should be exterminated by a sad death; but yet, when they perceived the
King inclined to milder measures, they revised their opinions; thus
my judges moderated themselves and instead of a sad death, which they
remitted, they thought meet to fit my punishment to one of my crimes.
To annihilate me by a punishment which would serve to undeceive me by
challenging the pretended empire of men over birds, they ordered that I
should be given up to the anger of the weakest among them; which meant
that they condemned me to be eaten by flies.
At that moment the assembly rose and I heard a murmur go round that the
circumstances of my suffering had not been gone into in detail, because
of an accident to a bird of the party, which had fallen in a swoon just
as it was about to speak to the King. They thought this had happened
from the horror caused it by looking too fixedly at a man; and so the
order was given for me to be taken away.
Sentence was pronounced upon me; and as soon as the osprey who filled
the office of clerk of the court had finished reading it to me, I
perceived the sky about me black with flies, humble-bees, midges,
gnats, and fleas, buzzing with impatience. I expected to be carried off
by my eagles as before, but in their place I saw a great black ostrich,
which set me shamefully astride its back; for with them this position
is the most ignominious in which a criminal can be placed, and whatever
offence a bird has committed it cannot be condemned to this.
The archers who took me to execution consisted of fifty condors and as
many griffins; before and behind them flew very slowly a procession of
ravens croaking something lugubriously and I thought I heard in the
distance responses from screech-owls.
When we left the place where judgment had been pronounced upon me, two
birds of paradise who had been ordered to be present at my death came
and perched on my shoulders. Although my soul was greatly troubled by
horror at the step I was about to take, I yet remember almost all the
reasonings by which they tried to console me.
"Death", said they, with their beaks in my ear, "is certainly not a
great evil, because our good mother Nature subjects all her children to
it; and it cannot be an affair of great consequence, because it happens
at any moment and from so small a cause; for if life were so excellent
it would not be in our power to withhold it from offspring; or if death
brought with it consequences so important as you persuade yourself, it
would not be in our power to give it: on the contrary, there is every
probability that since every animal begins in play, it ends similarly.
I speak to you in this way because, since your soul is not immortal
like ours, you may well suppose when you die that everything dies with
you. Do not be troubled then at undergoing what some of your companions
will undergo later. Their condition is more deplorable than yours; for
if death is an evil, it is only an evil to those who are condemned to
die; compared with you, who have only an hour between here and there,
they will be fifty or sixty years a-dying. Then, you know, he who is
not yet born is not unhappy. Well, you are about to resemble him who
is not yet born; a twinkling of an eye after life, you will be what
you were a twinkling of an eye before; and immediately after that
twinkling of an eye you will be dead as long as he who died a thousand
centuries ago. But in any case, granted that life is a good, the same
chance which in the infinity of time made you what you are may some day
cause you to exist again. May not that matter, which by constant mixing
finally reached that number, that disposition and that order necessary
to the construction of your being, once more by remixing reach the
state required to cause you to feel again? Yes, but, you will say,
I do not remember to have existed. Why! my dear brother, what do you
care so long as you are conscious of existing? And then may it not be
that to console you for the loss of your life you will imagine the same
reasons which I now put before you?
"These are considerations sufficiently strong to oblige you to drink
this bitter cup with patience; but I have others still more urgent,
which doubtless will bring you to desire it. My dear brother, you must
convince yourself that, since you and other brutes are material, and
since death instead of annihilating matter simply alters its economy
you must, I say, believe with certainty that when you cease to be what
you were you will begin to be something else. Suppose you become a clod
of earth or a stone, well, you will be something less wicked than man.
But I have a secret to discover to you, which I should not like any
of your companions to hear from my mouth; and that is, when you are
eaten, as you will be, by our little birds, you will pass into their
substance: yes, you will have the honour of contributing (even though
blindly) to the intellectual operations of flies, and though you do not
reason yourself, you will at least share in the glory of making them
reason."
At about this point of their exhortation we reached the place fixed
upon for my execution.
There were four trees very close to each other and about the same
distance apart, on each of which at the same height was perched a
large heron. I was taken down from the black ostrich and a number of
cormorants carried me to the place where the four herons were waiting
for me. These birds, firmly seated each on its tree opposite each
other, wound their prodigiously long necks about my legs and arms as
though they were ropes, and bound me so tightly that although each of
my limbs was only tied by the neck of one bird I had not the power to
move it at all.
