sparkles on all sides; when one looks at this water composed of a
torrent of damp sparks they seem to observe no certain order as they
fly along. When I had observed it more attentively I took notice that
the humour that flowed in its bed was pure potable gold and its foam
oil of talc. The fishes it breeds are Remoræ, Sirens, and Salamanders;
instead of gravel there are to be found those pebbles of which Pliny
speaks, which make one heavy when touched on one side and light when
applied on the other side. I noticed others again, of which Gyges
had a ring, which renders invisible; but above all a large number
of philosopher's stones glittered in its sands. On its banks were
numerous fruit-trees, principally those found by Mohammed in Paradise;
the branches swarmed with phœnixes, and I noticed seedlings of that
fruit-tree whence Discord plucked the apple she cast at the feet of the
three Goddesses; they had grafted on it shoots from the garden of the
Hesperides. Each of these two wide rivers separated into an infinity
of interlacing arms; and I observed that when a large stream of
Memory approached a smaller one of Imagination the former immediately
exterminated the latter; but on the contrary, if the stream of
Imagination were larger, it dried up that of Memory. Now, since these
three streams always flow side by side, either in their main channel or
in their branches, wherever Memory is strong, Imagination diminishes,
and the one increases as the other sinks.
Near at hand the river of Judgment flows incredibly slowly; its
channel is deep, its fluid seems cold, and when scattered on anything
dries instead of moistens. In the mud of its bed grow plants of
Hellebore,[83] whose roots spreading out in long filaments purify the
water of its mouth. It nourishes serpents, and a million elephants
repose on the soft grass which carpets its banks; like its two cousins
it splits into an infinity of little branches; it increases as it flows
and although it always gains ground turns and returns upon itself
eternally.
[Footnote 83: "Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous
purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired...."
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_.]
The whole Sun is watered with the moisture of these three rivers; it
serves to dilute the burning atoms of those who die in this great
world; but this deserves to be treated more at length.
The life of animals in the Sun is very long; they only die by a natural
death, which never occurs until the end of seven or eight thousand
years, when from the continuous excesses of mind to which their fiery
temperament inclines them, the order of their matter grows confused;
for as soon as Nature feels in a body that more time is needed to
repair the ruins of its being than to compose a new one, she tends to
dissolve it; so that from day to day the animal is seen, not to rot,
but to fall into particles like red ashes.
Death only happens in this way. When he has expired, or rather, is
extinguished, the small igneous bodies which composed his substance
enter the gross matter of this lighted world until chance has watered
them with the fluid of these three rivers; for then, becoming mobile
through their fluidity, with the purpose of exercising quickly
the faculties which this water has impressed upon their obscure
comprehension, they attach themselves in long threads, and, by a
flood of luminous points sharpen into rays and are scattered upon
the surrounding spheres, where they are no sooner enveloped than
they arrange the matter as far as they can in the shape proper to
exercise all the functions, whose instinct they acquired in the
water of the three rivers, the five fountains and the Pool; and so
they allow themselves to be attracted to plants to vegetate; plants
allow themselves to be cropped by animals to feel, and animals allow
themselves to be eaten by men in order that by passing into their
substance they may repair those three faculties of Memory, Imagination
and Judgment, whose power they presaged in the rivers of the Sun.
Now, according to whether the atoms have been more or less soaked in
the moisture of these three rivers, they bring the animals more or less
Memory, Imagination or Judgment; and according to whether, while they
were in the three rivers, they absorbed more or less of the liquid of
the five fountains and of the little Lake, they elaborate in them more
or less perfect senses and produce more or less sleepy souls.
This is approximately what we observed, as touching the nature of these
three rivers. Their little veins are to be met with scattered here
and there; but the principal arms all debouch in the province of the
philosophers; and so we returned to the highway without going farther
from the stream than was necessary to get on to the road. We could see
the whole time the three large rivers flowing beside us; but we watched
from above the five streams winding below us through the meadows.
This road, although solitary, is very agreeable; one breathes a free
subtle air there, which feeds the soul and causes it to reign over the
passions.
