part I

took to my heels during the hottest of the scuffle. I entrusted my safety to my legs and they would soon have brought me off happily but, unluckily, the looks which everybody once more turned on me, threw me afresh into my former fears. If the sight of a hundred rags, which danced around me like a maypole-dance of the rabble, caused some gaper to stare at me, straightway I apprehended that he read upon my forehead that I was a prisoner at large. If a saunterer put out his hand from beneath his cloak, I imagined a catchpole stretching out his hand to arrest me. If I noticed another striding along without lifting his eyes upon me I was convinced he was pretending not to see me in order to grasp me from the rear. If I saw a tradesman enter his shop I said: "He is taking down his halberd." If I passed through a district more crowded than usual I thought, "So many people have not met here without a purpose." If another part was deserted, "They are watching for me here." Was there some impediment to my flight, "They have barricaded the streets to surround me." At last my fear debauched my reason and I imagined every man was an archer, every word "arrest" and every noise the unendurable creaking of the bolts in my late prison.

Hag-ridden by this panic terror I resolved to beg once more, in order to pass through the remainder of the town to the posting station without suspicion, but as I feared my voice might be recognized, I added to the exercise of begging the device of counterfeiting dumbness. I therefore went up to those who, as I perceived, were looking at me; then I pointed a finger above my chin, then above my mouth and gaped it wide with an inarticulate cry to make it understood by my grimace that a poor mute was asking alms. Sometimes I was charitably given an eleemosynary shrug; sometimes I felt some oddment thrust into my hand; and sometimes I heard women say that it might well be that I had been martyrized in this way in Turkey. In short I learned that begging is a large book which teaches us the manners of people far more cheaply than all those great voyages of Columbus and Magellan.

This device nevertheless failed to weary the obstinacy of my fate or to win over its evil disposition; yet what other course could I adopt? For, in crossing a town like Toulouse, where my engraving had made me familiar even to the fish-wives, dressed as I was in rags as motley as Harlequin's, was it not probable that I should be observed and immediately recognized? And that the counter-spell to this danger was to play the beggar, whose part is played by all manner of faces? And even if this ruse were not devised with all the necessary caution, I still think that amid so many unhappy circumstances I showed strong judgment by not losing my head entirely.

I continued thus on my way when on a sudden I found myself obliged to return on my steps; for my venerable gaoler, with some dozen archers of his acquaintance, who had delivered him from the hands of the rabble, were up in arms and patrolling the whole town in search of me, and unhappily crossed my path. As soon as they saw me with their lynx eyes with one accord they rushed upon me full speed and I fled away at the top of mine. I was so sharply pursued that every moment my liberty felt at my neck the breath of the tyrants who would oppress it; but it seemed the air they puffed out as they ran behind me blew me before them. At last Heaven or fear gave me a space of four or five turnings in front of them. My pursuers lost track and scent of me and I lost the sight and turmoil of this troublesome chase. Certainly those who have not experienced similar agonies at first hand will hardly understand with what joy I trembled when I found I had escaped. But since my safety demanded all my attention, I resolved to employ most carefully the time which would elapse before they caught up with me. I daubed my face, rubbed my hair with dust, put off my doublet, loosened my breeches, threw my hat in a ventilator; then I spread out my handkerchief on the pavement with a little stone at each corner, like those who are sick of the plague, lay beside it with my belly on the ground and began to groan very grievously in a piteous tone. I had scarcely done this when I heard the noise of this hoarse-throated populace long before the sound of their feet; but I had enough self-control to remain in the same position in the hope of not being recognized; in this I was not deceived, for they all took me to be plague-smitten and passed me very nimbly, holding their noses and most of them throwing a farthing into my handkerchief.

The storm over, I went down an alley, put on my clothes again and abandoned myself to Fortune once more, but I had run so hard she was weary of following me. I suppose this was the case: the glorious Goddess was not accustomed to walk so quickly, and as I went through squares and crossroads, through and across streets, to conceal my way the better, she let me fall blindly into the hands of the archers who were pursuing me. At meeting me they uttered so furious a yell that I was deafened. They seemed to think they had not enough arms to arrest me, so they used their teeth and even then were not sure they had me; one dragged me along by the hair, another by the collar, while the more temperate went through my pockets. This search was more successful than that in the prison; they found the rest of my gold.