They were to remain a long time in this position; for I heard orders
given to the cormorants who had lifted me to catch fish for the herons
and to slide their food into their beaks. They were still waiting for
the flies, because they cleft the air with a flight less rapid than
ours; nevertheless we were never out of hearing of them. The first
thing they undertook was to apportion my body, and this arrangement
was made so cunningly that they assigned my eyes to the bees, so
that I should have them stung out as they ate them; my ears to the
humble-bees, so that I should have them deafened and devoured at the
same time; and my shoulders to the fleas, in order that I should
have them pierced by itching bites; and so on for the rest. Scarcely
had I heard these orders arranged, when suddenly I saw the insects
approaching. It seemed as if all the atoms of which the air is composed
had been changed into flies; for only two or three weak rays of light
reached me, and these appeared to slip through to get at me, so closely
were these battalions drawn up and so near my flesh were they.
But just as each one of them was choosing the place it desired to bite
me, I saw them suddenly retreat; and among the confusion of a vast
number of shouts, which re-echoed to the clouds, I several times made
out the words: _Pardon, pardon, pardon_.
Two turtle-doves then came up to me. At their arrival all the dismal
apparatus of my death disappeared; I felt my herons loose the circles
of the long necks which bound me; and my body, stretched out like a
Saint Andrew's cross, slipped from the top of the four trees to the
foot of their roots. I expected from this fall to be shattered on
the ground against a rock; but at the height of my terror I was very
surprised to find myself seated on a white ostrich, which set off at a
gallop as soon as it felt me on its back.
I was taken by a road different from that by which I had come; for
I remember passing through a large wood of myrtles and another of
terebinth trees leading to a huge forest of olive trees, where King
Dove was awaiting me in the midst of all his court.
As soon as he saw me, he signed for me to be helped down. Immediately
two eagles of the guard extended their feet and carried me to the
Prince. I respectfully attempted to embrace and to kiss his Majesty's
little spurs, but he evaded me.
"I ask you", said he, "whether you know this bird."
At these words they showed me a parrot, which began to strut and flap
its wings, when it perceived I was looking at it.
"It seems to me", I exclaimed to the King, "that I have seen it
somewhere, but I am so confused by fear and joy that I cannot yet tell
precisely where it was."
At these words the parrot came to me, embraced my face with its two
wings and said:
"What! You do not recognise Cæsar, your cousin's parrot, on whose
account you have so often maintained that birds reason? Just now,
during your trial, it was I who tried to declare after the session what
obligations I have to you, but the pain of seeing you in so great a
peril made me fall into a swoon."
His speech completed the unsealing of my sight. Having recognised him I
embraced and kissed him; he embraced and kissed me.
"'Tis you, then, my poor Cæsar", said I, "whose cage I opened to
return you the liberty taken from you by the tyrannical custom of our
world?"
The King interrupted our caresses and spoke to me to this effect:
"Man, with us a good action is never lost; for this reason, although
as a man you deserve to die simply because you were born, the Senate
pardons you your life. This act of recognition may well accompany that
intelligence with which Nature enlightened your instinct, when she
made you suspect in us that faculty of reasoning you were incapable of
comprehending. Go then in peace and live happily."
He whispered some orders and my white ostrich, led by the two
turtle-doves, carried me away from the assembly. After galloping me
for about half a day, the ostrich left me near a forest, into which I
plunged as soon as it had gone. There I began to taste the pleasure
of liberty and of eating the honey which flowed down the bark of the
trees. If my body could have resisted the exertion I think I should
never have finished my walk, for the agreeable diversity of the place
made me continually discover something more beautiful; but when at
last I found myself worn out with fatigue I sank down upon the grass.
Stretched out thus under the shadow of the trees I felt invited to
sleep by the soft coolness and the silence of solitude, when an
indistinct noise of confused voices, which I seemed to hear fluttering
about me, woke me with a start.
The ground appeared very flat and did not bristle with any bush to
interrupt the sight, and mine therefore ranged far afield among the
forest trees; yet the murmur which reached my ear could only have come
from close beside me. Listening more intently, I distinctly heard a
sequence of Greek words, and among the conversation of a number of
people I heard one expressing himself as follows:
"Doctor, one of my relatives, the three-headed Elm, informs me by a
Finch, which he sends me, that he is sick of a hectic fever and of a
moss disease, which covers him from head to foot. I beseech you, by
your friendship for me, to prescribe something for him."
I remained a little time without hearing anything, but after a short
space it seemed to me I heard this reply:
"Even if the three-headed Elm were not your relative, and even if this
request were made me by the most outlandish of our species, instead of
by you, who are my friend, my profession would nevertheless oblige me
to help him. Tell the three-headed Elm that to cure his illness he must
suck up as much damp and as little dry as possible; for this purpose he
must send the small threads of his roots towards the wettest parts of
his soil, converse only of cheerful matters, and every day listen to
the music of a few excellent Nightingales. He will then let you know
how he feels after this regime; and then, according to the development
of his illness, when we have prepared his humours, some Stork among my
friends will give him a clyster, which will set him fairly on the road
to convalescence."
