having mastered my
thought in spite of me, drew me to the most hollow part of a depthless
light. Little by little, however, my reason undeceived my instinct; I
pressed assured and not trembling steps upon the plain and I counted
my strides so proudly that if men could have perceived me from their
world they would have taken me for the great God who walks upon the
clouds. After I had walked about fifteen days, as I believe, I reached
a district of the Sun less resplendent than that from which I came. I
felt deeply moved by joy and I imagined that this joy was assuredly the
result of a secret sympathy for its opacity retained by my being. The
knowledge I had of it did not make me desist from my enterprise; for I
was like those sleeping old men who, although they know that sleep is
bad for them and that they have ordered their servants to deprive them
of it, are nevertheless very annoyed at the time they are awakened.
So, as my body grew darker when I reached more shaded provinces, it
re-contracted the weaknesses brought by this infirmity of matter; I
grew weary and sleep grasped me.
Those pleasing languors which possess us at the approach of sleep
poured so much pleasure into my senses that, captured by pleasure, my
senses forced my soul to thank the tyrant who chains his slaves; for
sleep, that old tyrant of one half our days, who, on account of his
old age, cannot endure the light or look upon it without swooning,
had been forced to abandon me when I entered the brilliant climates
of the Sun and had come to wait for me upon the borders of the shaded
region of which I speak, where he caught me, arrested me his prisoner,
and shut up his declared enemies, my eyes, under the dark vault of
my eyelids; and, fearing lest my other senses should betray him as
they had betrayed me and trouble him in the peaceable possession of
his conquest, he tied down all of them to their beds. All this means
in two words that I lay down very weary upon the sand. It was a flat
plain, so bare that as far as I could see my sight did not even meet a
bush; and yet when I woke up I found myself under a tree, in comparison
with which the tallest cedars would seem like grass. Its trunk was of
massive gold, its branches of silver and its leaves of emeralds, which,
underneath the glittering green of their precious surface, reflected as
in a mirror the images of the fruit which hung round about. But judge
whether the fruit owed anything to the leaves: the burning scarlet
of a large carbuncle formed one half of each and the other half was
uncertain whether its material came from chrysolite or from a piece
of golden amber; the open flowers were roses of very large diamonds
and the buds were big, pear-shaped pearls. A nightingale, whose smooth
plumage rendered him excellently beautiful, was perched on the summit
and seemed with his melody desirous of forcing the eyes to confess
to the ears that he was not unworthy of the throne upon which he was
seated.
For a long time I remained amazed at the sight of so rich a spectacle
and I could not be satiated with looking at it; but as I was
occupying all my thoughts in contemplating among the other fruits an
extraordinarily beautiful pomegranate, whose pulp was a cluster of
several large rubies, I perceived the little crown which took the place
of its head was moving and stretching out until it formed a neck. Then
I saw something white seething above it which, by thickening, growing,
advancing and retiring the matter in different places, at last appeared
as the face of a small bust of flesh. This small bust ended in a
circle about the waist; that is to say, its lower parts still kept the
shape of an apple. Little by little it stretched out, its stem became
two legs, and each of its legs split into five toes. This humanised
pomegranate loosened itself from its stem and with a light bound
fell exactly at my feet. Certainly I must admit I was impressed with
veneration when I saw this little reasonable apple, this little piece
of a dwarf no larger than my thumb, but strong enough to create itself,
walking before me proudly.
"Human animal", he said in that mother-tongue, whereof I have formerly
spoken, "after I had observed you for a long time from the branch on
which I was hanging I thought I read in your face that you were not an
inhabitant of this world, and for that reason I have descended to be
enlightened by the truth."
When I had satisfied his curiosity about all the matters concerning
which he questioned me, I said to him:
"But tell me who you are; what I have just seen is so very astonishing
that I despair of ever knowing the cause unless you instruct me. What!
a huge tree all of pure gold, whose leaves are emeralds, the flowers
diamonds, the buds pearls, and, among all this, fruits which make
themselves into men in the twinkling of an eye? For my part I admit
that the comprehension of such a miracle passes my capacity."
I was awaiting his reply to this explanation, when he said:
"As I am the king of the nation which makes up this tree, you will not
take it ill if I call them to follow me."
When he had spoken thus I noticed that he collected himself in
meditation. I do not know if he wound up the interior springs of
his will and thus excited outside himself the movement, which was
the cause of what you are about to hear, but it is certain that
immediately afterwards all the fruits, all the flowers, all the leaves,
all the branches, in short, the whole tree, fell apart into little
seeing, feeling and walking men, who began to dance around me as if
to celebrate their birthday at the very moment of their birth. The
nightingale alone retained its shape and was not metamorphosed; it
came and perched on the shoulder of the little monarch, where it sang
an air so melancholy and so amorous that the whole assembly, including
the prince himself, were moved by the gentle languors of its dying
voice and shed a few tears. My curiosity to learn whence this bird came
caused me so extraordinary a longing to speak that I could not contain
it.
"Seigneur", said I, addressing myself to the king, "if I did not
fear to importune your majesty I should ask you why among so many
metamorphoses the nightingale alone has kept its being?"
The little prince listened to me with a benevolence which showed his
natural kindness; and, understanding my curiosity, he replied:
"The nightingale has not changed its form like us, because it could
not. It is a real bird and is no more than it appears to be. But let us
walk towards the opaque regions and on the way I will relate to you who
I am, together with the story of the nightingale."
I had scarcely showed the satisfaction I received from his offer, when
he bounded lightly on to one of my shoulders. He raised himself on his
little toes to bring his mouth level with my ear; and sometimes hanging
by my hair and sometimes sliding down it, he said:
"By my faith, you must excuse a person who is already out of breath.
I have crowded lungs in a little body and my voice is consequently
so weak that I am forced to strain to make myself heard. I hope the
nightingale will speak for himself. Let him sing if he wishes, and we
shall at least have the pleasure of hearing his story in music."
I replied that I was not yet sufficiently practised in the language of
birds; that, indeed, a certain philosopher whom I had met on my way
to the Sun had given me some general principles to understand that of
the beasts, but that they were not enough to understand all words in
general, nor enough for me to be moved by all the delicate points which
would be met with in an adventure such as this must be.
"Well", said he, "since you will have it so, your ears shall be
deprived not only of the nightingale's beautiful songs, but of almost
all its adventure, whereof I can only tell you that part which has
come to my knowledge; however, you must be content with this fragment,
because, even if I knew it all, the brevity of our journey to its
country, whither I am about to conduct you, would not permit me to take
my story further."
Having spoken thus, he jumped from my shoulder to the ground. He then
gave his hand to his little subjects and began to dance with them in
a kind of movement which I cannot describe, because nothing like it
has ever been seen. But hearken, nations of the Earth, to that which
I do not compel you to believe, because it passed for a miracle in a
world where your miracles are only natural effects! As soon as these
little men began to dance I seemed to feel their motion in myself and
my motion in them. I could not look upon this dance without being
distinctly moved from where I was, as if a whirlwind agitated all
the parts of my body with the same dance and the particular movement
of each one; and I felt the same joy expanding upon my face which a
similar movement had spread upon theirs. As the dance drew closer, the
dancers became confused with a much more rapid and more imperceptible
motion; it seemed that the object of the ballet was to represent an
enormous giant; for as they drew nearer each other and redoubled the
swiftness of their movement they became so closely mingled that I
perceived nothing but a great, open and almost transparent colossus;
and yet my eyes perceived them interlinked with each other. At this
moment I began to be unable to distinguish any more the diversity of
the movements of each, on account of their extreme rapidity and also
because this rapidity shrank as it approached the centre, and thus each
vortex at last occupied so little space that it escaped my sight. Yet
I think these parts drew still closer together; for this once unwieldy
human mass gradually reduced itself until it formed a young man of
moderate height, all of whose limbs were proportioned with a symmetry
to which perfection at its strongest idea could never have flown. He
was beautiful beyond everything to which all painters have raised their
fantasy; but what I thought very marvellous was that the connection of
all the parts which completed this perfect microcosm took place within
the twinkling of an eye. The most agile of our little dancers leaped up
with a flourish to the height and into the position needed to form a
head; others hotter and not so loose formed the heart; and others much
heavier only supplied the bones, the flesh and the plumpness.
When this large, beautiful young man was entirely finished, although
his rapid construction had scarcely allowed me any time to notice an
interval in its progress, I saw the king of the whole people enter by
the mouth, yet it seemed to me he was attracted into this body by the
breathing of the body itself. All this mass of little men had not yet
given any sign of life; but as soon as it had swallowed its little
king, it felt itself one. He remained some time looking at me and then,
as if he were grown familiar by looking, he approached me, caressed me,
and giving me his hand said:
"And now without damaging the delicacy of my lungs I can converse with
you about the things which you long to know; but it is reasonable to
reveal to you first of all the hidden secrets of our origin. Learn
then that we are animals inhabiting the luminous regions of the Sun;
the most general and the most useful of our occupations is to travel
through the vast countries of this great world. We note carefully the
habits of the nations, the peculiarity of climates and the nature of
all things that can merit our attention, from which we build up an
exact science of what exists. You must know that my vassals travelled
under my guidance and, in order to have leisure to observe things more
curiously, we did not keep the conformation particular to our body
(which your senses could not perceive), whose subtlety would have
caused us to move too quickly; but we made ourselves into birds. All
my subjects became eagles by my command; and for fear they should grow
weary I transformed myself into a nightingale to soothe their fatigue
by the charms of music. I followed the rapid flight of my people
without flying, for I was perched on the head of one of my vassals. We
were following our road when a nightingale, dwelling in a province of
the opaque country, through which we were then travelling, astonished
to see me in the power of an eagle (it could only take us for what
it saw us to be), began to commiserate my misfortune. I caused my
followers to halt and we descended on the tops of some trees where
sighed this charitable bird. I took so much pleasure in the sweetness
of its mournful songs that I would not undeceive it, in order that I
might enjoy them longer and more at my ease. On the spur of the moment
I invented a story, in which I related to it imaginary misfortunes
which had caused me to fall into the hands of the eagle; I mixed with
it such surprising adventures, wherein the passions were so skilfully
aroused and the music so well suited to the words, that the nightingale
was beside itself.
"One after the other we sang to each other in music the story of our
mutual loves. In my airs I sang that I was not only consoled for, but
that I even rejoiced in, my misfortune, since it had procured me the
glory of being lamented in such beautiful songs; and this inconsolable
little creature replied in its airs that it would gladly accept all my
esteem for it, if it knew that this could make it merit the honour of
dying in my place, but that, since Fortune had not reserved so much
glory for so unfortunate a creature, it would only accept of that
esteem sufficiently to prevent me from blushing for my friendship. In
my turn I replied again with all the transports, all the tenderness
and all the caresses of so touching a passion that twice or thrice I
perceived it ready to die of love on its branch. In truth, I mingled
such skill with the softness of my voice and I surprised its ear with
such masterly strokes and with paths so little frequented by those of
its kind, that I carried off its fair soul into all the passions by
which I desired to dominate it.
"We passed twenty-four hours in this exercise and I think we should
never have been tired of making love if our throats had not refused us
voices. This was the only obstacle which prevented us from proceeding,
but feeling that the labour was beginning to hurt my throat and that
I could not go further without falling into a swoon, I made it a sign
to come near me. The peril in which it thought I was in the midst
of so many eagles convinced it that I was calling it to my help. It
flew immediately to my aid and, wishing to give a glorious proof that
it dared to brave death even to his throne for a friend's sake, it
came and sat proudly on the great curved beak of the eagle on which
I was perched. So great a courage in so weak an animal moved me to
veneration; for, even if I had called to it as it supposed and
although there is a law among animals of the same kind to help another
in misfortune, yet the instinct of its timid nature ought to have made
it hesitate. But it did not hesitate. On the contrary, it started so
hastily that I do not know which flew the first, my signal or the
nightingale. Proud at seeing the tyrant's head under its feet, happy to
think that it was about to be sacrificed for love of me almost within
my wings and that perhaps some fortunate drops of its blood might be
sprinkled on my feathers, it looked gently towards me and, having as
it were said farewell by a look, which seemed to ask my permission to
die, it thrust its little beak so sharply into the eagle's eyes that
I saw they were crushed rather than struck. When my bird felt it was
blind it made itself new sight at once. I remonstrated gently with the
nightingale on its too precipitate action and, judging that it would
be dangerous to hide from it any longer our real existence, I revealed
myself to it and told it what we were; but the poor little creature,
convinced that these barbarians, whose prisoner I was, forced me to
feign this fable, would give no faith to anything I could say. When I
perceived that all the reasons by which I tried to convince it were
mere waste of breath, I whispered some orders to ten or twelve thousand
of my subjects and immediately the nightingale perceived at its feet
a river flowing under a boat and the boat floating upon the river. It
was just large enough to hold me twice over. At the first signal I made
to them my eagles flew off and I threw myself into the boat, whence I
cried to the nightingale to embark with me if it could not yet resolve
to abandon me so soon. As soon as it came in I commanded the river to
flow towards the region where my people were flying; but since the
fluidity of the water was less than that of the air and consequently
the rapidity of their flight greater than that of our sailing, we
remained a little behind.
"All the way I tried to undeceive my little guest; I pointed out to it
that it could hope for no fruit from its passion, since we were not
of the same species; that it ought to have perceived this when the
eagle whose eyes it had crushed had made new eyes in its presence,
and when at my command ten thousand of my vassals had metamorphosed
themselves into this river and the boat in which we were sailing. My
arguments were unsuccessful. The nightingale replied that as to the
eagle making itself eyes as I asserted, there had been no need, because
it was not blinded, since the beak had not pierced its eye-balls;
and as to the river and the boat, which I said had only been created
by a metamorphosis of my people, they had been in the wood since the
creation of the world, only no one had noticed them. Seeing it was so
ingenious in deceiving itself I agreed with it that my vassals and I
would metamorphose ourselves into whatever it liked before its eyes, on
condition that afterwards it would return to its own country. Sometimes
it asked that this should be a tree; sometimes it wished this to be a
flower, sometimes a fruit, sometimes a metal, sometimes a stone. At
last to satisfy all its desires at once, when we had reached my court
at the place where I had ordered it to await me, we metamorphosed
ourselves before the nightingale's eyes into that precious tree, whose
shape we have just abandoned, which you met with on your road.
"Now I see this little bird resolved to return into its own country,
my subjects and I will renew our shape and continue our journey. But
first of all it is reasonable to tell you who we are: animals, natives
of the Sun in its luminous part, for there is a very remarkable
difference between the nations produced by the luminous region and the
nations of the opaque region. In the world of the Earth you call us
Spirits and your presumptuous stupidity gave us this name because you
could not imagine any animals more perfect than man, and yet you saw
certain creatures perform acts above human power, and so you thought
these animals were Spirits. But you are mistaken, nevertheless; we are
animals like you. Although, as you have just seen, we give our matter
the shape and essential form of those things into which we desire to
metamorphose ourselves, whenever we please, that does not mean that we
are Spirits. But hearken, and I will discover to you why it is that
all these metamorphoses which seem to you so many miracles are purely
natural processes. You must know that since we were born inhabitants of
the bright part of this great world, where the principle of matter is
action, our imagination is necessarily much more active than that of
the inhabitants of the opaque regions and the substance of our bodies
is also much finer. Granted this, it inevitably follows that since our
imagination meets with no obstacle in the matter which composes us,
it arranges that matter as it desires and since it is mistress of our
whole mass it causes this mass to pass, by moving all its particles,
into the order necessary to create on a large scale the thing it has
formed in little. Thus each of us imagined the place and part of that
precious tree into which he desired to change, and by this effort of
imagination we excited our matter to the movements necessary to produce
them, and therefore we became metamorphosed into them. Thus, when my
eagle's eyes were crushed, to re-establish them he had only to imagine
himself a clear-sighted eagle, since all our transformations occur by
means of movement; for this reason, when we transmuted ourselves out
of leaves, flowers and fruits into men, you saw we still danced some
time after, because we had not yet recovered from the movement we had
to give our matter to make ourselves into men: like bells which vibrate
after they stop and continue in muffled tones the same sounds which the
clapper caused by striking them. For the same reason you saw us dance
before we made a large man because, in order to produce it, we had
to give ourselves all the general and particular movements necessary
to constitute it; so that this motion, bringing our bodies little by
little closer to each other and absorbing them one with another through
its movement, should create in each part the specific movement it ought
to have. You men cannot do the same things on account of the weight of
your mass and the coldness of your imaginations."