While these charitable physicians were occupied in curing the dropsy of my purse, a great clamour arose; the whole square echoed with the words "Kill, kill!" and at the same time I saw the glitter of swords. The gentlemen who were haling me along exclaimed that these were the Grand Provost's archers who wanted to rob them of their prey. "But", said they to me, dragging me harder than ever, "beware of falling into their hands, you will be condemned in twenty-four hours and the King himself cannot save you." At last, however, they grew apprehensive as the scuffle involved them and they abandoned me so completely that I was standing alone in the middle of the street while the aggressors dispatched everyone they met.

I leave you to imagine whether I took to my heels, I who had reason to fear both parties equally. In a little time I drew away from the hubbub, but as I was asking the way to the posting station, a torrent of people running from the brawl dashed into my street. I was unable to resist the crowd, so I went with it, and growing angry at so much running I reached at length a small very dark door into which I rushed pell-mell with other fugitives. We bolted it behind us and when everyone had recovered breath one of the group said:

"Comrades, if you will take my advice, we shall go through the two gates and hold firm in the prison-yard."

These terrible words hit my ears with so astounding a pain that I thought I should fall dead on the spot. Alas! I perceived immediately, but too late, that instead of escaping to a refuge as I had thought, I had merely cast myself into prison, so impossible is it for any man to escape the influence of his star. I looked at this man more attentively and I saw he was one of the archers who had so long pursued me. A cold sweat rose to my forehead and I became pale and ready to swoon. Those who saw me so ill were moved by compassion and called for water; everyone drew near to help me, unhappily that accursed archer was one of the first and he no sooner cast his eyes upon me than he recognised me. He made a sign to his companions and at the same time greeted me with a "I take you prisoner in the King's name." They had not far to go to my cell.

I remained in the lower prison until evening, when each of the warders, one after the other, by means of an exact and critical examination of all the parts of my face drew my picture on the canvas of his memory.[56]

[Footnote 56: Mr Pickwick in the Fleet, "sitting for his portrait"!]

As seven o'clock struck, the noise of a bunch of keys gave the signal for bed. I was asked if I wished to be shown into the one-pistole room; I replied with a nod. "The money then!" replied my guide. I knew I was in a place where I should have to swallow many more insults. I therefore prayed him, if his courtesy could not bring him to trust me until the morning, to ask the gaoler from me to return the money which had been taken from me.

"Ho! By my faith", responded the rascal, "our master has a stout heart, he never returns anything. Do you think your lovely nose.... Hey, off with you, into the black dungeons!"

With these words he showed me the way with a savage blow from his bunch of keys, whose weight overthrew me and tumbled me from top to bottom of a dark flight of stairs down to the foot of a door which stopped me; I should not have known it was one without the sparks from the shock with which I struck it, for I had lost my eyes, they remained at the top of the stairs in the shape of a candle held twenty-four steps above me by my hangman of a warder. This man came down gradually, opened some thirty large locks, undid as many bolts, pushed the door a little and with a blow of his knee hurled me into this hole, whose horrors I had not time to see, he closed the door so quickly. I was standing in mud up to the knees. If I tried to reach the side I sank up to the waist. The awful croaking of frogs as they squatted in the mud made me long to be deaf; I felt lizards wandering along my thighs and snakes twining about my neck; I perceived one by the sombre glow of its glinting eye-balls darting a three-pronged tongue from its venom-blackened throat, while its brusque movement made it seem like a thunderbolt with the look of the eyes for the flash.

I am completely unable to express the remainder; it surpasses all belief and I dare not attempt to recollect it, so much do I fear that my present certainty of having escaped this prison may turn out to be a dream from which I shall awake. The hand on the dial of the great tower pointed to ten before anyone knocked at my tomb, but about that time when the anguish of a bitter grief began to grip my heart and to disturb that equilibrium which makes life, I heard a voice bidding me grasp a rod that was held out to me. After groping for some time in obscurity to find it I touched the end, grasped it with emotion, and my gaoler, pulling it towards him, fished me out of the bog. I suspected my affairs had taken a turn for the better, because he offered me profound civilities, only spoke to me with his head uncovered and told me that five or six people of quality were waiting in the courtyard to see me. This savage brute who had shut me in the dungeon I have described had the impudence to accost me. Having kissed my hands, with one knee on the ground, he plucked out with one paw a quantity of slugs which had stuck in my hair and with the other he pulled off a great heap of leeches which masked my face. After this exquisite courtesy he said:

"You will at least remember, good master, the care and trouble taken of you by fat Nicholas. Pardi, even if it had been for the King, it isn't to be grudged you."