At the end of five or six days' journey, while we were delighting
our eyes in considering the different rich aspects of the landscape,
a languishing voice like a sick person moaning reached our ears. We
approached the place from which we imagined it might come and on the
bank of the river Imagination we found an old man, who had fallen
backwards and was uttering loud cries. Tears of compassion came into
my eyes and the pity I felt for this wretch's misfortune compelled me
to ask the reason.
"This man", replied Campanella, turning towards me, "is a philosopher
in the death agony; for we die more than once, and since we are
merely parts of this Universe we change our shape in order to take
up our lives again elsewhere; and this is not an evil, but a method
of perfecting one's being and of acquiring an infinite amount of
knowledge. His malady is that which causes the death of nearly all
great men."
His discourse made me observe the sick man more attentively and at the
first glance I perceived that his head was as large as a butt and open
in various places.
"Come", said Campanella, drawing me by the arm, "all the help we should
think we were giving this dying man would be useless and would merely
serve to disturb him. Let us go on, since his disease is incurable. The
swelling of his head comes from his having over-exercised his mind; for
although the elements with which he has filled the three organs or the
three ventricles of his brain are very small images, they are corporeal
and consequently occupy a large space when they are very numerous. Now
you must know that this philosopher so swelled up his brain by piling
into it image upon image that, unable to contain them any longer, it
burst. This manner of dying is that of great geniuses, and is called
_Bursting with Wit_."
We walked on as we talked and the first things which presented
themselves to us furnished us with subjects of conversation. I should
have liked to leave the opaque regions of the Sun and to return to
those which are luminous; for the reader knows that all its countries
are not diaphanous: some are obscure as in our world and but for the
light of a Sun, which is seen there, would be enveloped in darkness.
Now, in proportion as one enters these opaque regions one gradually
becomes opaque and on approaching the transparent regions one sheds
that dark obscurity under the vigorous irradiation of the climate.
I remember that, apropos this desire which consumed me, I asked
Campanella whether the province of the philosophers were brilliant or
shadowy.
"It is more shadowy than brilliant", he replied, "for since we still
sympathize greatly with the Earth, our native land, which is opaque by
nature, we have not been able to settle in the brightest regions of
this globe. Nevertheless, when we so desire we can render ourselves
diaphanous by a vigorous effort of will; and the greater part of the
philosophers do not even speak with the tongue but, when they desire
to communicate their thought, they purge themselves by a sally of
their fantasy of a dark vapour under which their conceptions are
generally hidden; and as soon as they have caused this darkness of the
spleen, which darkened them, to return to its seat, their body becomes
diaphanous and there can be perceived through their brain what they
remember, what they imagine, what they judge; and in their liver and
their heart what they desire and what they resolve; for although these
little portraits are more imperceptible than anything we can imagine,
yet in this world our eyes are sharp enough to distinguish easily the
smallest ideas.
"Thus, when one of us desires to show his friend the affection he bears
to him, his heart is seen to throw its rays as far as his memory upon
the image of the person he loves; and when on the contrary he desires
to show his aversion, his heart is seen to project swirls of burning
sparks against the image of the person he hates and to retire as far as
possible from it: similarly, when he speaks to himself the elements,
that is to say, the character of everything he is meditating upon, are
clearly seen either impressed or in relief, presenting before the eyes
of the onlooker not an articulated speech, but a pictured story of all
his thoughts."
My guide would have continued, but he was interrupted by an accident
hitherto unheard of: and this was that we suddenly perceived the earth
grow dark beneath our feet and the burning rays of the sky grow faint
above our heads, as if a canopy four leagues square had been spread
betwixt us and the Sun.
It would be difficult to tell you what we imagined at this occurrence;
we were assailed by all manner of terrors, even by that of the end
of the world, and none of these terrors seemed to us beyond all
likelihood; for, to see night in the Sun or the air darkened with
clouds, is a miracle which never happens there. But this was not all;
immediately afterwards a sharp squealing noise, like the sound of a
pulley turning rapidly, struck our ears and at the same time we saw a
cage fall at our feet. Scarcely had it touched the sand when it opened
and was delivered of a man and a woman; they dragged out an anchor,
which they hooked in the roots of a rock; after which we saw them
coming towards us. The woman led the man and dragged him along with
menaces. When she was near us she said in a slightly excited voice:
"Gentlemen, is not this the province of philosophers?"