He continued his proof and supported it with examples so palpable
that finally I threw off a large number of badly proved opinions by
means of which our pig-headed men of learning prejudice weak people's
understanding. Then I began to comprehend that in very truth the
imagination of these Solar people, which on account of the climate must
be hotter, while for the same reason their bodies must be lighter and
their entities more mobile (since in that world, unlike ours, there is
no attraction from the centre to turn matter away from the movement
imprinted upon it by the imagination) I conceived, I say, that without
a miracle this imagination could produce all the miracles it had
recently done. A thousand examples of almost similar events, witnessed
by the nations of our globe, completed my conviction: Cippus, King
of Italy, having witnessed a bull-fight, so filled his imagination
with horns all that night that the next morning he found his forehead
horned; Gallus Vitius, bending up his soul and exciting it vigorously
to conceive the essence of madness, by an effort of imagination gave
his matter the same movements this matter should have to constitute
madness, and so became mad; King Codrus, the consumptive, fixing his
eyes and his thought on the freshness of a young face and upon that
flourishing happiness which the boy's youth overflowed with almost to
him, and giving his body the movement by which he imagined the young
man's health, became convalescent; and lastly several pregnant women
made monsters of the children already formed in their wombs, because
their imagination was not strong enough to give them themselves the
shape of the monsters they imagined, but was strong enough to arrange
the much hotter and more mobile matter of the fœtus in the order
necessary for the production of these monsters. I am even convinced
that, when that famous hypochondriac of antiquity imagined himself a
pitcher, if his matter had not been too compact and too heavy to follow
the emotion of his fantasy it would have formed a perfect pitcher out
of his body, and he would really have appeared a pitcher to everyone as
he appeared to himself.
So many other satisfactory examples convinced me to such an extent that
I did not doubt any of the marvels related to me by the Man-Spirit.
He asked me if I desired anything more of him; I thanked him with all
my heart. Afterwards he had still the kindness to advise me, since I
was an inhabitant of the earth, to follow the nightingale into the
opaque regions of the Sun, because they were more apt for the pleasures
desired by human nature. Scarcely had he finished speaking when he
opened his mouth very wide and I saw the king of these little animals
fly out of his throat in the shape of a nightingale. The large man fell
down at once and at the same time all his limbs flew away piecemeal in
the shape of eagles. This nightingale, creator of himself, perched on
the head of the most beautiful of them, whence he sang an admirable
air, by which I fancy he bade me farewell. The real nightingale flew
away also, but not in their direction nor so high as they. I did not
lose sight of it and we travelled on at about the same pace; for since
I had no idea of visiting one country rather than another I was very
glad to accompany it, especially since the opaque regions of the birds
were more suitable to my temperament and I hoped there to meet with
adventures more answerable to my humour.
With this hope I journeyed on for at least three weeks with every
sort of pleasure, if I had had only my ears to satisfy, since the
nightingale did not let me lack music; when it was weary it came and
rested upon my shoulder and when I stopped it waited for me. At last I
reached a district in the region of this little singer, which then did
not trouble to accompany me further. Having lost sight of it, I sought
for it and called it; but at last I grew so weary of vainly pursuing
it that I resolved to rest. For this purpose I lay down upon a lawn
of soft grass which carpeted the roots of a tall rock. This rock was
covered with several green leafy saplings, whose shadow charmed my
tired senses most delightfully and forced me to abandon them to sleep,
to repair in safety my strength in so calm and cool a place.
STORY OF THE BIRDS[60]
[Footnote 60: See Appendix I, for a brief account of Tom d'Urfey's
opera derived from this part of Cyrano's _Voyages_.]
I began to grow sleepy in the shade, when I perceived a marvellous bird
gliding in the air above my head; it sustained itself with so light
and so imperceptible a movement that I wondered several times if it
were not a little universe balanced by its own centre. Nevertheless it
descended little by little and at last arrived so near me that my eyes
were happily filled with its image. Its tail appeared to be green, its
belly of enamelled azure, its wings carnation colour and its purple
head glittered, when moved, with a golden crown whose rays sprang from
its eyes. For a long time it flew in the air and I was so attentive to
everything it did that my soul, being as it were folded and shortened
down to the single operation of seeing, scarcely reached to that of
hearing for me to perceive that the bird talked by singing.
Released little by little from my ecstasy, I noticed distinctly
syllables, words and the speech it articulated. Here then, to the best
of my memory, are the terms in which he arranged the fabric of his song:
"You are a stranger", sang the bird very agreeably, "and you were born
in a world where I was born too. That secret inclination which draws us
to our compatriots is the instinct urging me to desire that you should
know my life.
"I see that your mind is trying to understand how it is possible that
I can express myself to you in coherent speech, seeing that although
birds imitate your words they do not understand them; but when you in
turn imitate the barking of a dog or the song of a nightingale you do
not understand what the dog or the nightingale means. From that you
may deduce that neither birds nor men are any the less reasonable on
this account.
"However, just as among you there have been found men so enlightened
that they understood and spoke our language, such as Apollonius
Tianeus, Anaximander, Æsop[61] and several others, whose names I will
not repeat, since you have never heard of them; so among us there are
individuals who understand and speak your language. Some, indeed, only
know the language of one nation; but just as there are some birds which
say nothing, others which twitter, others which talk, so there are
still more perfect birds able to use all sorts of idioms. For my part I
have the honour to belong to that small number.
[Footnote 61: Apollonius of Tyana (1st cent. A.D.), Greek
neo-Pythagorean. Anaximander (611-547 B.C.), Greek philosopher. Æsop
(620-560 B.C.), Greek fabulist.]
"For the rest, you must know that in every world Nature has imprinted
in the birds the secret desire to fly here, and it may be that this
emotion of our will is the reason for our growing wings, as pregnant
women produce upon their children the shape of things they have
desired; or rather, like those who, passionately desiring to swim, have
been seen while they were asleep to plunge in the current of streams
and to cross, with more skill than an experienced swimmer, perils
which they would not even have dared to look upon when awake; or like
that son of King Crœsus who, by a vehement desire to speak to save his
father, suddenly learned a language; or briefly like that ancient,
pursued by his enemy and surprised without arms, who felt the horns of
a bull growing on his forehead through the desire inspired in him by a
fury similar to that of this animal.
"When birds reach the Sun they rejoin the republic of their race. I see
that you are impatient to learn who I am. Among you I am called the
phœnix; in each world there is only one at a time which lives there
during the space of a hundred years; for at the end of a century, when
upon some mountain of Arabia it has brought forth a large egg in the
midst of the embers of its pyre, whose composition it has culled from
the boughs of aloes, from cinnamon and incense, it takes wing and
directs its flight toward the Sun, as a country to which its heart has
long aspired. Before this it has made every effort to accomplish this
voyage, but the weight of its egg, whose shell is so thick it needs a
century to hatch, always delayed the attempt.
"I am sure it will be difficult for you to understand this miraculous
production, and therefore I will explain it to you. The phœnix is a
hermaphrodite but, among hermaphrodites there is still another very
extraordinary phœnix, for...."[62]
[Footnote 62: There has perhaps been a censor at work here.]
He remained a half-quarter of an hour without speaking and then added:
"I see that you suspect what I have just told you is false; but if I
do not speak the truth may I never reach your globe without an eagle
swooping down upon me."
For some time it still remained hovering in the sky and then flew away.
The surprise caused me by its recital gave me the curiosity to follow
it; and since it cleft the air of the heavens with a flight which was
not rapid I accompanied it easily enough with my eyes and gait.
At the end of about fifty leagues I reached a land so filled with birds
that their numbers almost equalled those of the leaves protecting
them. I was still more surprised that these birds, instead of taking
fright at meeting me flew all about me; one sang in my ear, another
spread out its tail on my head, and at last, after my attention had
been occupied a long time by their little gambols I suddenly felt my
arms held down by more than a million of all kinds, weighing so heavily
that I could not move them.
They held me in this way until four large eagles arrived, two of which
grasped me by the legs in their claws, the two others by the arms, and
carried me high up.
Among the crowd I noticed a magpie flying hither and thither, backwards
and forwards with great alacrity. I heard it tell me to make no
resistance, because its companions were already debating about plucking
out my eyes. This warning prevented any resistance I might have made,
and so the eagles carried me more than a thousand leagues thence to a
large wood, which (according to what I was told by my magpie), was the
town where their king lived.
The first thing they did was to imprison me in the hollow trunk of
a large oak, while a number of the strongest birds perched on the
branches, where they carried out the functions of a company of soldiers
under arms. At the end of about twenty-four hours others came on guard
to relieve them. While I was awaiting with a good deal of melancholy
the manner in which it would please Fortune to dispose of my disasters,
my charitable magpie informed me of what was happening. Among other
things I remember it warned me that the bird-populace had strongly
protested against keeping me so long before eating me, and they had
pointed out that I was growing so thin there would be nothing on me
but the bones to gnaw. The rumour very nearly caused a rebellion. My
magpie had ventured to point out that it was a barbarous proceeding to
put to death without trial an animal which to some extent approached
their reasoning; they were ready to tear it to pieces, alleging that
it would be very ridiculous to think that a completely naked animal,
whom Nature herself had taken no care to furnish at its birth with
the things necessary to preserve it, should be capable of reason like
themselves.
"It might be different", they added, "if he were an animal approaching
a little nearer to our shape, but he is the most dissimilar and the
most horrible, a bald beast, a plucked bird, a chimera built up of all
kinds of natures, terrifying to everyone: Man, I say, so foolish and so
vain that he convinces himself we were only created for him; Man who
with his marvellously clear-sighted soul cannot distinguish sugar from
arsenic and who will swallow the hemlock his wonderful judgment causes
him to take for parsley; Man who maintains that we only reason by means
of the senses and who has the weakest, slowest and falsest senses of
any creature; Man whom Nature made like a monster, in order to create
all things, but in whom she inspired the ambition of commanding all
animals and exterminating them."
This is what the wisest said; as to the rabble, they exclaimed that it
was horrible to believe a beast whose face was not made like theirs
could possess reason.[63]
[Footnote 63: "The Abbé de Saint-Yves supposed that a man who was not
born in France possessed no common sense." Voltaire, _L'Ingénu_.]
"What!" they murmured to each other; "he has neither beak, claws nor
feathers, and yet his soul is spiritual? Gods! What impertinence!"
The pity felt for me by the most generous did not prevent my being
subjected to a criminal prosecution. They drew up all the documents on
the bark of a cypress tree, and then, after some days, I was carried
before the Tribunal of the Birds. The solicitors, counsel and judges at
the sitting were magpies, jays and starlings. Only those who understood
my language had been chosen.
Instead of interrogating me in the dock they set me astride a stump of
rotten wood; then the president of the bench, after clapping his beak
twice or thrice and ruffling up his feathers majestically, asked me
whence I was, of what nation and of what species? My charitable magpie
had given me certain instructions beforehand, which were very useful to
me, one of which was to be careful not to admit I was a man. I replied
that I came from the little world called the Earth, whereof the phœnix
and several others I saw in the assembly might have spoken to them,
that the climate in which I was born was situated in the temperate
zone of the northern hemisphere in that end of Europe called France.
As touching my species, I was not a man as they supposed but a monkey;
certain men had taken me from my cradle when I was very young and fed
me; their evil education had thus rendered my skin delicate; they had
caused me to forget my natural tongue and had instructed me in theirs;
to please these ferocious animals I had accustomed myself to walk only
upon two feet; in fine, since it is easier to fall than to rise in the
scale of animals, the opinions, the habits and the food of these dirty
beasts had acquired so much power over me that even my parents, who are
monkeys of honour, would hardly recognize me now. I added in support
of what I said that I was ready to be searched by experts and if they
should decide I was a man I submitted myself to be obliterated as a
monster.[64]
[Footnote 64: This would be "savage satire" in Swift; in Cyrano it is
merely "madness".]
[Illustration: _The Parliament of Birds._]
"Gentlemen", cried a swallow in the assembly as soon as I had ceased
speaking, "I hold him convicted. You have not forgotten he said the
country in which he was born was France; but you know that monkeys do
not breed in France; after that, judge if he is what he boasts to be."
I replied to my accuser that I had been taken from the bosom of my
parents and transported to France when I was so young that I had a
perfect right to call that my native country to which my earliest
memories were attached. Although this reason was specious, it was
insufficient. But the greater part of them, charmed to hear that I was
not a man, were very glad to believe it; for those who had never seen
one could not but persuade themselves that a man was something much
more horrible than I appeared to be, while the most sensible of them
added that a man was something so abominable it was useful to believe
he was only an imaginary being.[65]
[Footnote 65: Even the Yahoos beat this only in nastiness, not in
scorn.]
The whole assembly clapped their wings with joy and I was immediately
handed over to the Syndics for examination, with orders to produce me
next day and to make a report to the committee at the opening of the
Chambers. They took charge of me then and carried me off to a retired
wood. While they kept me there they did nothing but gesticulate about
me with a hundred different kinds of somersaults and walk about in
processions with nutshells on their heads. Sometimes they clapped
their feet together, sometimes they dug little ditches and filled them
up again; and all this time I was surprised not to see anyone else.
The day and the night were passed in these trifles until the prescribed
hour arrived next day; I was carried back at once to appear before
my judges and, when the Syndics were bidden to speak the truth, they
replied that upon their consciences they felt themselves bound to
inform the court I was assuredly not a monkey as I boasted.
"For", they said, "we leaped, walked, pirouetted and invented a hundred
tricks in his presence, whereby we meant to urge him to do the same,
according to the habit of monkeys. Now, even when brought up by men, a
monkey is always a monkey, and if he had been one we maintain it would
not have been in his power to forbear imitating our monkey-tricks. That
is our report, gentlemen."
The judges drew together to hear each other's opinion; but it was
noticed that the sky was cloudy and seemed charged with rain; and this
made them postpone the sitting. I imagined that this had happened on
account of the appearance of bad weather, when the solicitor-general
came to tell me by order of the court that I should not receive
sentence that day; that they never end a criminal prosecution when the
sky is not clear, because they fear lest the bad temperature of the
air might influence the good constitution of the judges' minds; lest
that ill humour which comes over birds during rain should be discharged
upon the case; or lest the court should visit its depression upon the
prisoner. And so my sentence was put off until finer weather. I was
taken back to prison and I remember that my charitable magpie did not
abandon me on the way; it flew continually beside me and I think it
would not have left me if its companions had not approached us.
At last I arrived at my prison, where during my captivity I had nothing
to eat but the "king's bread"[66]; by this they meant fifty worms and
as many cheese-worms,[67] which they brought me to eat every seven
hours.
[Footnote 66: "Pain du Roy", _i.e._ prisoner's rations.]
[Footnote 67: "Guillots"; I went to five dictionaries, before finding
this (dubious) meaning.]
I thought I should be brought up again the next day and everyone
thought so too; but after five or six days one of my guards told me
the whole of the time had been taken up by the plea of a community of
goldfinches, who demanded justice against one of their companions. I
asked my guard of what crime this wretch was accused.
"Of the most enormous crime", replied the guard, "by which a bird can
be blackened. He is accused.... Can you believe it? He is accused....
But, good Gods! When I only think of it, the feathers stand up on my
head. He is accused of not having merited a friend for the last six
years; so they have condemned him to be a king, and king of a people of
another species. If his subjects had been of his kind, he might have
dipped into their pleasures, at least with his eyes and his desire;
but since the pleasures of one species have no relation at all to the
pleasures of another species, he will undergo all the fatigues and will
drink all the bitterness of royalty, without being able to taste any of
its compensations. He was sent off this morning surrounded by a number
of doctors, who have to watch that he does not poison himself on the
journey."
Although my guard was naturally a great talker, he dared not converse
with me alone any longer for fear he should be suspected of a compact
with me.
At the end of about a week I was again brought before my judges. I
was placed upon the fork of a small leafless tree. The learned birds,
solicitors, counsel and judges, were perched in rows according to their
rank on the summit of a large cedar. The others, who were only present
at the assembly from curiosity, were placed pell-mell so that all the
seats were filled, that is to say, so that the cedar branches were
covered with birds' feet.
The magpie, who, as I had noticed, had always been filled with
compassion for me, came and perched on my tree, where it feigned to
amuse itself by pecking the moss.
"It is impossible for you to know", it said, "how much your misfortune
moves me; for although I am not ignorant that a man among living
beings is a pest of which every civilized state ought to purge itself,
yet when I remember I was brought up by them from the cradle, that I
learned their language so perfectly I almost forgot my own, and that
I ate such excellent soft cheeses from their hands, I cannot think
of it without water coming into my eyes and mouth; I feel for you a
tenderness which prevents me from inclining towards the juster party."
It had finished speaking when we were interrupted by the arrival of
an eagle, which came and perched on the boughs of a tree near mine. I
should have risen to get on my knees before it, thinking it was the
king, if my magpie had not kept me in my former position with its foot.
"Do you suppose", it said, "that this large eagle is our sovereign?
That is a supposition of men who, because they allow themselves to
be commanded by the largest, strongest and most cruel of their
companions, and judge all things from themselves, foolishly imagine
that the eagle must command us. But our policy is very different. We
choose only the weakest, the gentlest and the most peaceful for our
kings; moreover, we change them every six months and we choose them
weak so that the humblest individual they have wronged may be avenged
upon them. We choose them gentle so that they may neither hate nor be
hated by anybody. And we desire them to be of a peaceful temper in
order to avoid war, the channel of all injustices.
"Every week a parliament is held, where anyone may complain of him.