After these words I did not hear the least sound, but a quarter of an
hour later a voice, which I think I had not before noticed, reached my
ear; this is what it said:
"Are you asleep, forked tree?"
I heard another voice reply thus: "No, fresh bark, why?"
"Because", replied the voice which had first broken the silence, "I
feel disturbed in the manner we are accustomed to be when those animals
called Men approach us and I should like to ask if you feel the same
thing."
Some time passed before the other replied, as if he were concentrating
his most secret senses upon this investigation. Then he exclaimed: "By
heaven! you are right, and I swear my organs are so filled with the
presence of a man that I am very much deceived if there is not one very
close at hand."
Several voices then exclaimed together that assuredly they perceived a
man. However much I gazed about me on all sides I could not discover
whence this speech came. At last, when I had a little recovered from
the horror into which this event had cast me, I replied to that voice,
which I thought I had noticed asking if there were a man there, that
there was one.
"But I beg you", I went on immediately, "whoever you are speaking to
me, to tell me where you are."
A moment after I heard these words: "We are in your presence, your
eyes behold us and you do not see us! Behold the oaks upon which we
feel your sight is resting, it is we who speak to you, and if you are
surprised that we should speak a language used in the world whence
you come, know that our first fathers were born there; they dwelt
in Epirus in the forest of Dodona,[69] where their natural kindness
caused them to render oracles to those who consulted them in trouble.
For this purpose they learned the Greek language, at that time the
most universal, in order to be understood; and because we descend
from them, from father to son, the gift of prophecy has come down to
us. Well, you must know that a large eagle who was sheltered by our
fathers in Dodona could not go hunting because it had broken one of
its hands and therefore fed upon the acorns furnished it by their
branches, when, one day, tired of living in a world where it suffered,
it took flight towards the Sun and continued its voyage so happily that
at last it reached the luminous globe where we are now; but the heat
of the climate on its arrival made it vomit; it threw up a number of
undigested acorns; these acorns germinated and from them grew the oaks
which were our ancestors.
[Footnote 69: The famous oracle of Zeus was here.]
"In this way we changed our dwelling-place. But although you hear us
speak a human language, it does not mean that other trees express
themselves in the same way; only those oaks issued from the forest of
Dodona speak as you do. As to other plants, this is how they express
themselves: have you never noticed that fine gentle breeze which never
fails to breathe on the outskirts of woods? That is the breath of their
speech, and the little murmur or the delicate noise by which they break
the silence of their solitude is actually their language. But although
the sound of forests always seems the same, it is really so different
that every kind of plant has its own; the birch does not speak like the
maple, nor the beech like the cherry-tree. If the silly people of your
world heard me as I am now speaking, they would think there was a devil
imprisoned under my bark; for, far from believing that we can reason,
they do not even suppose that we have a sentient soul, although every
day they see that at the first blow given a tree by the wood-cutter
the wedge enters four times deeper into the flesh than at the second
blow; from which they ought to conjecture that the first blow assuredly
surprised the tree and struck it unexpectedly, then that, immediately
it was warned by the pain, it collected itself, united its forces to
resist and became as it were petrified to combat the hardness of its
enemy's weapon. But my intention is not to make the blind understand
light; to me an individual is the whole race and the whole race is but
an individual when that individual is not infected by the errors of the
race; be attentive therefore, since when I speak to you I imagine I am
speaking to the whole human race.
"In the first place you must know that almost all the concerts at
which the birds make music are composed in praise of trees; moreover,
to repay the care they take in celebrating our worthy actions, we are
careful to hide their loves; for you must not imagine when you find
so much difficulty in discovering one of their nests that this is
the result of the prudence with which they have hidden it; it is the
tree itself which folds its boughs all around the nest to protect its
guest's family from the cruelties of man. To prove that this is so,
observe the nests of those which are either born for the destruction of
the birds, their fellow-citizens, like sparrow-hawks, hobbies, merlins,
falcons, or of those which only speak to quarrel like jays and magpies,
or of those which delight to terrify us, like owls and night-jars; you
will notice that their nests are exposed to everybody's sight,[70]
because the tree holds its branches away from them in order that they
may be taken.
[Footnote 70: Nobody "observed Nature" in the 17th century, of course!]
"But it is unnecessary to mention so many details to prove that trees
exercise all your functions both of the body and of the soul. Is there
any one among you who has not noticed in the spring, when the Sun has
delighted our bark with fertile sap, that we lengthen our boughs and
spread them out, covered with fruit, on the breast of the earth whereof
we are amorous? The earth, on its side, opens and is warmed with the
same ardour; and as if each of our boughs were a male organ she draws
near to join with them; and our boughs transported with pleasure
discharge into her lap the seed with which she burns to conceive. She
is nine months in forming this embryo before she brings it forth; but
the tree, her husband, fearing the winter cold may harm her pregnancy,
casts off his green robe to cover her, while to hide a little of his
own nudity he is content with an old cloak of dead leaves.