I answered that it was not, but that we hoped to arrive there in
twenty-four hours, that the old man, who suffered me to remain in his
company, was one of the principal officers of that monarchy.
"Since you are a philosopher", replied this woman, addressing
Campanella, "I must unburden my heart here before going any further.[84]
[Footnote 84: This episode allows Cyrano to jest a little at some of
the absurd sexual ideas of More and Campanella.]
"To tell you in a few words the matter which brings me here, you must
know that I come to complain of a murder committed upon the person of
my youngest child; this barbarian I am holding has killed it twice,
although he was its father."
We were mightily embarrassed by this discourse and so I desired to know
what she meant by a child that was killed twice.
"Know, then", replied the woman, "that in our country among other
statutes of Love there is a law to regulate how often a husband shall
pay his debt to his wife; therefore every evening each doctor goes
through all the houses of the district and, having examined the husband
and the wife, he allots them so many embraces for that night, according
to their good or bad health. My husband here was allotted seven;
however, piqued at some rather disdainful words I said to him as we
were undressing, he did not approach me all the time we were in bed.
But God, who avenges the cause of the afflicted, permitted this wretch
(tickled by the thought of the kisses he had withheld from me) to waste
a man in a dream. I told you that his father killed him twice, because
by preventing him from existing he caused him not to exist, which
was his first murder; and he caused him never to have existed, which
was the second; while an ordinary murderer knows that the person he
deprives of the daylight ceases to exist, but he cannot cause him not
to have existed at all. Our magistrates would have made short work of
him; but he cunningly excused himself by saying he would have performed
his conjugal duty if he had not feared that by embracing me in the
height of the anger I had put him into he would beget a frantic man.
"The senate, embarrassed by this justification, ordered us to go to the
philosophers and to plead our cause before them. As soon as we received
the order to go we entered a cage hung on the neck of the great bird
you see there, from which we lower ourselves to the ground and hoist
ourselves into the air by means of a pulley attached to it. In our
province there are persons expressly employed in taming them when young
and in training them for the tasks which render them useful to us.
They are principally urged to yield themselves to discipline contrary
to their ferocious natures, by their hunger, which is almost always
unsatisfied; and so we abandon to them the bodies of all beasts which
die. For the rest, when we desire to sleep (for, on account of the too
continuous excesses of love which weaken us, we need repose) we send up
from the country at regular intervals twenty or thirty of these birds,
each attached to a cord and, as they fly up, their vast wings spread in
the sky a shadow wider than the horizon."
I was very attentive to her discourse and observed in an ecstasy the
enormous height of this giant bird; but as soon as Campanella had
looked at it a little he exclaimed:
"Ha! Truly, it is one of those feathered monsters called condors which
are seen in the island of Mandragora in our world and throughout the
torrid zone; they cover an acre of ground with their wings; but since
these animals become larger in proportion as the Sun, which saw their
birth, is more heated, it cannot be but that they are of a fearful size
in the world of the Sun.
"However", he added, turning towards the woman, "you must necessarily
continue your voyage since you have to be judged by Socrates, to whom
the supervision of morals has been allotted. But I beg you to tell us
of what country you are, because I have only been three or four years
in this world and do not yet know the map."
"We are", she replied, "from the Kingdom of Lovers; this great state
is bounded on one side by the republic of Peace and on the other by
that of the Just. In the country whence I come the boys at the age of
sixteen enter the novitiate of Love: this is a most sumptuous palace
which covers nearly a quarter of the city. As for the girls, they enter
it at thirteen. There they spend a year of probation, during which the
boys are only occupied in deserving the affection of the girls and the
girls in making themselves worthy of the friendship of the boys. At
the end of twelve months the Faculty of Medicine visits this Seminary
of Lovers in a body; they examine them all one after another, down to
the most secret parts of their persons, and cause them to couple before
their eyes; and then in proportion as the male is found by experiment
to be vigorous and suitable, he is given as his wives ten, twenty,
thirty or forty girls from among those who affect him, provided the
affection be reciprocal.[85] The husband, however, may only lie with
two at once and he is not allowed to embrace any of them while she
is pregnant. Those women who are found to be sterile are employed
as menials and impotent men are made slaves and can mingle carnally
with the sterile women.[86] For the rest, when a family has more
children than it can feed the republic looks after them; but this is a
misfortune which never happens, because as soon as a woman is delivered
in the city, the treasury furnishes an annual sum for the education
of the child according to its rank, and the treasurers of the state
themselves carry the money to the father's house on a given day. But
if you wish to know more, come into our basket, it is large enough for
four. Since we are going the same road we will deceive the length of
the way by talk."