If there are only three birds dissatisfied with his government he
is dethroned and they proceed to a new election. During the day the
parliament is held, our king is placed on the top of a tall yew on the
edge of a pond, with his feet and wings bound. All the birds one after
another pass in front of him, and if any one of them knows he deserves
the last punishment, it may cast him into the water; but it must at
once justify itself for what it has done, otherwise it is condemned to
a sad death."
I could not forbear interrupting him to ask what he meant by a sad
death; and this is what he replied:
"When a bird is judged culpable of a crime so enormous that death is
too small an expiation, they try to choose a death which contains the
pain of several; and they proceed as follows: those among us whose
voices are the most melancholy and the most funereal are attached to
the guilty person, who is carried to a sad cypress. There these sad
musicians gather around him and fill his soul through his ears with
such lugubrious and tragical songs that the bitterness of his grief
disorders the economy of his organs and so presses upon his heart that
he pines visibly and dies suffocated with sadness. However, such a
spectacle never happens; for since our kings are very gentle they never
provide anyone with the opportunity of desiring to risk so cruel a
death for the sake of vengeance. The reigning monarch at present is a
dove, whose temper is so peaceful that the other day when two sparrows
had to be reconciled there was all the difficulty in the world to make
him understand what enmity is."
My magpie could not continue so lengthy a discourse without being
noticed by several of those present; and since it was already suspected
of some understanding with me, the chiefs of the assembly sent an eagle
of the guard to arrest him. King Dove arrived at this moment; everyone
was silent and the first thing which broke this silence was the plea
of the chief censor of the birds against the magpie. The King, fully
informed of the scandal it had caused, asked its name and how it knew
me.
"Sire", it replied in astonishment, "I am called Margot; there are many
birds of quality here who will answer for me. One day in the world
of the Earth of which I am a native I learned from Coughing-Chirper
there (who, hearing me calling in my cage, came to visit me at the
window where I was hung) that my father was Short-Tail and my mother
Crack-Nuts. I should not have known it but for him; for I had been
taken from beneath my parent's wing when I was in the cradle, very
young. Some time after my mother died of grief and my father, now too
old to beget other children and in despair at finding himself without
an heir, went off to the Jays' war, where he was killed by a beak-wound
in the brain. Those who seized me were certain savage animals called
swine-herds, who took me to a castle to sell, and there I saw this man
whom you are now prosecuting. I do not know if he conceived good-will
for me, but he took the trouble to order the servants to cut up food
for me. Sometimes he had the kindness to bring me the food himself. If
in the winter I was perishing with cold he carried me near the fire
and lined my cage or bade the gardener warm me inside his shirt. The
servants dared not tease me in his presence and I remember one day he
saved me from the cat that had me in its claws, to which I had been
exposed by my lady's little lackey. But it will not be inopportune
to acquaint you with the cause of that barbarity. To please Verdelet
(that was the little lackey's name) I was repeating one day the foolish
things he had taught me. It unfortunately happened, although I always
repeated my quirks in the same order, that just as he came in to
deliver a false message I said: 'Silence, whoreson, you have lied.' The
accused man here, knowing the rogue's lying disposition, imagined that
I might have spoken prophetically and sent to the place to inquire if
Verdelet had been there. Verdelet was convicted of deceit, Verdelet was
whipped, and to avenge himself Verdelet would have had me eaten by the
cat had it not been for this man."
The King, bowing his head, showed that he was pleased with the pity it
had had for my misfortunes, but yet forbade it to speak to me again
in secret. He then asked counsel if he were ready with his plea, who
made a sign with his foot that he was about to speak; and here are the
points upon which he insisted against me.
PLEADING MADE IN THE PARLIAMENT OF BIRDS, THE CHAMBERS ASSEMBLED,
AGAINST AN ANIMAL ACCUSED OF BEING A MAN.
GENTLEMEN,
The complainant against this criminal is Guillemette the Plump,
a partridge by birth, newly arrived from the world of the Earth
with its throat still open from a lead bullet shot at it by men,
a suitor against the human race, and, consequently, against an
animal whom I claim to be a member of that great body. It would
not be difficult for us to prevent the violence he might do by
killing him. However, since the safety or the loss of every living
thing concerns the republic of the living, it seems to me we should
deserve to be born men, that is to say degraded from the reason
and the immortality we possess above them, if we resembled them
in any of their injustices. Let us then examine, gentlemen, the
difficulties of this case with all the keenness of which our divine
minds are capable.
The main point of the case consists in discovering whether this
animal is a man; and then, if we declare he is, whether he deserves
death on that account.
For my part, I make no difficulty in declaring he is: first, from
a feeling of horror which we all felt ourselves seized with at his
sight without being able to declare the reasons; secondly, because
he laughs like a madman; thirdly, because he weeps like a fool;
fourthly, because he blows his nose like a vagabond; fifthly,
because he is plucked of feathers like one that is mangy; sixthly,
because he carries his tail in front; seventhly, because he has
always a quantity of little square stones in his mouth and has not
the wit to spit them out or to swallow them; and eighthly, and
lastly, because every morning he lifts up his eyes, his nose and
his large beak, sticks together his open hands with their flat
parts together pointing to the sky and makes of them one attachment
as if he were tired of having two free ones, breaks his legs in
the middle so that he falls on his shanks, and then hums magic
words, after which I have noticed his broken legs join up and he
rises as gay as he was before. You know, gentlemen, that of all
animals man alone has a soul sufficiently black to give himself up
to magic and, consequently, he must be a man. We must now examine
whether he deserves death for being a man.
I think, gentlemen, that it has never been doubted that all
creatures were produced by our common Mother to live together
sociably. Then if I prove that man seems only to have been born
to disturb this, shall I not prove that by going contrary to the
end for which he was created he deserves that Nature should repent
of her work? The first and fundamental law for the maintenance of
a republic is equality; but man could not endure this eternally;
he rushes upon us to devour us, he convinces himself that we were
only made for his use. As an argument of his pretended superiority
he cites the barbarity with which he massacres us and the little
resistance he finds in overcoming our weakness, and yet he will not
admit as his masters the eagles, condors, and griffins, by whom
the strongest of them are overcome. But why should this size and
position of limbs mark a diversity of species, since even among
them dwarfs and giants are found?
Moreover this empire on which they flatter themselves is an
imaginary right. On the contrary they are so inclined to servitude
that for fear of failing to serve, they sell their liberty to
each other. Thus the young are slaves of the old, the poor of the
rich, the peasants of the gentlemen, princes of monarchs, and even
monarchs of the laws they have established. But with all this the
poor serfs are so afraid of lacking masters that, as if they feared
that liberty should come to them from some unexpected quarter,
they make themselves Gods everywhere, in the water, in air, in
fire, under the earth. They would rather make them of wood than
lack them; and I even think they caress themselves with false
hopes of immortality not so much because they are terrified by
the horror of annihilation as because of the fear they have of
not being commanded after death. This is the wonderful effect of
that fantastic monarchy and natural empire of man over the animals
and ourselves; for his insolence reaches even to that point.
Nevertheless, as a consequence of this ridiculous chieftainship,
he pleasantly arrogates to himself the right of life and death
over us; he lies in ambush for us, he binds us, he throws us into
prison, he cuts our throats, he eats us; and the power to kill
those of us who remain free is made a privilege of the Nobility;
he thinks the Sun was lighted to enable him to make war upon us;
he thinks Nature allows us to make excursions through the sky
simply for him to draw favourable or unfavourable auspices from our
flight, and that when God put entrails into our bodies His only
purpose was to make a book from which man might learn the science
of future things.
Is not this pride utterly insupportable? Could one who entertained
such a conception deserve a punishment less than that of being
born a man? Yet it is not on this account that I urge you to
condemn this man; since the poor beast has not the use of reason
like ourselves, I excuse his errors in so far as they are produced
by lack of understanding; but I ask justice on account of those
which are daughters of his will. As, for example, that he kills
us without being attacked by us; that he eats us when he might
satisfy his hunger with more suitable food; and, which I consider
the most cowardly of all, that he debauches the natural disposition
of hawks, falcons and vultures, by teaching them to massacre their
kind, to feed upon their like or to deliver us into his hands.
This consideration alone is so heinous that I ask the court to
condemn him to extermination by a sad death.[68]
[Footnote 68: To the best of my knowledge this admirable indictment is
Cyrano's own.]
The whole Bar shivered with horror at the idea of so great a torture;
and, with the purpose of moderating it, the King made a sign to my
counsel to reply. It was a starling, a great jurisconsult, who,
striking his foot thrice upon the branch which supported him, spoke to
the assembly as follows:
"It is true, gentlemen, that moved by pity I undertook the case of this
wretched beast; but, at the moment of pleading, remorse of conscience
has come to me and a kind of secret voice forbidding me to undertake
so detestable an action. Thus, gentlemen, I declare to you and to the
court that for the sake of my soul's salvation I will not contribute in
any fashion towards the duration of such a monster as man."
The whole populace clapped their beaks as a sign of rejoicing and to
congratulate the sincerity of so worthy a bird.
My magpie presented itself to plead in his place, but silence was
imposed upon it because, since it had been brought up by men and was
perhaps infected by their morals, there was some fear it would approach
my case with a prejudiced mind; for the Court of Birds will not hear an
advocate who is more interested on behalf of one client than another,
unless he can show that this preference comes from the party's right.
When my judges saw that nobody came forward to defend me they stretched
out their wings, shook them and flew immediately to consultation.
I learned afterwards that the greater part insisted strongly that I
should be exterminated by a sad death; but yet, when they perceived the
King inclined to milder measures, they revised their opinions; thus
my judges moderated themselves and instead of a sad death, which they
remitted, they thought meet to fit my punishment to one of my crimes.
To annihilate me by a punishment which would serve to undeceive me by
challenging the pretended empire of men over birds, they ordered that I
should be given up to the anger of the weakest among them; which meant
that they condemned me to be eaten by flies.
At that moment the assembly rose and I heard a murmur go round that the
circumstances of my suffering had not been gone into in detail, because
of an accident to a bird of the party, which had fallen in a swoon just
as it was about to speak to the King. They thought this had happened
from the horror caused it by looking too fixedly at a man; and so the
order was given for me to be taken away.
Sentence was pronounced upon me; and as soon as the osprey who filled
the office of clerk of the court had finished reading it to me, I
perceived the sky about me black with flies, humble-bees, midges,
gnats, and fleas, buzzing with impatience. I expected to be carried off
by my eagles as before, but in their place I saw a great black ostrich,
which set me shamefully astride its back; for with them this position
is the most ignominious in which a criminal can be placed, and whatever
offence a bird has committed it cannot be condemned to this.
The archers who took me to execution consisted of fifty condors and as
many griffins; before and behind them flew very slowly a procession of
ravens croaking something lugubriously and I thought I heard in the
distance responses from screech-owls.
When we left the place where judgment had been pronounced upon me, two
birds of paradise who had been ordered to be present at my death came
and perched on my shoulders. Although my soul was greatly troubled by
horror at the step I was about to take, I yet remember almost all the
reasonings by which they tried to console me.
"Death", said they, with their beaks in my ear, "is certainly not a
great evil, because our good mother Nature subjects all her children to
it; and it cannot be an affair of great consequence, because it happens
at any moment and from so small a cause; for if life were so excellent
it would not be in our power to withhold it from offspring; or if death
brought with it consequences so important as you persuade yourself, it
would not be in our power to give it: on the contrary, there is every
probability that since every animal begins in play, it ends similarly.
I speak to you in this way because, since your soul is not immortal
like ours, you may well suppose when you die that everything dies with
you. Do not be troubled then at undergoing what some of your companions
will undergo later. Their condition is more deplorable than yours; for
if death is an evil, it is only an evil to those who are condemned to
die; compared with you, who have only an hour between here and there,
they will be fifty or sixty years a-dying. Then, you know, he who is
not yet born is not unhappy. Well, you are about to resemble him who
is not yet born; a twinkling of an eye after life, you will be what
you were a twinkling of an eye before; and immediately after that
twinkling of an eye you will be dead as long as he who died a thousand
centuries ago. But in any case, granted that life is a good, the same
chance which in the infinity of time made you what you are may some day
cause you to exist again. May not that matter, which by constant mixing
finally reached that number, that disposition and that order necessary
to the construction of your being, once more by remixing reach the
state required to cause you to feel again? Yes, but, you will say,
I do not remember to have existed. Why! my dear brother, what do you
care so long as you are conscious of existing? And then may it not be
that to console you for the loss of your life you will imagine the same
reasons which I now put before you?
"These are considerations sufficiently strong to oblige you to drink
this bitter cup with patience; but I have others still more urgent,
which doubtless will bring you to desire it. My dear brother, you must
convince yourself that, since you and other brutes are material, and
since death instead of annihilating matter simply alters its economy
you must, I say, believe with certainty that when you cease to be what
you were you will begin to be something else. Suppose you become a clod
of earth or a stone, well, you will be something less wicked than man.
But I have a secret to discover to you, which I should not like any
of your companions to hear from my mouth; and that is, when you are
eaten, as you will be, by our little birds, you will pass into their
substance: yes, you will have the honour of contributing (even though
blindly) to the intellectual operations of flies, and though you do not
reason yourself, you will at least share in the glory of making them
reason."
At about this point of their exhortation we reached the place fixed
upon for my execution.
There were four trees very close to each other and about the same
distance apart, on each of which at the same height was perched a
large heron. I was taken down from the black ostrich and a number of
cormorants carried me to the place where the four herons were waiting
for me. These birds, firmly seated each on its tree opposite each
other, wound their prodigiously long necks about my legs and arms as
though they were ropes, and bound me so tightly that although each of
my limbs was only tied by the neck of one bird I had not the power to
move it at all.
They were to remain a long time in this position; for I heard orders
given to the cormorants who had lifted me to catch fish for the herons
and to slide their food into their beaks. They were still waiting for
the flies, because they cleft the air with a flight less rapid than
ours; nevertheless we were never out of hearing of them. The first
thing they undertook was to apportion my body, and this arrangement
was made so cunningly that they assigned my eyes to the bees, so
that I should have them stung out as they ate them; my ears to the
humble-bees, so that I should have them deafened and devoured at the
same time; and my shoulders to the fleas, in order that I should
have them pierced by itching bites; and so on for the rest. Scarcely
had I heard these orders arranged, when suddenly I saw the insects
approaching. It seemed as if all the atoms of which the air is composed
had been changed into flies; for only two or three weak rays of light
reached me, and these appeared to slip through to get at me, so closely
were these battalions drawn up and so near my flesh were they.
But just as each one of them was choosing the place it desired to bite
me, I saw them suddenly retreat; and among the confusion of a vast
number of shouts, which re-echoed to the clouds, I several times made
out the words: _Pardon, pardon, pardon_.
Two turtle-doves then came up to me. At their arrival all the dismal
apparatus of my death disappeared; I felt my herons loose the circles
of the long necks which bound me; and my body, stretched out like a
Saint Andrew's cross, slipped from the top of the four trees to the
foot of their roots. I expected from this fall to be shattered on
the ground against a rock; but at the height of my terror I was very
surprised to find myself seated on a white ostrich, which set off at a
gallop as soon as it felt me on its back.
I was taken by a road different from that by which I had come; for
I remember passing through a large wood of myrtles and another of
terebinth trees leading to a huge forest of olive trees, where King
Dove was awaiting me in the midst of all his court.
As soon as he saw me, he signed for me to be helped down. Immediately
two eagles of the guard extended their feet and carried me to the
Prince. I respectfully attempted to embrace and to kiss his Majesty's
little spurs, but he evaded me.
"I ask you", said he, "whether you know this bird."
At these words they showed me a parrot, which began to strut and flap
its wings, when it perceived I was looking at it.
"It seems to me", I exclaimed to the King, "that I have seen it
somewhere, but I am so confused by fear and joy that I cannot yet tell
precisely where it was."
At these words the parrot came to me, embraced my face with its two
wings and said:
"What! You do not recognise Cæsar, your cousin's parrot, on whose
account you have so often maintained that birds reason? Just now,
during your trial, it was I who tried to declare after the session what
obligations I have to you, but the pain of seeing you in so great a
peril made me fall into a swoon."
His speech completed the unsealing of my sight. Having recognised him I
embraced and kissed him; he embraced and kissed me.
"'Tis you, then, my poor Cæsar", said I, "whose cage I opened to
return you the liberty taken from you by the tyrannical custom of our
world?"
The King interrupted our caresses and spoke to me to this effect:
"Man, with us a good action is never lost; for this reason, although
as a man you deserve to die simply because you were born, the Senate
pardons you your life. This act of recognition may well accompany that
intelligence with which Nature enlightened your instinct, when she
made you suspect in us that faculty of reasoning you were incapable of
comprehending. Go then in peace and live happily."
He whispered some orders and my white ostrich, led by the two
turtle-doves, carried me away from the assembly. After galloping me
for about half a day, the ostrich left me near a forest, into which I
plunged as soon as it had gone. There I began to taste the pleasure
of liberty and of eating the honey which flowed down the bark of the
trees. If my body could have resisted the exertion I think I should
never have finished my walk, for the agreeable diversity of the place
made me continually discover something more beautiful; but when at
last I found myself worn out with fatigue I sank down upon the grass.
