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.