[Footnote 85: This is especially aimed at Sir Thomas More: "For a sad
and an honest matrone sheweth the woman, be she mayde or widdowe, naked
to the wower. And lykewise a sage and discreet man exhibyteth the wower
naked to the woman". _The Seconde Booke of Utopia._]
[Footnote 86: "Nel tempo innanzi é ad alcuno lecito il coito con le
donne sterile et pregne...." (Campanella, _Città del Sole_.)]
Campanella was of the opinion that we should accept the offer. I, too,
was very glad to avoid the fatigue; but when I came to help them weigh
the anchor I was very surprised to find that instead of a large cable
to hold it, it was hung on a thread of silk as fine as a hair. I asked
Campanella how it could be that a heavy mass, such as this anchor
was, did not break so frail a thing with its weight; and the good man
replied that this cord did not break, because it had been spun equally
throughout and therefore had no reason to break at one point more than
at another. We crowded into the basket and then pulleyed[87] ourselves
up to the bird's throat, where we seemed like a bell hung round his
neck. When we found ourselves touching the pulley we fastened the
cable to which our cage was hung round one of the lightest feathers of
its down, which nevertheless was as thick as a thumb; and as soon as
the woman had signed to the bird to start we felt ourselves cleaving
the sky with violent rapidity. The condor diminished or increased its
flight, rose or sank, at the will of its mistress, whose voice served
it as a bridle. We had not flown two hundred leagues, when on our
left hand we saw upon the ground a shadow similar to that produced
underneath us by our living parasol. We asked the strange woman what
she thought it was.
[Footnote 87: Cyrano coined this verb, "to pulley".]
"It is another malefactor on his way to be judged in the province
whither we are going; his bird is no doubt stronger than ours or else
we have wasted a good deal of time, since he left after me."
I asked her of what crime this wretch was accused.
"He is not merely accused", she replied, "he is condemned to die,
because he is already convicted of not fearing death."
"What", said Campanella, "do the laws of your country order that death
should be feared?"
"Yes", replied the woman, "they enjoin it upon all except those who
have been received into the College of Wise Men; for our magistrates
have proved from disastrous experience that he who does not fear to
lose his life is capable of taking the life of anyone also."
After some more conversation resulting from this, Campanella desired to
know at more length the manners of her country. He asked her what were
the laws and customs of the Kingdom of Lovers, but she excused herself
from speaking of them, because she had not been born there and only
half knew it; for which reason she was afraid of saying either too much
or too little.
"I come indeed from that province", continued the woman, "but I and
all my ancestors were inhabitants of the Kingdom of Truth; my mother
was delivered of me there and had no other child. She brought me up
in that country until I was thirteen, when the king, by the doctor's
advice, ordered her to take me to the Kingdom of Lovers whence I come,
so that by being bred up in the place of Love, a softer and more joyous
education than that of our country would render me more fertile than
she. My mother took me there and placed me in the House of Pleasure.
"I had great difficulty in growing used to their customs. At first they
appeared to me very uncivilised; for, as you know, the opinions we have
sucked in with our milk always appear to us the most reasonable and I
had only just arrived from my native land, the Kingdom of Truth.