Stretched out thus under the shadow of the trees I felt invited to
sleep by the soft coolness and the silence of solitude, when an
indistinct noise of confused voices, which I seemed to hear fluttering
about me, woke me with a start.
The ground appeared very flat and did not bristle with any bush to
interrupt the sight, and mine therefore ranged far afield among the
forest trees; yet the murmur which reached my ear could only have come
from close beside me. Listening more intently, I distinctly heard a
sequence of Greek words, and among the conversation of a number of
people I heard one expressing himself as follows:
"Doctor, one of my relatives, the three-headed Elm, informs me by a
Finch, which he sends me, that he is sick of a hectic fever and of a
moss disease, which covers him from head to foot. I beseech you, by
your friendship for me, to prescribe something for him."
I remained a little time without hearing anything, but after a short
space it seemed to me I heard this reply:
"Even if the three-headed Elm were not your relative, and even if this
request were made me by the most outlandish of our species, instead of
by you, who are my friend, my profession would nevertheless oblige me
to help him. Tell the three-headed Elm that to cure his illness he must
suck up as much damp and as little dry as possible; for this purpose he
must send the small threads of his roots towards the wettest parts of
his soil, converse only of cheerful matters, and every day listen to
the music of a few excellent Nightingales. He will then let you know
how he feels after this regime; and then, according to the development
of his illness, when we have prepared his humours, some Stork among my
friends will give him a clyster, which will set him fairly on the road
to convalescence."
After these words I did not hear the least sound, but a quarter of an
hour later a voice, which I think I had not before noticed, reached my
ear; this is what it said:
"Are you asleep, forked tree?"
I heard another voice reply thus: "No, fresh bark, why?"
"Because", replied the voice which had first broken the silence, "I
feel disturbed in the manner we are accustomed to be when those animals
called Men approach us and I should like to ask if you feel the same
thing."
Some time passed before the other replied, as if he were concentrating
his most secret senses upon this investigation. Then he exclaimed: "By
heaven! you are right, and I swear my organs are so filled with the
presence of a man that I am very much deceived if there is not one very
close at hand."
Several voices then exclaimed together that assuredly they perceived a
man. However much I gazed about me on all sides I could not discover
whence this speech came. At last, when I had a little recovered from
the horror into which this event had cast me, I replied to that voice,
which I thought I had noticed asking if there were a man there, that
there was one.
"But I beg you", I went on immediately, "whoever you are speaking to
me, to tell me where you are."
A moment after I heard these words: "We are in your presence, your
eyes behold us and you do not see us! Behold the oaks upon which we
feel your sight is resting, it is we who speak to you, and if you are
surprised that we should speak a language used in the world whence
you come, know that our first fathers were born there; they dwelt
in Epirus in the forest of Dodona,[69] where their natural kindness
caused them to render oracles to those who consulted them in trouble.
For this purpose they learned the Greek language, at that time the
most universal, in order to be understood; and because we descend
from them, from father to son, the gift of prophecy has come down to
us. Well, you must know that a large eagle who was sheltered by our
fathers in Dodona could not go hunting because it had broken one of
its hands and therefore fed upon the acorns furnished it by their
branches, when, one day, tired of living in a world where it suffered,
it took flight towards the Sun and continued its voyage so happily that
at last it reached the luminous globe where we are now; but the heat
of the climate on its arrival made it vomit; it threw up a number of
undigested acorns; these acorns germinated and from them grew the oaks
which were our ancestors.
[Footnote 69: The famous oracle of Zeus was here.]
"In this way we changed our dwelling-place. But although you hear us
speak a human language, it does not mean that other trees express
themselves in the same way; only those oaks issued from the forest of
Dodona speak as you do. As to other plants, this is how they express
themselves: have you never noticed that fine gentle breeze which never
fails to breathe on the outskirts of woods? That is the breath of their
speech, and the little murmur or the delicate noise by which they break
the silence of their solitude is actually their language. But although
the sound of forests always seems the same, it is really so different
that every kind of plant has its own; the birch does not speak like the
maple, nor the beech like the cherry-tree. If the silly people of your
world heard me as I am now speaking, they would think there was a devil
imprisoned under my bark; for, far from believing that we can reason,
they do not even suppose that we have a sentient soul, although every
day they see that at the first blow given a tree by the wood-cutter
the wedge enters four times deeper into the flesh than at the second
blow; from which they ought to conjecture that the first blow assuredly
surprised the tree and struck it unexpectedly, then that, immediately
it was warned by the pain, it collected itself, united its forces to
resist and became as it were petrified to combat the hardness of its
enemy's weapon. But my intention is not to make the blind understand
light; to me an individual is the whole race and the whole race is but
an individual when that individual is not infected by the errors of the
race; be attentive therefore, since when I speak to you I imagine I am
speaking to the whole human race.
"In the first place you must know that almost all the concerts at
which the birds make music are composed in praise of trees; moreover,
to repay the care they take in celebrating our worthy actions, we are
careful to hide their loves; for you must not imagine when you find
so much difficulty in discovering one of their nests that this is
the result of the prudence with which they have hidden it; it is the
tree itself which folds its boughs all around the nest to protect its
guest's family from the cruelties of man. To prove that this is so,
observe the nests of those which are either born for the destruction of
the birds, their fellow-citizens, like sparrow-hawks, hobbies, merlins,
falcons, or of those which only speak to quarrel like jays and magpies,
or of those which delight to terrify us, like owls and night-jars; you
will notice that their nests are exposed to everybody's sight,[70]
because the tree holds its branches away from them in order that they
may be taken.
[Footnote 70: Nobody "observed Nature" in the 17th century, of course!]
"But it is unnecessary to mention so many details to prove that trees
exercise all your functions both of the body and of the soul. Is there
any one among you who has not noticed in the spring, when the Sun has
delighted our bark with fertile sap, that we lengthen our boughs and
spread them out, covered with fruit, on the breast of the earth whereof
we are amorous? The earth, on its side, opens and is warmed with the
same ardour; and as if each of our boughs were a male organ she draws
near to join with them; and our boughs transported with pleasure
discharge into her lap the seed with which she burns to conceive. She
is nine months in forming this embryo before she brings it forth; but
the tree, her husband, fearing the winter cold may harm her pregnancy,
casts off his green robe to cover her, while to hide a little of his
own nudity he is content with an old cloak of dead leaves.
"Well, you men eternally see these things and never perceive them;
still more convincing things pass before your eyes and your stupidity
is not even disturbed."
My attention was closely directed to the speech I heard from this
arboreal voice and I was awaiting the remainder when it suddenly ceased
speaking in a tone similar to that of a person who is prevented from
speaking by short breath.
When I found it altogether obstinate in its silence I conjured it by
everything I thought might move it to deign to instruct a person who
had risked the perils of so great a voyage only for the purpose of
learning. At the same time I heard two or three voices making the same
supplication for love of me and then I distinguished one, saying to it
as if it had been annoyed:
"Well, since you complain so much of your lungs, take a rest, and I
will tell him the 'Story of the Lover-Trees'."
"Oh you, whoever you may be", cried I, throwing myself upon my knees,
"the wisest of all the oaks of Dodona, who deign to take the trouble
to instruct me, know that your lesson is not wasted upon one who is
ungrateful; if ever I return to my native globe I make a vow that I
will publish the marvels which you do me the honour to let me witness."
As I finished this protestation I heard the same voice continue thus:
"Little man, look twelve or fifteen paces to your right hand, you will
see two twin trees of moderate height intertwining their branches and
their roots and trying in a thousand ways to make themselves one."
I turned my eyes towards these love-plants and I noticed that the
leaves of both were lightly agitated by a half-voluntary emotion, while
their rustling created a murmur so delicate that it scarcely reached
the ear; and yet one would have said that by this means they were
trying to question and answer each other.
When the time necessary for me to notice this double plant had passed,
my good friend the oak took up the thread of his discourse thus:
"You cannot have lived so long without the famous friendship of Pylades
and Orestes coming to your knowledge?
"I would describe to you all the joys of a gentle passion and I would
relate to you all the miracles with which these lovers have astonished
their age, did I not fear that so much light would dazzle the eyes of
your reason, and therefore I will only paint these two young Suns in
their eclipse.
"It will suffice you then to know that one day in battle the brave
Orestes sought his dear Pylades, to taste the pleasure of conquering
or dying in his presence. When he perceived him in the midst of a
hundred arms of iron lifted above his head, alas! what did he become?
He rushed despairingly through a forest of pikes, he shouted, he
howled, he foamed; but how badly I express the horror of his movements
in his despair! He pulled out his hair, he gnawed his hands, he tore
his wounds; and at the end of this description I am obliged to say that
the means of expressing his grief died with him. When he thought to cut
a path with his sword to rescue Pylades, a mountain of men opposed his
passage. Yet he cut through them; and after trampling long over the
bloody trophies of his victory, little by little he approached Pylades;
but Pylades seemed to him so near death that he scarcely dared ward
off his enemies any more for fear of surviving the thing for which he
lived: to see his eyes filled already with the shadows of death one
would even have said he tried to poison the murderers of his friend
with his looks. At last Pylades fell lifeless; and the amorous Orestes,
feeling his own life ready to leave his lips, yet retained it until his
wandering sight sought and found Pylades among the dead, when, kissing
his mouth, he seemed as if he would throw his soul into his friend's
body.[71]
[Footnote 71: Cyrano seems to have confused Orestes and Pylades with
Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus; _Æneid_, Bk. IX.]
"The younger of these heroes died of grief on the body of his friend;
and you must know that from their rotting flesh (which doubtless
had fertilised the earth) there sprang up among the whitening bones
of their skeletons two young saplings, whose trunks and branches
mingled together and seemed to hasten their growth only to twine
more closely together. It was apparent they had changed their being
without forgetting what they had been; for their perfumed buds leaned
one upon the other and warmed each other with their breath as if
to make them open more quickly. But what shall I say of the loving
portioning maintained by their fraternity? Never was the juice in
which nourishment resides offered to their stock but that they shared
it with ceremony. Never was one of them ill-nourished but that the
other was sick with weariness; both drew from the breasts of their
nurse within as you suckle them from without. Finally these happy
lovers produced apples, and such miraculous apples that they performed
even more miracles than their Fathers. Those who ate the apples of one
tree immediately became passionately in love with anyone who had eaten
the fruit of the other. And this happened almost every day, because the
shoots of Pylades surrounded, or were surrounded by, those of Orestes,
and their almost twin fruits could not resolve to part from each other.
"Nature, however, had differentiated the energy of their double essence
so carefully that when the fruit of one of the trees was eaten by a
man and the fruit of the other tree by another man, this caused a
reciprocal friendship and when the same thing happened to two persons
of different sex it caused love, but a vigorous love which retained the
character of its cause; for although this fruit proportioned its effect
to the eater's capacity, softening its virtue in a woman, it still
preserved something masculine.
"It must also be noticed that he who ate more of the fruit was the more
beloved. This fruit failed not to be very sweet and very beautiful,
since nothing is so beautiful and so sweet as friendship; and these two
qualities of beauty and goodness which are never met with in one person
caused them to be in such repute. How many times have its miraculous
virtues multiplied the copies of Orestes and Pylades! Since that time
have been seen Hercules and Theseus, Achilles and Patroclus, Nisus and
Euryalus; in short, an innumerable number, who by more than human
friendships have consecrated their memory in the temple of eternity.
Cuttings were taken to Peloponnesus and the drill-ground, where the
Thebans trained their youth, was ornamented with them. These twin trees
were planted in lines and at that season of the year when the fruit
hangs upon the boughs, the young men, who went to the park every day,
were tempted by the beauty of the fruit and did not abstain from eating
it: usually their courage felt the effect at once. They were seen to
exchange souls pell-mell; each of them became the half of the other,
lived less in himself than in his friend, while the most cowardly would
attempt dangerous things for his friend's sake.
"This heavenly malady warmed their blood with so noble an ardour that
by the advice of the wisest men this band of lovers was enrolled for
war in the same company. Since that time, on account of the noble deeds
they performed, they have been called the Sacred Band.[72] Its exploits
went far beyond anything Thebes had imagined; for in battle each of
these brave men dared such incredible efforts to protect his lover or
to deserve his love that Antiquity saw nothing like it; and as long as
that company of lovers existed, the Thebans, who before that time were
considered the worst soldiers of all Greece, fought and always overcame
the most warlike peoples of the earth, from even the Lacedemonians
downwards.
[Footnote 72: A body of 300 picked Theban infantry, used notably
by Pelopidas and Epaminondas in the battles of Tegyra and Leuctra,
B.C. 375 and 371.]
"But among an infinite number of praiseworthy actions produced by these
apples they innocently caused some which were very shameful.
"Myrrha,[73] a young lady of quality, ate of them with Cinyrus, her
father; unhappily one ate of Pylades and the other of Orestes. Love
immediately swallowed up Nature and confused it to such an extent
that Cinyrus could swear 'I am my son-in-law' and Myrrha 'I am my
stepmother'. In short, I think it sufficient to tell you, in order that
you should understand the whole crime, that at the end of nine months
the father became the grandfather of those he begat and the daughter
brought forth her brothers.
[Footnote 73: These tales are from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.]
"But chance was not content with this crime alone; it willed that a
bull, having entered the gardens of King Minos, unhappily found some
apples under a tree of Orestes and devoured them; I say unhappily,
because Queen Pasiphaë ate this fruit every day. They became madly in
love with each other. I shall not explain their enormous pleasure;
suffice it to say that Pasiphaë was plunged in a crime which hitherto
had no example.
"The famous sculptor Pygmalion precisely at that time was carving a
marble Venus in the palace. The Queen, who delighted in good workmen,
presented him with a couple of these apples; he ate the finest; and
because he chanced to lack water, which, as you know, is necessary to
the cutting of marble, he moistened his statue with the juice. The
marble penetrated at the same time by this juice, little by little
grew soft; and the energetic virtue of the apple carrying on its
labour according to the workman's plan followed within the image the
features it had met with on the surface, for it dilated, warmed and
coloured in natural proportions the parts it met with in its passage.
Finally the marble became living and touched by the apple's passion
embraced Pygmalion with all the strength of her heart; and Pygmalion,
transported by reciprocal love, received her for his wife.
"In the same Province the youthful Iphis had eaten of this fruit
with the beautiful Ianthë, her companion, in all the circumstances
necessary to cause a reciprocal friendship. Their eating was followed
by the customary effect; but because Iphis found the fruit to be of a
very agreeable taste she ate so many that her friendship, increasing
with the number of apples of which she was insatiable, usurped all
the functions of love and this love by increasing little by little
became more masculine and more vigorous; for her whole body, imbued
with this fruit, burned to form the movements which coincided with the
enthusiasms of its will and moved its matter so powerfully that it
fashioned itself much stronger organs, able to carry out its thought
and to content its love wholly to the most virile extent; that is to
say, Iphis became what is needed to espouse a woman.
"I should call this adventure a miracle if I had any other name to
describe the following event:
"A very accomplished young man called Narcissus had deserved by his
love the affection of a very beautiful girl, whom the poets have
celebrated under the name of Echo. But, as you know, even more than
those of our sex, women are never so beloved as they desire; and she,
having heard the virtues of these apples of Orestes greatly commended,
went about to collect them from several places; and because she was
fearful and her love apprehended the apples of one tree might have less
strength than those of the other, she willed him to taste of both;
but he had scarcely eaten them when Echo's image was effaced from his
memory, all his love turned towards the person who had digested the
fruit, he was the lover and the beloved; for the substance derived
from the apple of Pylades embraced within him that from the apple of
Orestes. This twin fruit, extending through the whole of his blood,
excited all the parts of his body to caress themselves. His heart, into
which flowed their double virtue, darted its flames within; all his
limbs animated by his passion desired to penetrate each other. Even
his image, which burned in the coldness of pools, attracted his body
to join with it; in short, poor Narcissus became madly in love with
himself. I shall not be so tedious as to relate to you his deplorable
catastrophe; past ages have already sufficiently spoken of it and I
have still two adventures to tell you, which will better fill up the
time.
"You must know that the beautiful Salmacis frequented the shepherd
Hermaphrodite, but with no familiarity beyond that authorised by the
vicinity of their homes, when Fortune, who delights to trouble the most
peaceful lives, permitted that Hermaphrodite should win the prize for
running and Salmacis that for beauty in a meeting for games, where the
prizes for beauty and running were two of these apples. They had been
plucked together, but from different boughs, because these amorous
fruits mingle with such cunning that one from Pylades is always met
with beside one from Orestes; and their appearing to be twins was the
cause that they were usually plucked in pairs. The beautiful Salmacis
ate her apple and the gentle Hermaphrodite placed his in his shepherd's
scrip. Salmacis, inspired by the enthusiasms of her apple, and of the
shepherd's apple, which began to grow warm in his scrip, felt attracted
towards him by the sympathetic ebb and flow of her apple with the other.
