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.