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.