Enraged by the rogue's effrontery, I made a sign that I would remember. By a thousand terrifying windings I reached the light at last and then the courtyard, where as soon as I entered I was grasped by two men I could not recognize, because they threw themselves on me at once and each kept his face pressed against mine. For some time I did not know who they were, but when their transports of friendship were a little abated I recognised my dear Colignac and the brave Marquis. Colignac had his arm in a sling and Cussan was the first to emerge from his ecstasy.

"Alas!" said he, "we should never have suspected such a disaster, had it not been for your horse and the mule which arrived last night at the gates of my house; their breast-pieces, their saddle, girths and their cruppers were all broken, which made us anticipate something of your misfortune. We got to horse at once and had ridden but two or three leagues towards Colignac, when the whole countryside, alarmed by the accident, described to us what had happened. We galloped off immediately to the town where you were imprisoned, but learning there that you had escaped and hearing a rumour that you had gone in the direction of Toulouse, we came on at full speed with the servants we had with us. The first person whom we asked for news of you said you had been recaptured. We turned our horses towards this prison, but other people assured us you had vanished from the hands of the police. And as we pushed on we heard the bourgeois relating to each other the story that you had become invisible. At length by continually making inquiries we learned that after you had been taken, lost and retaken I know not how many times, you were being carried to prison in the Large Tower. We intercepted your archers and with a good fortune more apparent than real we met them, attacked them, fought them and put them to flight, but we failed to learn even from the wounded we had captured what had become of you, until this morning, when we were informed that you had blindly come to prison of your own accord for safety. Colignac is wounded in several places, but very slightly. For the rest, we have arranged for you to be lodged in the best room here. Since you like fresh air we have furnished a little room for you alone at the top of the Large Tower, where the terrace will serve you as a balcony; your eyes at least will be at liberty, in spite of the body which confines them."

"Ah! My dear Drycona", cried the Count, taking his turn to speak, "we 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.

"I will reveal to you", he replied, "secrets which are not known in your climate. Look carefully at the ground on which we walk; a little while ago it was a confused and disordered mass, a chaos of intricate matter, a black and slimy dross thrown off by the Sun. After it had mingled, pressed and made compact these numerous clouds of atoms by the vigour of the rays still cast forth; after, I say, a long and powerful maturation had separated in this ball the most contrary bodies and united the most similar, this mass was so provoked by heat and sweated so much that it caused a deluge, which covered it more than forty days; for that space of time was fully needed by so much water to flow into the lowest and most sloping parts of our globe.

"From these united torrents of water was formed the sea, whose salt still proves that it must be a mass of sweat, since all sweat is salt. Following upon the retreat of the waters there remained on this earth a fat and fertile mud, and when the Sun shone upon it it rose like a blister, which cannot cast out its germ on account of the cold. It then received another maturation and this maturation rectified and perfected it by a more exact mixture and thereby the germ, which was only able hitherto to vegetate, was rendered capable of sentience. But the waters, which had settled so long on the mud, had chilled it too much and the pimple did not burst; and so the Sun heated it up once more. After the third digestion this womb was so heated that the cold no longer made an obstacle to its delivery: it opened and brought forth a man who has retained in his liver (which is the seat of the vegetative soul and the place of first maturation) the power of multiplying; in his heart (which is the seat of activity and the place of the second maturation) vital power: and in the brain (which is the seat of the intellect and the place of the third maturation) the power of reasoning. Otherwise, why should we be longer in the belly of our mothers than all other animals, if it were not that our embryo must receive three distinct maturations to form the three distinct faculties of our soul, and beasts only two, to form their two powers? I know that the horse is only completed by ten, twelve or fourteen months in the belly of a mare; but since its constitution is so contrary to that which makes us men, since it is never born except in those months (notice!) which are entirely hostile to our birth, when we remain in the womb beyond the normal time, it is not surprising that Nature needs a longer time for the delivery of a mare than of a woman.[58]

[Footnote 58: This sentence is so obscure that I do not understand it either in French or English.]