"I did indeed perceive that this Nation of Lovers lived with much more
gentleness and indulgence than ours; for although everyone averred that
the sight of me wounded him dangerously, that my looks were mortal,
and that my eyes sent out a flame which consumed all hearts, yet the
kindness of everybody and principally of the young men was so great
that they caressed me, kissed me, and embraced me, instead of avenging
upon me the ill I had done them. I even grew angry with myself for the
disorders of which I was the cause; and, moved by compassion, I one
day revealed to them the resolution I had taken of running away. 'But,
alas! how will you escape', they all cried, throwing themselves on my
neck and kissing my hands, 'your house is besieged by water on all
sides and the danger appears so great that without a miracle you and we
shall inevitably be drowned'."
"What", I interrupted, "is the country of Lovers liable to
inundations?"[88]
[Footnote 88: In spite of M. Lachèvre, I cannot help thinking that
Cyrano is making fun of the _précieux_ style in all this.]
"It must be so", she replied, "for one of my lovers (and this man would
not have deceived me, since he loved me) wrote to me that his regret at
my departure had caused him to shed an ocean of tears. I saw another
who assured me that for three days his eye-balls had distilled a river
of tears; and as I was cursing (out of love for them) the fatal hour
when they saw me, one of those who was numbered among my slaves sent to
tell me that the night before his over-flowing eyes had made a flood. I
was about to take myself off from the world, so that I might no longer
be the cause of so many misfortunes, but the messenger added that his
master had bidden him assure me there was nothing to fear, because the
furnace of his bosom had dried up the flood. You may easily conjecture
that the Kingdom of Lovers must be very aquatic, since with them it
is but half-weeping, unless streams, fountains and torrents flow from
beneath their eyelids.
"I was greatly troubled to know by what machine I could escape all the
waters flowing in upon me. But one of my lovers, who was known as the
Jealous, advised me to tear out my heart and then to embark in it; he
added that I should not fear it would fail to hold me, because it held
so many others, nor that it would sink, because it was too light, and
that all I had to fear would be burning, because the matter of such a
vessel was very liable to fire; and that I should set out upon the sea
of his tears, that the bandage of his love would serve me as a sail and
that the favourable wind of his sighs would carry me safe to port in
spite of the tempest of his rivals.
"For a long time I meditated how I could put this enterprise into
execution. The natural timidity of my sex prevented me from daring
it; but at last the opinion I had that no man would be so foolish as
to advise it if the thing were impossible, still less a lover to his
mistress, gave me courage.
"I grasped a knife, I pierced my breast; already my two hands were
groping in the wound and with an intrepid gaze I sought my heart to
tear it out, when a man who loved me arrived. He wrested the steel away
from me against my will and then asked me the motive of an action,
which he called despairing. I related what had happened; but I was very
surprised when a quarter of an hour later I learned that he had handed
the Jealous over to justice. But the magistrates, who feared perhaps
to attach too much importance to the example or the novelty of the
incident, sent the case to the parliament of the Kingdom of the Just.
There he was condemned to banishment for life and to end his days as a
slave in the territories of the Republic of Truth, with a prohibition
to all his descendants down to the fourth generation to set foot in the
Province of Lovers; moreover, he was enjoined never to use hyperboles
on pain of death.
"From that time on I conceived a great affection for the young man who
had preserved me; and either on account of this service or because
of the passion he had shown me I did not refuse him when, on the
completion of his novitiate and mine, he asked me to be one of his
wives.
"We have always lived comfortably together and we should still have
done so had he not, as I have informed you, killed one of my children
twice, for which I am about to implore vengeance in the Kingdom of
Philosophers."
Campanella and I were vastly astonished at this man's complete silence;
and I was about to try to console him, judging that so profound a
silence was the daughter of a most profound grief, when his wife
prevented me.
"'Tis not excess of grief closes his mouth, but our laws, which forbid
every criminal awaiting his trial to speak except before his judges."
During this conversation the bird continued to advance, when I was
astonished to hear Campanella exclaim, with a face filled with joy and
delight:
"Welcome, dearest of all my friends; come, gentlemen, come", continued
this good man, "let us meet Monsieur Descartes; let us descend, there
he is not three leagues from here."
For my part I was greatly surprised by this sally, for I could not
understand how he could know of the arrival of a person of whom we had
received no news.
"Assuredly", said I, "you have just seen him in a dream."