"Well, you men eternally see these things and never perceive them;
still more convincing things pass before your eyes and your stupidity
is not even disturbed."
My attention was closely directed to the speech I heard from this
arboreal voice and I was awaiting the remainder when it suddenly ceased
speaking in a tone similar to that of a person who is prevented from
speaking by short breath.
When I found it altogether obstinate in its silence I conjured it by
everything I thought might move it to deign to instruct a person who
had risked the perils of so great a voyage only for the purpose of
learning. At the same time I heard two or three voices making the same
supplication for love of me and then I distinguished one, saying to it
as if it had been annoyed:
"Well, since you complain so much of your lungs, take a rest, and I
will tell him the 'Story of the Lover-Trees'."
"Oh you, whoever you may be", cried I, throwing myself upon my knees,
"the wisest of all the oaks of Dodona, who deign to take the trouble
to instruct me, know that your lesson is not wasted upon one who is
ungrateful; if ever I return to my native globe I make a vow that I
will publish the marvels which you do me the honour to let me witness."
As I finished this protestation I heard the same voice continue thus:
"Little man, look twelve or fifteen paces to your right hand, you will
see two twin trees of moderate height intertwining their branches and
their roots and trying in a thousand ways to make themselves one."
I turned my eyes towards these love-plants and I noticed that the
leaves of both were lightly agitated by a half-voluntary emotion, while
their rustling created a murmur so delicate that it scarcely reached
the ear; and yet one would have said that by this means they were
trying to question and answer each other.
When the time necessary for me to notice this double plant had passed,
my good friend the oak took up the thread of his discourse thus:
"You cannot have lived so long without the famous friendship of Pylades
and Orestes coming to your knowledge?
"I would describe to you all the joys of a gentle passion and I would
relate to you all the miracles with which these lovers have astonished
their age, did I not fear that so much light would dazzle the eyes of
your reason, and therefore I will only paint these two young Suns in
their eclipse.
"It will suffice you then to know that one day in battle the brave
Orestes sought his dear Pylades, to taste the pleasure of conquering
or dying in his presence. When he perceived him in the midst of a
hundred arms of iron lifted above his head, alas! what did he become?
He rushed despairingly through a forest of pikes, he shouted, he
howled, he foamed; but how badly I express the horror of his movements
in his despair! He pulled out his hair, he gnawed his hands, he tore
his wounds; and at the end of this description I am obliged to say that
the means of expressing his grief died with him. When he thought to cut
a path with his sword to rescue Pylades, a mountain of men opposed his
passage. Yet he cut through them; and after trampling long over the
bloody trophies of his victory, little by little he approached Pylades;
but Pylades seemed to him so near death that he scarcely dared ward
off his enemies any more for fear of surviving the thing for which he
lived: to see his eyes filled already with the shadows of death one
would even have said he tried to poison the murderers of his friend
with his looks. At last Pylades fell lifeless; and the amorous Orestes,
feeling his own life ready to leave his lips, yet retained it until his
wandering sight sought and found Pylades among the dead, when, kissing
his mouth, he seemed as if he would throw his soul into his friend's
body.[71]
[Footnote 71: Cyrano seems to have confused Orestes and Pylades with
Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus; _Æneid_, Bk. IX.]
"The younger of these heroes died of grief on the body of his friend;
and you must know that from their rotting flesh (which doubtless
had fertilised the earth) there sprang up among the whitening bones
of their skeletons two young saplings, whose trunks and branches
mingled together and seemed to hasten their growth only to twine
more closely together. It was apparent they had changed their being
without forgetting what they had been; for their perfumed buds leaned
one upon the other and warmed each other with their breath as if
to make them open more quickly. But what shall I say of the loving
portioning maintained by their fraternity? Never was the juice in
which nourishment resides offered to their stock but that they shared
it with ceremony. Never was one of them ill-nourished but that the
other was sick with weariness; both drew from the breasts of their
nurse within as you suckle them from without. Finally these happy
lovers produced apples, and such miraculous apples that they performed
even more miracles than their Fathers. Those who ate the apples of one
tree immediately became passionately in love with anyone who had eaten
the fruit of the other. And this happened almost every day, because the
shoots of Pylades surrounded, or were surrounded by, those of Orestes,
and their almost twin fruits could not resolve to part from each other.
"Nature, however, had differentiated the energy of their double essence
so carefully that when the fruit of one of the trees was eaten by a
man and the fruit of the other tree by another man, this caused a
reciprocal friendship and when the same thing happened to two persons
of different sex it caused love, but a vigorous love which retained the
character of its cause; for although this fruit proportioned its effect
to the eater's capacity, softening its virtue in a woman, it still
preserved something masculine.