"The shepherd's parents, perceiving the nymph's desires, tried
to preserve and to increase them, because of the advantages they
perceived in this alliance; and therefore, having heard these twin
apples vaunted as a fruit whose juice inclines the mind to love, they
distilled some of them and found means to cause their son and his
mistress to drink the purest quintessence. They had sublimated its
energy to the highest degree it could attain and thereby lighted in
these lovers' hearts so vehement a desire of joining together that at
first sight Hermaphrodite was absorbed in Salmacis and Salmacis melted
away in the arms of Hermaphrodite. They passed into each other and
they composed from two persons of different sex a double 'something',
which was neither man nor woman. When Hermaphrodite desired to enjoy
Salmacis he found he was the nymph herself; and when Salmacis desired
to be embraced by Hermaphrodite she felt she was the shepherd. Yet this
double 'something' retained its unity; it begat and conceived without
being either man or woman. In short, Nature here produced a marvel,
which she has never since been able to prevent from being unique.
"Well, are not these astonishing stories? They are; for to see a
daughter lie with her father; a young princess satisfy the desires of
a bull; a man yearn to enjoy a stone; another marry with himself; to
see one celebrate as a girl a marriage she consummates as a boy, cease
to be a man without beginning to be a woman, become double outside the
mother's womb and twin of a person who is no relative; all these are
very distant from the ordinary paths of Nature. And yet what I am about
to tell you will surprise you even more.
"Among the sumptuous diversity of all sorts of fruits brought from
the most distant climates for the wedding banquet of Cambyses,
they presented him with a graft of Orestes, which he inserted in a
plane-tree; and among other delicacies, at dessert they put before him
apples of the same tree.
"The agreeable taste of the fruit led him to eat a great deal of it;
and after the three digestions, which converted the substance of this
fruit into a perfect germ, he formed from it in the queen's womb the
embryo of his son Artaxerxes; for all the details of his life caused
his doctors to conjecture that he must have been produced in this way.
"When this prince's youthful heart was of an age to merit Love's anger
it was noticed that he did not sigh for his own kind; he loved only
trees, orchards and woods; but above all those to which he appeared
tender, the plane-tree on which his father Cambyses had formerly
grafted the shoot of Orestes consumed him with love.
"His temperament followed so scrupulously the plane-tree's progress
that he seemed to grow with the branches of that tree; every day he
went to embrace it; in his sleep he dreamed of nothing else; and he
transacted all his business under the curve of its green tapestry. It
was perceived that the plane-tree, pierced by a reciprocal ardour, was
ravished by his caresses; for suddenly, without any apparent reason,
its leaves were seen to stir and as it were to thrill with joy, the
branches curved down upon his head as if to make him a crown and
descended so near his face that it was easy to perceive this was rather
to kiss him than from a natural tendency to grow downwards. It was even
noticed that the tree jealously ranged and pressed its leaves together
for fear lest the rays of daylight as they glided through should also
kiss him. The king for his part placed no limits to his love. He caused
his bed to be made at the foot of the plane-tree and the plane-tree,
not knowing how to repay such friendship, gave him the most precious
thing trees have--honey and dew--which it distilled every morning upon
him.
"Their caresses would have lasted longer if death, the enemy of all
beautiful things, had not ended them. Artaxerxes expired of love in
the embraces of his dear plane-tree; and all the Persians, afflicted
at the loss of so good a prince, decreed (in order to give him some
satisfaction after death) that his body should be burned with the
branches of this tree, without any other wood being used to consume him.
"When the pyre was lighted its flame was seen to knit with that of the
body's fat and their burning hair curled together and diminished in
pyramid shape until it was out of sight.
"This pure and subtle fire did not divide; but when it reached the Sun,
to which as you know all igneous matter tends, it formed the germ of
the apple-tree of Orestes, which you see there on your right hand.
"Now the seed of this fruit is lost in your world and this misfortune
happened as follows:
"Fathers and mothers, who, as you know, in directing their families,
are governed only by interest, were angry that their children as soon
as they had tasted these apples bestowed on their friend everything
they possessed; and so the parents burned as many of these plants as
they could discover. The extinction of the race is the reason why a
true friend is no longer found.
"As these trees were consumed by fire the rains which fell on them
calcined the ashes, so that the congealed juice petrified in the same
way that the humour of burnt fern is metamorphosed into glass; and thus
in all the countries of the Earth the ashes of these twin trees formed
two metallic stones called to-day the iron and the loadstone, which,
because of the sympathy of the fruits of Pylades and Orestes, whose
virtue they have always preserved, aspire every day to embrace; and
notice that if the piece of loadstone is larger it attracts the iron,
but if the piece of iron exceeds the other in quantity it attracts the
loadstone, as happened of old in the miraculous effect of the apples of
Pylades and Orestes; for whoever had eaten more of one of them was the
more beloved by him who had eaten of the other.
"Well, iron feeds upon the loadstone and the loadstone feeds upon iron
so visibly that the one grows rusty and the other loses its strength
unless they are brought together to repair what is lost of their
substance.
"Have you never observed a piece of loadstone placed on iron filings?
In a flash you see the loadstone covered with these metallic atoms;
and they grip with such amorous ardour so suddenly and so impatiently
that after they have embraced everywhere you would say there is not
a grain of loadstone which does not desire to kiss a grain of iron,
and not a grain of iron which does not wish to unite with a grain of
loadstone; for the iron and the loadstone, when separated, continually
send out from their bulk the most active small bodies in search of
what they love, but when they have found it and have nothing more to
desire, each terminates its travels; the loadstone spends its repose
in the possession of the iron, as the iron collects all its being to
enjoy the loadstone. It is therefore from the sap of these two trees
that the moisture flowed from which these two metals were born. Before
that they were unknown; and if you wish to know from what matter they
manufactured weapons of war--Samson armed himself with the jaw-bone of
an ass against the Philistines; Jupiter, King of Crete, with artificial
fire by means of which he imitated thunder and overcame his enemies;
and Hercules conquered tyrants and tamed monsters with a club. But
these two metals have another much more specific relation to our two
trees. You must know that although this lifeless couple of lovers turn
towards the pole, they never do so except in each other's company; and
I will discover to you the reason of this after I have discoursed to
you a little about the poles.
"The poles are the mouths of the sky by which it takes in the light,
heat and influences it has diffused upon the Earth; otherwise, if all
the treasures of the Sun did not return to their source it would long
ago be extinct (since its light is only a dust of burning atoms shed
from its globe) and would shine no more or else this abundance of small
igneous bodies heaped continually upon the Earth would already have
consumed it. Therefore, as I have said, the sky must have vent-holes
by which the repletions of the Earth are cast out and others by which
the sky can repair its losses, so that the eternal circulation of these
little bodies of life may successively penetrate all the globes of this
great universe. Now the vent-holes of Heaven are the poles by means of
which it feeds upon the souls of everything that dies in its worlds and
all the planets are the mouths and pores by whose means its spirits
are exhaled afresh. And to show you that this is not so novel a fancy,
observe that when your ancient poets, to whom philosophy had discovered
the most hidden secrets of Nature, were speaking of a hero and desired
to say that his soul was gone to dwell with the Gods, they expressed
themselves thus: '_He has risen to the pole; he is seated above the
pole; he has passed the pole_:' because they knew that the poles were
the only entrances by which the sky receives all that has left it.
If the authority of these great men does not fully satisfy you, the
experience of those moderns who have travelled towards the north will
perhaps content you. They have found that the nearer they approach the
Bear during the six months of night, when it was thought this country
was entirely black, the horizon was illuminated by a great light, which
could only come from the pole, because the nearer they approached it,
and consequently the farther they drew from the Sun, the larger the
light became. It is therefore very probable that this light proceeds
from rays of daylight and from a great heap of souls which, as you
know, are made of luminous atoms alone, returning to the sky by their
accustomed portals.
"After that it is not difficult to understand why iron rubbed with
loadstone or loadstone rubbed with iron turns towards the pole; for
since they are extracted from the bodies of Pylades and Orestes and
have always preserved the propensities of the two trees, as the two
trees preserved those of the two lovers, they must aspire to rejoin
their soul, and so they strain towards the pole, whither they feel it
has risen, with this proviso, that the iron does not turn unless it
is rubbed by the loadstone nor the loadstone if it is not rubbed by
the iron, because iron will not abandon a world without its friend,
loadstone, nor loadstone without its friend, iron; and they cannot
resolve to make this voyage without each other."
I think the voice was going to begin another discourse; but it was
prevented by the noise of a loud alarm; the whole forest in disturbance
echoed with the words: _Beware the plague!_ and _Pass it on!_
I begged the tree, which had talked to me so long, to inform me what
was the reason of this great disorder.
"My friend", it said, "in this district we have not yet received
precise details of the misfortune; I can only tell you in three
words that the plague by which we are menaced is what men call a
conflagration; and we may well name it a plague, for among us no
disease is so contagious. The remedy we shall apply to it is to hold
our breath and then to blow all together on the place whence the
conflagration is moving, in order to repulse this dangerous air. I
think this burning fever has been brought to us by a Fire-Beast, which
for some days has been wandering about these woods; for since these
beasts never go without fire and cannot do without it, this one no
doubt has set fire to one of our trees.
"We have sent for the Ice-Animal to come to our aid; but it has not yet
arrived. But now farewell, I have no time to talk to you, I must think
of the common safety; and you yourself should take to flight, otherwise
you run the risk of being involved in our ruin."
I followed its advice, but without hurrying very much, because I knew
my legs. However I was so ignorant of the plan of that country that
at the end of ten hours' walking I found myself behind the forest I
thought I was avoiding; and to increase my apprehension, a hundred
terrible thunder-claps shook my brain, while the pale dismal light of a
thousand flashes of lightning quenched my eye-balls.
From moment to moment they increased with such fury one would have said
the foundations of the world were about to collapse; yet, in spite of
it all, the sky never appeared clearer. I was unable to find reasons
for this and my desire of knowing the cause of so extraordinary an
event urged me to walk towards the place whence the noise seemed to
come.
I walked for about four hundred _stadia_, at the end of which I
perceived in the middle of a very large field what looked like two
balls which, after moving round each other for a very long time with
a humming noise, came together and then recoiled; and I observed that
the moment of the shock was that when these great noises were heard.
Drawing nearer I perceived that what at a distance had seemed to me to
be two balls were two animals; one of them, although round at the base,
formed a triangle from the middle, and its very high head with red hair
streaming upwards narrowed off in a pyramid shape, while its body was
filled with holes like a sieve and one could see through these hollow
places, which served it as pores, little flames issuing forth which
seemed to cover it with fiery plumage.
Walking round I met a most venerable old man looking at this wonderful
combat with as much curiosity as I. He signed to me to approach; I
obeyed and we sat down beside each other.
I was about to ask him what motive had brought him into this country,
but he closed my mouth with these words:
"Well, you shall know the motive which brought me into this country."
And immediately he related to me at length all the details of his
journey. I leave you to imagine whether or no I was astounded. But my
amazement was increased, for just as I was burning to ask him what
demon revealed my thoughts to him, he exclaimed:
"No, no, 'twas not a demon revealed your thoughts to me."
This new trick of divination caused me to observe him with more
attention than before and I noticed he was imitating my carriage, my
gestures, my appearance, placed all his limbs and disposed all the
features of his face on the pattern of mine; in short, my shadow in
relief would not have represented me better.
"I see", he went on, "you are anxious to know why I imitate you, and I
am glad to tell you. Know then that in order to understand what goes on
inside you, I arrange all the parts of my body in an order similar to
yours; for, by arranging all parts of me like you, I excite in myself
by this disposal of my matter the same thought that is produced in you
by this same disposal of your matter.
"You will conceive this effect to be possible if you have ever before
observed that twins resembling each other have generally similar minds,
passions and wills; to such an extent that two doubles were met with in
Paris who had always undergone the same illnesses and the same health,
had married without knowing the other's intention at the same hour
of the same day, wrote each other letters, whose sense, wording and
construction were the same and who composed the same sort of verses
on the same subject, with the same conceits, the same turn and the
same order. But you must see that if the composition of the organs of
their bodies were similar in all circumstances they could only act in
a similar manner, just as two equal instruments equally struck must
give forth an equal harmony; and so when I model my body on yours and
become, as it were, your twin, the same movement of matter must cause
us both the same movement of the mind."
After this he again settled himself to imitate me and went on thus:
"You are now very anxious to know the origin of the battle of these
two monsters, whereof I will inform you. Learn then that the trees of
the forest behind us were not able to repulse the violent efforts of
the Fire-Beast with their breath and therefore sought the aid of the
Ice-Animal."
"I have only heard these animals spoken of", I said, "by an oak in this
country, but this was in great haste, for it was only thinking of its
safety; and so I beg you will inform me."
He spoke in this way: "In this globe where we are the woods would be
very scattered, on account of the desolation caused them by the large
number of Fire-Beasts, but for the Ice-Animals which every day at the
request of their friends the forests come to heal these sick trees; I
say heal, because as soon as their icy mouth breathes upon the coals of
this plague they are extinguished.
"In the world of the Earth, whence you come and whence I come, the
Fire-Beast is called a Salamander and the Ice-Animal is known by the
name of Remora.[74] Well, you must know that the Remora dwells towards
the extremity of the pole in the deepest part of the frozen sea, and it
is the cold which evaporates from these fishes through their scales,
which in those districts freezes the sea-water, although it is salt.
[Footnote 74: Any reader of our Caroline poets will know how fond they
were of the Remora.]
"The greater part of the pilots who have sailed to discover Greenland
have noticed at one season of the year that the ice which stopped them
at other seasons was no longer to be met with; but although this sea
was free of ice at the time when winter is at its harshest they have
not failed to attribute the cause to the melting of the ice by some
secret warmth; but it is much more likely that the Remoræ, which feed
on nothing but ice, had absorbed them at that time. You must know then
that some months after they are filled this terrible digestion makes
their bellies so cold that the mere breath they exhale freezes the
whole Polar Sea again. When they come out on land (for they live in
both elements) they feed on nothing but hemlock, aconite, opium, and
mandragora.
"In our world people wonder whence come those chilly north winds, which
always bring the frosts with them; but if our compatriots knew, as we
do, that the Remoræ inhabit that climate, they would understand, as
we do, that these winds come from the breath wherewith these fishes
attempt to repulse the heat of the Sun as it approaches them.
"That Stygian water used to poison the great Alexander, whose cold
petrified his entrails, was the piss of one of these animals. In short,
the Remora contains so eminently all the principles of cold that when
it passes under a ship, the ship is gripped by cold and remains so
benumbed it cannot move from where it is. That is the reason why half
of those who have sailed northward to discover the pole never returned,
because it would be a miracle if the Remoræ, whose number is so great
in that sea, did not stop their vessels. So much for the Ice-Animals.
"As to the Fire-Beasts, they dwell in the earth under mountains lighted
by bitumen, such as Ætna, Vesuvius and the Red Cape. The pimples you
see on this one's throat, which proceed from the inflammation of its
liver, are...."[75]
[Footnote 75: Another hiatus here, perhaps.]
After that we remained without speaking to watch this extraordinary
duel.
The Salamander attacked with great ardour, but the Remora withstood him
impenetrably. Each blow they exchanged caused a clap of thunder, as it
happens in the worlds round about where the meeting of a warm with a
cold cloud excites the same noise.
At every glance of anger cast by the Salamander upon its enemy there
came from its eyes a red light, which seemed to burn the air as it flew
along; the beast sweated boiling oil and pissed acid.
The Remora, on its side, fat, square, and heavy, showed a body all
scaly with icicles. Its large eyes looked like two crystal plates,
whose glances carried with them so benumbing a light that I felt winter
shiver upon every limb of my body it looked at. If I put my hand before
me, it was numbed; the very air about the beast, attacked by its
rigour, grew thick with snow, the earth hardened under its feet; and I
could trace the footprints of the beast by the chilblains which greeted
me when I walked above them.
At the beginning of the fight the Salamander had made the Remora sweat
by the vigorous attack of its first ardour; but at length this sweat
growing cold enamelled the whole plain with so slippery a frost that
the Salamander could not join battle with the Remora without falling.
The philosopher and I could easily see it was tired from falling and
rising up again so often; for the thunder-claps created by the shock
as it struck its enemy, which were before so terrible, were now only
the dull sound of those small rumbles which mark the end of a storm;
and this dull sound, diminishing little by little, degenerated into a
hissing like that of a red-hot iron plunged into cold water.
When the Remora perceived the combat was drawing to an end by the
weakening of the shock which now scarcely shook it, it rose up on one
angle of its cube and let itself fall with the whole of its weight
on the Salamander's belly so successfully that the poor Salamander's
heart, in which all the remainder of its heat was concentrated, made so
horrible a noise in bursting that I know nothing in Nature to compare
with it.
Thus died the Fire-Beast beneath the passive resistance of the
Ice-Animal.[76]
[Footnote 76: Some have thought this combat of the Salamander and the
Remora was the lost _Story of the Spark_. In any case it is typical of
the age. See Montfaucon de Villars's _Comte de Gabalis_. 1670.]
Some time after the Remora had retired we approached the field of
battle and the old man, having covered his hands with the earth on
which it had walked as a preservative against burns, picked up the
Salamander's corpse.
