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.