"With this animal's body", said he, "I shall need no fire in my
kitchen; for as long as it is hung on the jack it will roast and boil
everything I put on the hearth. As for the eyes, I shall keep them
carefully; if they were cleansed from the shadows of death you would
take them for two little suns. In our world the ancients knew how to
make use of them; they called them Perpetual Lamps and they were only
hung in the pompous sepulchres of illustrious persons. In excavating
certain of these famous tombs our moderns have met with some of them,
but broke them in their ignorant curiosity by thinking to discover
behind the broken membranes the fire they had seen shining through."
The old man continued to walk and I followed him, listening to the
marvels he told me. Now, as touching the combat, I must not forget the
conversation we had concerning the Ice-Animal:
"I do not think", said he, "that you have ever seen a Remora[77]; for
these fishes never rise to the surface of the water and hardly ever
leave the Northern Ocean. But doubtless you have seen certain animals
which to some extent might be said to be of their species. I told you
a little while ago that the sea about the pole is filled with Remoræ,
who cast their fry on the mud like other fishes. You must know that
this seed, the extract of their whole mass, contains all its cold so
eminently that if a ship sails over it, the vessel contracts one or
several worms which become birds, whose cold blood causes them to be
placed in the order of fishes, although they have wings; and therefore
the Holy Father, who knows their origin, does not forbid them to be
eaten in Lent. They are what you call barnacle-geese."[78]
[Footnote 77: Probably not!]
[Footnote 78: Or "Scoters"; the text has "Maquereuses".]
I continued walking with no other purpose than that of following him,
so delighted at having found a man that I dared not take my eyes from
him, I was so afraid of losing him.
"Young mortal", said he, "(for I see you have not yet, like me,
paid that tribute we all owe to Nature), as soon as I saw you I
recognised in your face something which makes one anxious to pursue
the acquaintance. If I am not mistaken, from the circumstances of your
body's conformation you must be French, and a native of Paris. That
town is the place where I ended my misfortunes after having carried
them through all Europe.
"I am called Campanella and I am a Calabrian by birth. Since I came
to the Sun I have spent my time in visiting the countries of this
great globe to discover their wonders. It is divided into kingdoms,
republics, states and principalities, like the Earth. Thus the
quadrupeds, the birds, the plants, the stones, all have their own
states; and although some of them do not allow animals of a different
species to enter, particularly men, whom, above all, the birds hate
with a deadly hatred, I can travel everywhere without running any
risk, because a philosopher's soul is composed of particles much finer
than the instruments they would use to torment him. Happily I was in
the province of the trees when the Salamander's disturbances began;
those great thunder-claps, you must have heard as well as I, guided me
to their battlefield, where you arrived a moment afterwards. For the
rest, I am returning to the province of philosophers...."
"What", said I, "are there philosophers in the Sun, too?"
"There are, indeed", replied the good man, "yes, they are the principal
inhabitants of the Sun and the very same who so fill the mouth of fame
in your world. You may soon converse with them, if you have the courage
to follow me; for I hope to set foot in their town before three days
have passed. I do not suppose you can conceive in what manner these
great geniuses were transported here?"
"No, indeed", I exclaimed, "have so many other people had their eyes
closed hitherto not to have found the way? Or after death do we
fall into the hands of an Examiner of Spirits who, according to our
capacity, grants or refuses us rights of citizenship in the Sun?"
"Nothing of the kind", replied the old man, "souls come to join this
mass of light by a principle of similarity; for this world is formed of
nothing but the spirits of all who die in the surrounding orbs, such as
Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
"Thus, as soon as a plant, a beast, a man, expire, their souls rise
to its sphere, just as you see a candle flame fly there in a point,
in spite of the soot which holds its feet. Now, when all these souls
are united to the source of the day and purged of the gross matter
which impeded them, they exercise functions far more noble than those
of growing, feeling and reasoning; they are used to form the blood and
vital spirits of the Sun, that vast and perfect animal. And therefore
you should not doubt that the Sun works intellectually much more
perfectly than you, since it is by means of the heat of a million of
these rectified souls (whereof its own is an elixir, since it knows
the secret of life), that it infuses into the matter of your world the
power of procreation, renders bodies capable of consciousness and, in
short, is visible and makes all things visible.
"I have now to explain to you why the souls of philosophers are not
essentially joined to the mass of the Sun like those of other men.
"There are three orders of spirits in all the planets, that is in the
little worlds which move around this one.
"The grossest merely serve to repair the Sun's mass. The subtle
insinuate themselves in the place of its rays; but those of
philosophers, having acquired nothing impure during their exile, arrive
complete to inhabit the sphere of day. Now, they do not become like
others an integral part of its mass, because the matter which composes
them at the point of their begetting is so exactly mingled that
nothing can separate it; like the matter which forms gold, diamonds
and the stars, whose parts are so closely mingled and intertwined, the
strongest dissolvent could not loosen their embrace.
"Now the souls of philosophers are in respect to other souls what gold,
diamonds and the stars are in respect to other bodies, and Epicurus in
the Sun is the same Epicurus who formerly lived on the Earth."
The pleasure I received in listening to this man shortened the road
for me and I often led the conversation expressly towards learned and
curious matters, upon which I solicited his thought for my better
instruction. And truly I have never seen kindness so great as his; for
although through the agility of his substance he could have reached the
kingdom of philosophers by himself in a very few days, he preferred to
delay with me rather than to abandon me in those vast solitudes.
However, he was in a hurry; for I remember I asked him why he was
returning before he had visited all the regions of that great world
and he replied that he was obliged to interrupt his voyage, because of
his impatience to see one of his friends, who had recently arrived.
From subsequent parts of his talk I perceived that this friend was that
famous philosopher of our time, Monsieur Descartes, and that he was
only hastening to join him.
When I asked him in what esteem he held his _Physics_, he replied that
we should only read it with that respect we listen to the pronouncement
of Oracles.
"The science of natural things", he added, "like other sciences, is
forced to preoccupy our judgment with axioms it does not prove; but the
principles of his are simple and so natural that, once granted, there
are no others which more necessarily satisfy all appearances."
At this point I could not prevent myself from interrupting:
"But", said I, "it seems to me that this philosopher has always denied
a void; and yet, although he was an Epicurean, in order to have the
honour of giving a principle to the principles of Epicurus, that is to
atoms, he established for the beginning of things a chaos of wholly
solid matter, which God divided into an innumerable number of little
squares, to each of which He imparted different movements. Now, he
maintains that these cubes by rubbing against each other have become
ground down into particles of all kinds of shapes; but how can he
conceive that these square pieces could have begun to move separately
without admitting that a void was formed between their angles? Must
there not necessarily have been a void in those spaces which the angles
of these squares were compelled to leave in order to move? And then,
since these squares only occupied a certain space before moving, could
they be changed into a circle without occupying in their circumference
as much space? Geometry teaches us that this cannot be, that therefore
half of this space must have remained void, since there were not enough
atoms to fill it."
My philosopher replied that Monsieur Descartes would explain it himself
and that since he was born as obliging as philosophical he would
certainly be delighted to find in this world a mortal man to enlighten
him on a hundred doubts, which the surprise of death had forced him to
leave on the Earth from which he had departed[79]; that for his part he
did not think there was so much difficulty in replying to it according
to those principles which I had only examined as far as the weakness of
my mind permitted me, "Because", said he, "the works of this great man
are so full and so subtle that to understand them demands an attention
which calls for the soul of a true and consummate philosopher; for
which reason there is not a philosopher in the Sun but has veneration
for him, to such an extent that no one would contest his occupying the
first rank, did not his modesty cause him to shun it.
[Footnote 79: Descartes died 1650, which dates this part of _The Sun_.]
"To lighten the fatigue which the length of the way might bring you,
we will discuss this matter according to his principles, which are
assuredly so clear and seem to satisfy everything so well through the
admirable light of this great genius, that it seems as if he took part
in the lovely and magnificent structure of this universe.
"You remember he says our understanding is finite; and since matter is
divisible to infinity it is past doubt that this is one of the things
our understanding can neither comprehend nor imagine and is indeed too
far above it for it to explain.
"But, although this cannot be perceived by the senses, we do not fail
to conceive that this happens, through the knowledge we have of matter;
and we should not, he says, hesitate to order our judgment on things
whereof we conceive. Indeed can we imagine the way in which the soul
acts upon the body? Yet that truth cannot be denied nor doubted; while
it is a much greater absurdity to attribute to void an extension which
is a property belonging to the body of space, seeing that here the
idea of nothing is confounded with that of being and qualities are
attributed to that which can produce nothing and cannot be the author
of anything. But, poor mortal, I feel that these speculations tire you,
because, as that excellent man says, 'You have never taken the trouble
to purify your mind from the mass of your body, and because you have
rendered it so lazy that it will no longer perform any of its functions
without the help of the senses.'"
I was about to reply when he touched my arm to point out to me a valley
of marvellous beauty.
"Do you perceive", said he, "that incline by which we are about to
descend? It is as if the crests of the surrounding hills were expressly
crowned with trees to invite passers-by to rest in the coolness of
their shade.
"At the foot of one of those hills the Lake of Sleep has its source; it
is made of the fluid of five springs alone. If it did not mingle with
the three rivers and thicken their waters with its weight no animal in
our world could sleep."
I cannot express the impatience I felt to question him about these
three rivers, which I had never heard of before. But I was contented by
his promising me that I should see everything.
We soon reached the valley and almost at the same time the carpet which
borders this great lake.
"Truly", said Campanella, "you are fortunate to behold all the marvels
of this world before you die; it is well for the inhabitants of your
globe to have produced a man who can inform them of the Sun's marvels
since without you they were in danger of living in gross ignorance and
of enjoying a hundred agreeable things without knowing whence they
come; for it is not to be imagined what liberalities the Sun pours upon
all your little globes; this valley alone scatters an infinite number
of gifts through all the universe, without which you could not live
nor even see the light of day. It seems to me that to have seen this
country is sufficient to make you admit that the Sun is your Father
and the Author of all things.[80] The five rivulets which debouch here
flow only fifteen or sixteen hours; and yet when they arrive they
seem so tired they can scarcely move; but they show their weariness
in very different ways. Sight narrows as it approaches the Pool of
Sleep; Hearing as it debouches grows confused, wanders and is lost in
the mud; Smell creates a murmur like that of a man snoring; Taste,
deadened from the way, becomes wholly insipid, and Touch, formerly so
powerful that it harboured all its companions, is reduced to hiding
its dwelling-place. The Nymph of Peace, who lives in the midst of the
Lake, receives her guests with open arms, lays them in her bed, and
indulges them with such delicacy that she herself takes the trouble
to cradle them to put them to sleep. Some time after they have been
mingled in this vast round pond they are seen to divide again at the
other end into five rivulets, which, as they leave, take up again the
names they abandoned on entering. But the most impatient of the party
(who worry their companions to set out again) are Hearing and Touch; as
for the three others they wait for these two to arouse them, and Taste
especially always lags behind the others.[81]
[Footnote 80: This idea is a favourite with Cyrano. It is, of course, a
commonplace now.]
[Footnote 81: This is rather in the spirit of Mlle de Scudéry's _Carte
de Tendre_, but _Clélie_ was not published until 1654.]
"The black concave of a grotto arches over the Lake of Sleep.
Quantities of tortoises walk slowly on the bank; a thousand poppy
flowers reflected in the water give it the power of putting to sleep;
for fifty leagues round even the marmots come to drink of it and the
whisper of the stream is so delightful that it seems to rustle over the
pebbles in measure and to compose a sleepy music."
The wise Campanella no doubt saw that I should be affected by it to
some extent and therefore advised me to increase my pace. I should have
obeyed him, but the charms of this water had so enveloped my reason
that I retained scarce enough to understand these last words:
"Sleep, then, sleep, and I will leave you; the dreams one has here are
so perfect that some day you will be glad to remember what you are
about to dream. I will amuse myself by visiting the rarities of the
place and then I will rejoin you."
I do not think he spoke any more, or else the fumes of sleep had
already placed me in a state where I was incapable of hearkening to him.
I was in the midst of the wisest and best conceived dream imaginable,
when my philosopher awakened me. I will relate it to you later on,
when it will not interrupt the thread of my discourse, for it is very
important for you to know it, so that you may understand with what
liberty the mind of an inhabitant of the Sun acts, while his senses are
imprisoned by sleep.[82] For my part I think that this Lake exhales an
air which has the property of purifying completely the mind from the
embarrassment of the senses; for nothing is presented to your thought
by it which does not seem to perfect and instruct you; for which reason
I have the greatest respect in the world for those philosophers called
Dreamers, whom our ignorant people mock at.
[Footnote 82: We never get this dream.]
I opened my eyes with a start. It seems to me I heard him say:
"Mortal, you have slept enough; rise up, if you wish to see a rarity
which would never even be imagined in your world. For an hour since
I left you, in order not to disturb your repose, I have been walking
alongside the five streams, which flow out of the Pool of Sleep. You
may imagine how attentively I have observed them all; they bear the
names of the five Senses and flow very close together. Sight seems a
forked tube filled with powdered diamonds and little mirrors, which
steal and restore the images of everything that comes near, and in
its course it circles the Kingdom of the lynxes; Hearing is similarly
double, it turns in as many windings as a maze and in the most hollow
concaves of its bed can be heard an echo of every noise which sounds
about it; I am very much deceived if I did not see foxes cleaning their
ears beside it; Smell appears like the two preceding streams divided
into two little hidden channels under a single arch; from everything it
meets it extracts something invisible from which it composes a thousand
kinds of smell, which occupy the place of water in it; on the banks of
this stream may be seen many dogs purifying their noses; Taste flows in
spurts, which usually only occur three or four times a day, and even
then a large coral sluice-gate must be lifted up and underneath that
a number of other very small ones, which are made of ivory; its fluid
resembles saliva. But as to the fifth, the stream of Touch, it is so
vast and so deep that it surrounds all its sisters, even lying full
length in their bed, and its thick moisture is scattered far around on
lawns completely green with sensitive plants.
"Now you must know that I was admiring, frozen with admiration, the
mysterious turnings of all these streams when, as I walked on, I
reached the place where they flow into the three rivers. But follow me,
you will understand the arrangement of all these things far better by
seeing them."
So potent a promise woke me completely; I held out my arm to him and we
walked by the same way he had taken along the embankment which retained
the five streams, each in its channel.
At the end of about a _stadium_ something as shining as a lake reached
our eyes. The wise Campanella had no sooner perceived it than he said
to me:
"At last, my son, we are approaching. I see the three rivers
distinctly."
At this news I felt myself transported with such an ardour that I felt
as if I had become an eagle. I flew rather than walked, and rushed all
about, with so eager a curiosity, that in less than an hour my guide
and I had observed all that you are about to hear.
Three large rivers water the brilliant plains of this kindling world:
the first and the widest is called Memory; the second, narrower but
deeper, Imagination; the third, smaller than the others, is called
Judgment.
On the banks of Memory there is heard night and day the importunate
calling of Jays, Parrots, Magpies, Starlings, Linnets, Finches, and
birds of all kinds, which twitter what they have learned. At night
they say nothing, because they are then occupied in drinking the thick
vapour exhaled from these aquatic places. But their feeble stomachs
digest it so ill that in the morning when they think they have
converted it into their own substance it is seen to flow from their
bills as pure as if it were in the river. The water of this river seems
viscous and flows noisily; the echoes formed in its caverns repeat its
speech more than a thousand times; it engenders certain monsters, whose
faces are like the face of Woman. Others yet more furious are seen
with square horny heads very similar to those of our Pedants. These do
nothing but exclaim, and yet say nothing but what they have heard other
people say.
The river of Imagination flows more gently; its light brilliant fluid
sparkles on all sides; when one looks at this water composed of a
torrent of damp sparks they seem to observe no certain order as they
fly along. When I had observed it more attentively I took notice that
the humour that flowed in its bed was pure potable gold and its foam
oil of talc. The fishes it breeds are Remoræ, Sirens, and Salamanders;
instead of gravel there are to be found those pebbles of which Pliny
speaks, which make one heavy when touched on one side and light when
applied on the other side. I noticed others again, of which Gyges
had a ring, which renders invisible; but above all a large number
of philosopher's stones glittered in its sands. On its banks were
numerous fruit-trees, principally those found by Mohammed in Paradise;
the branches swarmed with phœnixes, and I noticed seedlings of that
fruit-tree whence Discord plucked the apple she cast at the feet of the
three Goddesses; they had grafted on it shoots from the garden of the
Hesperides. Each of these two wide rivers separated into an infinity
of interlacing arms; and I observed that when a large stream of
Memory approached a smaller one of Imagination the former immediately
exterminated the latter; but on the contrary, if the stream of
Imagination were larger, it dried up that of Memory. Now, since these
three streams always flow side by side, either in their main channel or
in their branches, wherever Memory is strong, Imagination diminishes,
and the one increases as the other sinks.
Near at hand the river of Judgment flows incredibly slowly; its
channel is deep, its fluid seems cold, and when scattered on anything
dries instead of moistens. In the mud of its bed grow plants of
Hellebore,[83] whose roots spreading out in long filaments purify the
water of its mouth. It nourishes serpents, and a million elephants
repose on the soft grass which carpets its banks; like its two cousins
it splits into an infinity of little branches; it increases as it flows
and although it always gains ground turns and returns upon itself
eternally.
[Footnote 83: "Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous
purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired...."
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_.]
The whole Sun is watered with the moisture of these three rivers; it
serves to dilute the burning atoms of those who die in this great
world; but this deserves to be treated more at length.
The life of animals in the Sun is very long; they only die by a natural
death, which never occurs until the end of seven or eight thousand
years, when from the continuous excesses of mind to which their fiery
temperament inclines them, the order of their matter grows confused;
for as soon as Nature feels in a body that more time is needed to
repair the ruins of its being than to compose a new one, she tends to
dissolve it; so that from day to day the animal is seen, not to rot,
but to fall into particles like red ashes.
Death only happens in this way. When he has expired, or rather, is
extinguished, the small igneous bodies which composed his substance
enter the gross matter of this lighted world until chance has watered
them with the fluid of these three rivers; for then, becoming mobile
through their fluidity, with the purpose of exercising quickly
the faculties which this water has impressed upon their obscure
comprehension, they attach themselves in long threads, and, by a
flood of luminous points sharpen into rays and are scattered upon
the surrounding spheres, where they are no sooner enveloped than
they arrange the matter as far as they can in the shape proper to
exercise all the functions, whose instinct they acquired in the
water of the three rivers, the five fountains and the Pool; and so
they allow themselves to be attracted to plants to vegetate; plants
allow themselves to be cropped by animals to feel, and animals allow
themselves to be eaten by men in order that by passing into their
substance they may repair those three faculties of Memory, Imagination
and Judgment, whose power they presaged in the rivers of the Sun.
Now, according to whether the atoms have been more or less soaked in
the moisture of these three rivers, they bring the animals more or less
Memory, Imagination or Judgment; and according to whether, while they
were in the three rivers, they absorbed more or less of the liquid of
the five fountains and of the little Lake, they elaborate in them more
or less perfect senses and produce more or less sleepy souls.
This is approximately what we observed, as touching the nature of these
three rivers. Their little veins are to be met with scattered here
and there; but the principal arms all debouch in the province of the
philosophers; and so we returned to the highway without going farther
from the stream than was necessary to get on to the road. We could see
the whole time the three large rivers flowing beside us; but we watched
from above the five streams winding below us through the meadows.
This road, although solitary, is very agreeable; one breathes a free
subtle air there, which feeds the soul and causes it to reign over the
passions.
At the end of five or six days' journey, while we were delighting
our eyes in considering the different rich aspects of the landscape,
a languishing voice like a sick person moaning reached our ears. We
approached the place from which we imagined it might come and on the
bank of the river Imagination we found an old man, who had fallen
backwards and was uttering loud cries. Tears of compassion came into
my eyes and the pity I felt for this wretch's misfortune compelled me
to ask the reason.
"This man", replied Campanella, turning towards me, "is a philosopher
in the death agony; for we die more than once, and since we are
merely parts of this Universe we change our shape in order to take
up our lives again elsewhere; and this is not an evil, but a method
of perfecting one's being and of acquiring an infinite amount of
knowledge. His malady is that which causes the death of nearly all
great men."
His discourse made me observe the sick man more attentively and at the
first glance I perceived that his head was as large as a butt and open
in various places.
"Come", said Campanella, drawing me by the arm, "all the help we should
think we were giving this dying man would be useless and would merely
serve to disturb him. Let us go on, since his disease is incurable. The
swelling of his head comes from his having over-exercised his mind; for
although the elements with which he has filled the three organs or the
three ventricles of his brain are very small images, they are corporeal
and consequently occupy a large space when they are very numerous. Now
you must know that this philosopher so swelled up his brain by piling
into it image upon image that, unable to contain them any longer, it
burst. This manner of dying is that of great geniuses, and is called
_Bursting with Wit_."
We walked on as we talked and the first things which presented
themselves to us furnished us with subjects of conversation. I should
have liked to leave the opaque regions of the Sun and to return to
those which are luminous; for the reader knows that all its countries
are not diaphanous: some are obscure as in our world and but for the
light of a Sun, which is seen there, would be enveloped in darkness.
Now, in proportion as one enters these opaque regions one gradually
becomes opaque and on approaching the transparent regions one sheds
that dark obscurity under the vigorous irradiation of the climate.
I remember that, apropos this desire which consumed me, I asked
Campanella whether the province of the philosophers were brilliant or
shadowy.
"It is more shadowy than brilliant", he replied, "for since we still
sympathize greatly with the Earth, our native land, which is opaque by
nature, we have not been able to settle in the brightest regions of
this globe. Nevertheless, when we so desire we can render ourselves
diaphanous by a vigorous effort of will; and the greater part of the
philosophers do not even speak with the tongue but, when they desire
to communicate their thought, they purge themselves by a sally of
their fantasy of a dark vapour under which their conceptions are
generally hidden; and as soon as they have caused this darkness of the
spleen, which darkened them, to return to its seat, their body becomes
diaphanous and there can be perceived through their brain what they
remember, what they imagine, what they judge; and in their liver and
their heart what they desire and what they resolve; for although these
little portraits are more imperceptible than anything we can imagine,
yet in this world our eyes are sharp enough to distinguish easily the
smallest ideas.
"Thus, when one of us desires to show his friend the affection he bears
to him, his heart is seen to throw its rays as far as his memory upon
the image of the person he loves; and when on the contrary he desires
to show his aversion, his heart is seen to project swirls of burning
sparks against the image of the person he hates and to retire as far as
possible from it: similarly, when he speaks to himself the elements,
that is to say, the character of everything he is meditating upon, are
clearly seen either impressed or in relief, presenting before the eyes
of the onlooker not an articulated speech, but a pictured story of all
his thoughts."
My guide would have continued, but he was interrupted by an accident
hitherto unheard of: and this was that we suddenly perceived the earth
grow dark beneath our feet and the burning rays of the sky grow faint
above our heads, as if a canopy four leagues square had been spread
betwixt us and the Sun.
It would be difficult to tell you what we imagined at this occurrence;
we were assailed by all manner of terrors, even by that of the end
of the world, and none of these terrors seemed to us beyond all
likelihood; for, to see night in the Sun or the air darkened with
clouds, is a miracle which never happens there. But this was not all;
immediately afterwards a sharp squealing noise, like the sound of a
pulley turning rapidly, struck our ears and at the same time we saw a
cage fall at our feet. Scarcely had it touched the sand when it opened
and was delivered of a man and a woman; they dragged out an anchor,
which they hooked in the roots of a rock; after which we saw them
coming towards us. The woman led the man and dragged him along with
menaces. When she was near us she said in a slightly excited voice:
"Gentlemen, is not this the province of philosophers?"
I answered that it was not, but that we hoped to arrive there in
twenty-four hours, that the old man, who suffered me to remain in his
company, was one of the principal officers of that monarchy.
"Since you are a philosopher", replied this woman, addressing
Campanella, "I must unburden my heart here before going any further.[84]
[Footnote 84: This episode allows Cyrano to jest a little at some of
the absurd sexual ideas of More and Campanella.]
"To tell you in a few words the matter which brings me here, you must
know that I come to complain of a murder committed upon the person of
my youngest child; this barbarian I am holding has killed it twice,
although he was its father."
We were mightily embarrassed by this discourse and so I desired to know
what she meant by a child that was killed twice.
"Know, then", replied the woman, "that in our country among other
statutes of Love there is a law to regulate how often a husband shall
pay his debt to his wife; therefore every evening each doctor goes
through all the houses of the district and, having examined the husband
and the wife, he allots them so many embraces for that night, according
to their good or bad health. My husband here was allotted seven;
however, piqued at some rather disdainful words I said to him as we
were undressing, he did not approach me all the time we were in bed.
But God, who avenges the cause of the afflicted, permitted this wretch
(tickled by the thought of the kisses he had withheld from me) to waste
a man in a dream. I told you that his father killed him twice, because
by preventing him from existing he caused him not to exist, which
was his first murder; and he caused him never to have existed, which
was the second; while an ordinary murderer knows that the person he
deprives of the daylight ceases to exist, but he cannot cause him not
to have existed at all. Our magistrates would have made short work of
him; but he cunningly excused himself by saying he would have performed
his conjugal duty if he had not feared that by embracing me in the
height of the anger I had put him into he would beget a frantic man.
"The senate, embarrassed by this justification, ordered us to go to the
philosophers and to plead our cause before them. As soon as we received
the order to go we entered a cage hung on the neck of the great bird
you see there, from which we lower ourselves to the ground and hoist
ourselves into the air by means of a pulley attached to it. In our
province there are persons expressly employed in taming them when young
and in training them for the tasks which render them useful to us.
They are principally urged to yield themselves to discipline contrary
to their ferocious natures, by their hunger, which is almost always
unsatisfied; and so we abandon to them the bodies of all beasts which
die. For the rest, when we desire to sleep (for, on account of the too
continuous excesses of love which weaken us, we need repose) we send up
from the country at regular intervals twenty or thirty of these birds,
each attached to a cord and, as they fly up, their vast wings spread in
the sky a shadow wider than the horizon."
I was very attentive to her discourse and observed in an ecstasy the
enormous height of this giant bird; but as soon as Campanella had
looked at it a little he exclaimed:
"Ha! Truly, it is one of those feathered monsters called condors which
are seen in the island of Mandragora in our world and throughout the
torrid zone; they cover an acre of ground with their wings; but since
these animals become larger in proportion as the Sun, which saw their
birth, is more heated, it cannot be but that they are of a fearful size
in the world of the Sun.
"However", he added, turning towards the woman, "you must necessarily
continue your voyage since you have to be judged by Socrates, to whom
the supervision of morals has been allotted. But I beg you to tell us
of what country you are, because I have only been three or four years
in this world and do not yet know the map."
"We are", she replied, "from the Kingdom of Lovers; this great state
is bounded on one side by the republic of Peace and on the other by
that of the Just. In the country whence I come the boys at the age of
sixteen enter the novitiate of Love: this is a most sumptuous palace
which covers nearly a quarter of the city. As for the girls, they enter
it at thirteen. There they spend a year of probation, during which the
boys are only occupied in deserving the affection of the girls and the
girls in making themselves worthy of the friendship of the boys. At
the end of twelve months the Faculty of Medicine visits this Seminary
of Lovers in a body; they examine them all one after another, down to
the most secret parts of their persons, and cause them to couple before
their eyes; and then in proportion as the male is found by experiment
to be vigorous and suitable, he is given as his wives ten, twenty,
thirty or forty girls from among those who affect him, provided the
affection be reciprocal.[85] The husband, however, may only lie with
two at once and he is not allowed to embrace any of them while she
is pregnant. Those women who are found to be sterile are employed
as menials and impotent men are made slaves and can mingle carnally
with the sterile women.[86] For the rest, when a family has more
children than it can feed the republic looks after them; but this is a
misfortune which never happens, because as soon as a woman is delivered
in the city, the treasury furnishes an annual sum for the education
of the child according to its rank, and the treasurers of the state
themselves carry the money to the father's house on a given day. But
if you wish to know more, come into our basket, it is large enough for
four. Since we are going the same road we will deceive the length of
the way by talk."
[Footnote 85: This is especially aimed at Sir Thomas More: "For a sad
and an honest matrone sheweth the woman, be she mayde or widdowe, naked
to the wower. And lykewise a sage and discreet man exhibyteth the wower
naked to the woman". _The Seconde Booke of Utopia._]
[Footnote 86: "Nel tempo innanzi é ad alcuno lecito il coito con le
donne sterile et pregne...." (Campanella, _Città del Sole_.)]
Campanella was of the opinion that we should accept the offer. I, too,
was very glad to avoid the fatigue; but when I came to help them weigh
the anchor I was very surprised to find that instead of a large cable
to hold it, it was hung on a thread of silk as fine as a hair. I asked
Campanella how it could be that a heavy mass, such as this anchor
was, did not break so frail a thing with its weight; and the good man
replied that this cord did not break, because it had been spun equally
throughout and therefore had no reason to break at one point more than
at another. We crowded into the basket and then pulleyed[87] ourselves
up to the bird's throat, where we seemed like a bell hung round his
neck. When we found ourselves touching the pulley we fastened the
cable to which our cage was hung round one of the lightest feathers of
its down, which nevertheless was as thick as a thumb; and as soon as
the woman had signed to the bird to start we felt ourselves cleaving
the sky with violent rapidity. The condor diminished or increased its
flight, rose or sank, at the will of its mistress, whose voice served
it as a bridle. We had not flown two hundred leagues, when on our
left hand we saw upon the ground a shadow similar to that produced
underneath us by our living parasol. We asked the strange woman what
she thought it was.
[Footnote 87: Cyrano coined this verb, "to pulley".]
"It is another malefactor on his way to be judged in the province
whither we are going; his bird is no doubt stronger than ours or else
we have wasted a good deal of time, since he left after me."
I asked her of what crime this wretch was accused.
"He is not merely accused", she replied, "he is condemned to die,
because he is already convicted of not fearing death."
"What", said Campanella, "do the laws of your country order that death
should be feared?"
"Yes", replied the woman, "they enjoin it upon all except those who
have been received into the College of Wise Men; for our magistrates
have proved from disastrous experience that he who does not fear to
lose his life is capable of taking the life of anyone also."
After some more conversation resulting from this, Campanella desired to
know at more length the manners of her country. He asked her what were
the laws and customs of the Kingdom of Lovers, but she excused herself
from speaking of them, because she had not been born there and only
half knew it; for which reason she was afraid of saying either too much
or too little.
"I come indeed from that province", continued the woman, "but I and
all my ancestors were inhabitants of the Kingdom of Truth; my mother
was delivered of me there and had no other child. She brought me up
in that country until I was thirteen, when the king, by the doctor's
advice, ordered her to take me to the Kingdom of Lovers whence I come,
so that by being bred up in the place of Love, a softer and more joyous
education than that of our country would render me more fertile than
she. My mother took me there and placed me in the House of Pleasure.
"I had great difficulty in growing used to their customs. At first they
appeared to me very uncivilised; for, as you know, the opinions we have
sucked in with our milk always appear to us the most reasonable and I
had only just arrived from my native land, the Kingdom of Truth.
"I did indeed perceive that this Nation of Lovers lived with much more
gentleness and indulgence than ours; for although everyone averred that
the sight of me wounded him dangerously, that my looks were mortal,
and that my eyes sent out a flame which consumed all hearts, yet the
kindness of everybody and principally of the young men was so great
that they caressed me, kissed me, and embraced me, instead of avenging
upon me the ill I had done them. I even grew angry with myself for the
disorders of which I was the cause; and, moved by compassion, I one
day revealed to them the resolution I had taken of running away. 'But,
alas! how will you escape', they all cried, throwing themselves on my
neck and kissing my hands, 'your house is besieged by water on all
sides and the danger appears so great that without a miracle you and we
shall inevitably be drowned'."
"What", I interrupted, "is the country of Lovers liable to
inundations?"[88]
[Footnote 88: In spite of M. Lachèvre, I cannot help thinking that
Cyrano is making fun of the _précieux_ style in all this.]
"It must be so", she replied, "for one of my lovers (and this man would
not have deceived me, since he loved me) wrote to me that his regret at
my departure had caused him to shed an ocean of tears. I saw another
who assured me that for three days his eye-balls had distilled a river
of tears; and as I was cursing (out of love for them) the fatal hour
when they saw me, one of those who was numbered among my slaves sent to
tell me that the night before his over-flowing eyes had made a flood. I
was about to take myself off from the world, so that I might no longer
be the cause of so many misfortunes, but the messenger added that his
master had bidden him assure me there was nothing to fear, because the
furnace of his bosom had dried up the flood. You may easily conjecture
that the Kingdom of Lovers must be very aquatic, since with them it
is but half-weeping, unless streams, fountains and torrents flow from
beneath their eyelids.
"I was greatly troubled to know by what machine I could escape all the
waters flowing in upon me. But one of my lovers, who was known as the
Jealous, advised me to tear out my heart and then to embark in it; he
added that I should not fear it would fail to hold me, because it held
so many others, nor that it would sink, because it was too light, and
that all I had to fear would be burning, because the matter of such a
vessel was very liable to fire; and that I should set out upon the sea
of his tears, that the bandage of his love would serve me as a sail and
that the favourable wind of his sighs would carry me safe to port in
spite of the tempest of his rivals.
"For a long time I meditated how I could put this enterprise into
execution. The natural timidity of my sex prevented me from daring
it; but at last the opinion I had that no man would be so foolish as
to advise it if the thing were impossible, still less a lover to his
mistress, gave me courage.
"I grasped a knife, I pierced my breast; already my two hands were
groping in the wound and with an intrepid gaze I sought my heart to
tear it out, when a man who loved me arrived. He wrested the steel away
from me against my will and then asked me the motive of an action,
which he called despairing. I related what had happened; but I was very
surprised when a quarter of an hour later I learned that he had handed
the Jealous over to justice. But the magistrates, who feared perhaps
to attach too much importance to the example or the novelty of the
incident, sent the case to the parliament of the Kingdom of the Just.
There he was condemned to banishment for life and to end his days as a
slave in the territories of the Republic of Truth, with a prohibition
to all his descendants down to the fourth generation to set foot in the
Province of Lovers; moreover, he was enjoined never to use hyperboles
on pain of death.
"From that time on I conceived a great affection for the young man who
had preserved me; and either on account of this service or because
of the passion he had shown me I did not refuse him when, on the
completion of his novitiate and mine, he asked me to be one of his
wives.
"We have always lived comfortably together and we should still have
done so had he not, as I have informed you, killed one of my children
twice, for which I am about to implore vengeance in the Kingdom of
Philosophers."
Campanella and I were vastly astonished at this man's complete silence;
and I was about to try to console him, judging that so profound a
silence was the daughter of a most profound grief, when his wife
prevented me.
"'Tis not excess of grief closes his mouth, but our laws, which forbid
every criminal awaiting his trial to speak except before his judges."
During this conversation the bird continued to advance, when I was
astonished to hear Campanella exclaim, with a face filled with joy and
delight:
"Welcome, dearest of all my friends; come, gentlemen, come", continued
this good man, "let us meet Monsieur Descartes; let us descend, there
he is not three leagues from here."
For my part I was greatly surprised by this sally, for I could not
understand how he could know of the arrival of a person of whom we had
received no news.
"Assuredly", said I, "you have just seen him in a dream."
"If you call a dream", said he, "that which your soul can see as
certainly as your eyes the day when it shines, I confess it."
"But", I cried, "is it not a dream to think that Monsieur Descartes,
whom you have not seen since you left the world of the Earth, is three
leagues from here, because you have imagined it?"
As I spoke the last syllable we saw Descartes arrive. Campanella at
once ran to embrace him. They talked together at length, but I could
not attend to their mutual expressions of regard, so much did I burn to
learn from Campanella the secret of his divination. That philosopher,
reading my passion upon my face, related the incident to his friend and
begged him to agree to his informing me. M. Descartes replied with a
smile and my learned preceptor discoursed to this effect:
"There are exhaled from all bodies elements, that is to say, corporeal
images which fly in the air. Now, in spite of their movement, these
images always preserve the shape, the colour and all the other
proportions of the object whereof they speak; but since they are very
subtle and very fine they pass through our organs without causing any
sensation there; they go straight to the soul, where they make an
impression, because its substance is so delicate, and thus they cause
it to see very distant things, which the senses cannot perceive; and
this is an ordinary occurrence here, where the mind is not involved in
a body formed of gross matter, as in your world. We will tell you how
this happens, when we have had leisure fully to satisfy the desire we
both have to converse together; for, assuredly, you fully deserve that
we should show you the greatest favour."[89]
[Footnote 89: This abrupt end indicates that the book is unfinished; I
cannot agree with those who think it intentional.]
[Illustration: _Gonsales' Voyage to the Moon_]
APPENDICES
1. EXTRACTS FROM GODWIN, D'URFEY AND SWIFT
2. BIBLIOGRAPHY
3. GENEALOGY
4. COAT OF ARMS
APPENDIX I
BISHOP GODWIN--TOM D'URFEY--SWIFT
To give full extracts from all the books copied by or copied
from Cyrano de Bergerac would make a volume. In the notes or the
introduction attention has already been called to Cyrano's greater or
less indebtedness to Lucian, Rabelais, Sorel, Gassendi, Descartes,
Rohault and other writers. His borrowing from Bishop Godwin's _Man in
the Moon_ is considerable. This pamphlet is included in the _Harleian
Miscellany_ (1810) vol. xi. The hero is a Spaniard, Domingo Gonsales,
who manufactures a flying machine, drawn by "gansas," or wild geese,
in which he is carried to the moon. There is a certain amount of
scientific disquisition upon gravity and a rebuke to those who reject
the Copernican system of astronomy; which corresponds with Cyrano's
talk with the governor of New France. Other points in common may be
tabulated:
1. Gonsales does not feel hungry on his voyage "on account of the
purity of the air".
2. He sees the earth turning beneath him.
3. Everything in the moon is larger than in the earth and the people
are "generally twice as high as ours"; they "live wonderful long", "a
thousand years".
4. They fan themselves rapidly through the air; the "attraction" of the
moon's earth is much less than ours.
5. A paragraph about sleep seems to have inspired Cyrano with his beds
of flowers and tickling attendants.
6. "Their language is very difficult, since it hath no affinity with
any other I ever heard, and consists not so much of words and letters,
as tunes and strange sounds, which no letters can express; for there
are few words but signify several things.... Yea, many words consist of
tunes only without words, by occasion whereof I find a language may be
framed, and easily learned, as copious as any other in the world, only
of tunes, which is an experiment worth searching after."
This pamphlet was published in England in 1638 and translated into
French in 1648.
Tom d'Urfey's _Wonders in the Sun or the Kingdom of the Birds_
(London, 1706) is obviously inspired by Cyrano's _Voyages_ (without
acknowledgment). There are characters taken from Cyrano: the main
situation is the trial before the court of birds and whole slices of
the prose dialogues are simply a translation. Characters are Domingo
Gonzales and Diego his man; the Daemon of Socrates; all with leading
parts; and King Dove. The other bird-characters are ingenious and Tom's
own. Here is an extract from Act I, scene 1:
_Daemon:_ Two thousand Years and upwards since the Death of that
Philosopher I've carefully Employ'd in Art's Improvement, I first in
_Thebes_ Taught wise _Epaminondas,_ then turning over to the _Roman_
side Espous'd the Party of the younger _Cato_.
_Gonzales:_ The world admir'd your fame, the Learned _Cardan_ still
doted on your Tenets.
_Daemon:_ He had reason. I Taught him many things. _Trithmethius_
too, _Cæzar_, _La Brosse_ and the occult _Agrippa_ were all my
Pupils, beside a new Cabal of Wise young Men, vulgarly called the
_Rosa-crucian_ Knights, those were, should I dilate their Virtues
fully, the very Keys of the locks of Nature.
_Gonzales_: _Gossendus_ too in France, and _Campanella_ were under your
instruction.
That is almost word for word from the _Moon._ In the same scene occurs
this:
_Gonzales:_ Well, and pray, Sir, your Philosophers, what must they feed
on?
_Daemon:_ Steams, luscious Fumes, rich edifying Smoak.
The next scene contains a translation of Cyrano's notion of the dignity
of walking on all fours. Acts II and III furnish other parallels; but
in Act IV, the trial scene is very closely imitated from Cyrano's
trial in the _History of the Birds_ in _The Sun_. The speech of the
prosecution is almost a word for word translation; the sentence is the
same and the prisoners are rescued by a parrot named "Cæzar"! (See _The
Sun_.)
It has long been recognised that _Gulliver's Travels_ owes quite as
much to Cyrano de Bergerac as to any other book. The resemblance is
rather one of general ideas, taken up and exploited by Swift, than of
parallel passages. One passage in the _Voyage to Lilliput_, chapter VI,
is taken directly from Cyrano:
"Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ
extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female
is founded upon the great law of Nature, in order to propagate and
continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it that men
and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of
concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds
from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow
that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him,
or to his mother for bringing him into the world, which, considering
the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor
intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters
were otherwise employed. Upon these and the like reasoning, their
opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted
with the education of their own children: and therefore they have in
every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and
labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared
and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time
they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility." (See _The Moon._)
Chapter II of the Voyage to Brobdingnag has a strong likeness to those
parts of Cyrano's _Moon_ describing how he was showed by a mountebank.
The flashing swords in chapter VII, the king's desire to "propagate
the breed" in chapter VIII, even the adventure with the monkey, may
have been suggested by Cyrano. As to the "Houyhnhnms", the device of
satirising and shaming man by showing him to be inferior in virtues to
the very beasts is a favourite one of Cyrano. The scenes with the birds
and trees in the Sun and some of the philosophical conversations in the
Moon may be referred to for confirmation of this. There can be little
doubt that Swift read Cyrano de Bergerac closely and frequently built
upon what the French writer had done or took up and developed better
the hint of some idea. The unity of Swift's purpose, the even tone of
his prose, the strong air of common sense, the Defoe-like illusion of
reality, are all in sharp contrast with Cyrano's wandering fancies,
varying styles, extravagance and lack of common sense.
APPENDIX II
LIST OF EDITIONS
(A complete bibliography of Cyrano de Bergerac's works will be found
in M. Lachèvre's edition. This list will give only editions of the
Complete Works and of the _Estats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil_,
but will add all the discoverable English translations of Cyrano's
work.)
_ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES_
_Les œuvres de Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac. Première (et seconde)
partie._ A Paris, chez Charles de Sercy, au Palais, au Sixiesme Pilier
de la Grand' Salle, vis-à-vis la Montée de la Cour des Aydes, à la
Bonne-Foy couronnée. M.DC.LXXVI. in-12.
_Ditto._ Rouen, 1677. 2 Vol. in-12.
_Ditto._ Paris, Ch. Osmont, 1699. 2 Vol. in-12.
_Les œuvres diverses de monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac._ Tome premier
(et second). Enrichi de Figures en taille-douce. A Amsterdam, chez
Daniel Pain, Marchand Libraire sur le Woorburgwal, proche du Stilsteeg.
M.DC.XCIX.
_Ditto._ Rouen, J.-B. Besonge, 1710. 2 Vol. in-12.
_Ditto._ Amsterdam, Jacques Desbordes, M.DCC.X.
_Les Œuvres de Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac_.... A Amsterdam, Jacques
Desbordes, M.DCC.IX.
_Ditto._ Nouvelle édition, Paris, 1709. 2 Vol. in-12.
_Les Œuvres Diverses de monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac._ Tomes premier
(second et troisième). A Amsterdam, chez Jacques Desbordes....
M.DCC.XII (1741 or 1761). in-8.
(Editions labelled Amsterdam actually printed at Rouen or perhaps
Trévoux.)
_ŒUVRES DIVERSES_ (containing the Voyages)
_Les Œuvres diverses de Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac._ A Paris, chez
Antoine de Sommaville.... Paris, M.DC.LXI. in-12.
_Les Œuvres diverses de Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac_.... A Paris. Chez
Charles de Sercy au Palais, dans la Salle Dauphine, à la Bonne-Foy.
M.DC.LXI.
_Ditto._ Lyon. Christophe Fourmy.... M.DC.LXIII. 2 Vol. in-12.
_Ditto._ Rouen, chez Antoine Ferrand. M.DC.LXIII. 2 Vol.
_Ditto._ Rouen, R. Sejourne, 1676, in-12.
_Ditto._ A Rouen, chez Jean B. Besonge.... 1678.
_L'AUTRE MONDE_
_Histoire Comique, par Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac. Contenant les
Estats et Empires de la Lune._ A Paris, chez Charles de Sercy, au
Palais, dans la Salle Dauphine, à la Bonne-Foy couronnée. M.DC.LVII.
in-12.
_Ditto._ Paris. Sercy. M.DC.LIX. in-12.
_Histoire comique, par monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac. Contenant les
Estats et Empires de la Lune._ A Lyon, chez Christophe Fourmy, rue
Merciere, à l'enseigne de l'Occasion. M.DC.LXII. in-12.
_Ditto._ Lyon, 1672, in-12.
_Voyages imaginaires, songes, visions et romans cabalistiques._ Ornés
de figures. Tome Treizième. A Amsterdam et Paris. M.DCC.LXXXVII. in-8.
MODERN EDITIONS
_Œuvres de Cyrano de Bergerac, précédées d'une Notice par Le Blanc.
Voyage Comique dans les Estats et Empires de la Lune, Voyage Comique
dans les Estats et Empires du Soleil._ Paris. Victor Lecou, et
Toulouse, Librairie centrale, 1855, in-8.
_Histoire Comique des Estats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, par
Cyrano de Bergerac._ Nouvelle Edition revue et publiée avec des notes
et une Notice historique. Par P.L. (Paul Lacroix) Jacob, bibliophile.
Paris, Adolphe Delahays, 1858, in-8.
_Voyages Fantastiques de Cyrano Bergerac._ Publiés avec une
introduction et des Notes par Marc de Montifaud. Paris, Librairie des
Bibliophiles, 1875, in-8.
_Histoire Comique de la Lune et du Soleil._ Paris, Garnier, 1876, in-12.
_Histoire Comique, etc._ Expurgated edition, 1886.
_Cyrano de Bergerac. Voyage dans la Lune._ Paris, Ernest Flammarion. No
date, in-8.
_Cyrano de Bergerac, Œuvres Comiques, etc._ Paris, Librairie de la
Bibliothèque nationale, 1898.
_Collection des plus belles pages. Cyrano de Bergerac_.... Notice de
Remy de Gourmont. Paris, Société du Mercure de France, M.CM.VIII.
in-18. (A good and useful edition of very full selections.)
_De Cyrano Bergerac. L'Autre Monde, etc._ Illustrations de Robida.
Librairie Moderne. Maurice Bauche, éditeur.... Paris, M.CM.X. in-8.
(Contains a hybrid text, part from MSS. and part from ed. Lyon, 1663.)
_S. de Cyrano Bergerac. Histoire Comique, etc._ As above. M.CM.X.
_Les Œuvres Libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac, Parisien_ (1619-1655).
Précédées d'une notice Biographique par Frédéric Lachèvre. Paris.
Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion. 2 Vols. 1921.
(Contains the whole of Cyrano's work, except a few of the letters; the
best text of the Voyages with MS. variations and notes; the notice is
very full and accompanied with many unpublished documents. The edition
is indispensable for any serious study of Cyrano de Bergerac. Its text
has been used throughout for this translation.)
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
_Satyrical Characters and handsome Descriptions, in Letters written
to several persons of quality._ Translated out of the French. London,
1658. (B.M.)
Σεληναρχία, _or, the Government of the World in the Moon. A
Comical history...._ Done into English by T. St. Serf. London, 1659.
(B.M.)
_The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the
Moon and Sun_ ... newly Englished by A. Lovell. London, 1687. (B.M.)
_A Voyage to the Moon.... A Comical Romance._ Done from the French of
M. Cyrano de Bergerac. By Mr Derrick. London, 1754. (B.M.)
_Cyrano de Bergerac. The agreement. A Satyrical and facetious dream. To
which is annexed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth._
By J. Friendly. London, 1756. (B.M.)
(A version of Cyrano's Letter: _Un Songe_)
An expurgated version of the Pédant Joué is recorded from Harvard in
1900. There is no copy at the British Museum.
APPENDIX III
GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE CYRANO FAMILY
(_From Brun, corrected from Lachèvre_)
SAVINIEN I DE CYRANO, bourgeois (?-1590) = ANNE I, LE MAIRE
|
+-------------------------+-------+-------------+----------------------+
| | | |
ABEL I DE CYRANO (1567-1648) ANNE II (_d._ 1652) PIERRE I (_m._ 1621) SAMUEL (_m._ 1616)
= ESPÉRANCE BELLENGER = JACQUES STOPAR = CHARLOTTE GENNE = MARIE DE SERQUEVILLÉ
| (_d. circa_ 1649) |
| +---+-------
| |
| PIERRE II (_d._ 1674)
| = MARIE DOUSSIN
| |
+----+------------+----------------+---------------+-----------+------------------------+ |
| | | | | | |
DENYS ANTOINE HONORÉ SAVINIEN ABEL II = MARIE MARCY CATHERINE |
(1614-_c._ 1639) (1616-_d. young_) (1617-_d. young_) the Author (1624-1686)| (?-1707) (? - ?) |
(1619-1655) | |
| +---------+---------+-------+--+
| | | |
| | JÉRÔME (1655-?). PAUL
+-----------------+-------------------+---------------------+ | = 1. SIMONNE LONDOIS (_b._ 1668)
| | | | = 2. MARIE CHERBOIS
CATHERINE MARIE-CATHERINE ABEL PIERRE | |
= J. P WLEUGELS (1659 _baptized_) (1656-_after_ 1707) | | | |
(_m._ 1699) MARIE ELIZABETH (1661-1738)
= JEAN CHOFFLER |
|
MARIE (_b._ 1728)
APPENDIX IV
Cyrano de Bergerac
La vraye et parfaite science des armoires, augmentée par P. Paillot,
Dijon et Paris, 1660, folio, gives a description of the arms of Cyrano
which (with apologies to heralds) I English as follows:
"Azure, a chevron or, two lion-skins or bound gules suspended in chief,
a lion with a tail saltire-wise or armed gules, with a chief gules."
In spite of this imposing shield the Cyrano family failed to establish
its claim to nobility at the visitations of 1668 and 1704. On the
former occasion Abel de Cyrano (brother of our author) was fined 300
_livres_ for claiming nobility unlawfully and on the latter occasion a
cousin, J. D. de Cyrano, was fined the large sum of 3000 _livres_ for
the same offence.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Some proper names are depicted as images
resembling musical notes. They are transcribed as [Image].]
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