"Yes, but, someone will say, the horse remains longer in its mother's belly than we do and consequently it receives either more perfect or more numerous maturations!

"I reply that it does not follow; for without relying on the observations on the energy of numbers made by so many learned men proving that, since all matter is in movement, certain beings are completed in a certain revolution of days and destroyed in another, and without strengthening myself with the proofs, whereby they deduce (after explaining the cause of all these movements) that the number nine is the most perfect; I shall content myself by replying that the germ of man is hotter and so the Sun fashions and completes more organs in him in nine months than it sketches out in a year in that of a colt. And it cannot be doubted that a horse is much colder than a man, since this animal only dies of a swollen spleen or other diseases which proceed from melancholy.

"Nevertheless, you will say, in our world we never see a man engendered from mud and produced in this fashion.

"I am sure that your world is now too heated; for as soon as the Sun attracts a germ from the Earth it does not meet that cold damp or, to put it better, that certain period of a completed movement which forces it to several maturations, and so it immediately forms a vegetable; or if two maturations take place, the second has no time to complete itself perfectly and so it only brings forth an insect: thus, I have noticed that the monkey, which like us carries its young nearly nine months, resembles us in so many ways that many naturalists do not distinguish the species from us; and the reason is that their seed is tempered much like ours and during this time has almost been able to complete the three digestions.

"You will undoubtedly ask me from whom I derive the story I have just told you: you will tell me that I cannot have learnt it from those who were not there. It is true that I was the only person there and, consequently, I cannot bear witness to it because it happened before I was born. That is true; but learn that, in a region so near the Sun as ours, souls are filled with fire and are clearer, more subtle and more penetrating than those of other animals in more distant spheres. Now, since even in your world there were prophets whose minds when heated by a vigorous enthusiasm presaged the future, it is not impossible that in this world, so much nearer the Sun and consequently so much more luminous than yours, some odour of the past should reach a powerful genius, that his mobile reason should move backwards as well as forwards and that it should be able to reach a cause by effects, seeing that it can reach effects by a cause."

In this way he finished what he was saying; but after a still more private conversation in which he revealed to me very hidden secrets (one part of which I shall keep silent, while the rest has escaped my memory) he told me that not three weeks before a lump of earth impregnated by the Sun had brought him forth.

"Look at that tumour."

He then pointed out to me something on the mud swollen like a molehill.

"It is", said he, "a boil or, to speak more correctly, a womb which for the last nine months has held the embryo of one of my brothers. I am waiting here for the purpose of acting as his midwife."

He would have gone on had he not perceived the earth palpitating around this clay sod. This, together with the size of the pimple, caused him to judge that the earth was in labour and that this motion was already the effort of the pains of delivery. He left me at once to run to it; and I went off to look for my cabin.

I climbed up the mountain, whence I had descended, and reached its top with some exertion. You may conceive my distress when I found my machine was not where I had left it. I was already sighing for its loss when I saw it fluttering a long way off. I rushed after it at top speed as fast as my legs permitted, and indeed it was an agreeable pastime to contemplate this new method of hunting; for, sometimes when I almost had my hand upon it there would be a slight increase of heat in the glass ball, which drew up the air with more force, and, as this air became swifter, lifted my box above me and made me jump after it like a cat at the hook where it sees a hare hanging. If my shirt had not remained on the roof, and thereby intercepted the force of the mirrors, the box would have gone off on its travels alone.

But to what end do I refresh the memory of an adventure which I cannot recollect now except with a pain such as I then felt? It suffices to know that the box bounded, ran and flew, and that I leaped, walked and strode, until at last I saw it fall at the foot of a very tall mountain. It would very likely have led me further if the shadow of this proud swelling of the earth, which darkened the sky far into the plain, had not spread half a league of darkness around it; for when my box reached these shadows, its glass no sooner felt the coolness than it ceased to create a vacuum, with wind through the hole, and consequently there was no impulse to sustain it; in so much that it fell and would have been broken into a thousand pieces had not the pool into which it fell happily yielded under its weight. I drew it from the water, repaired what was disorganized, and then grasping it with all my strength, carried it to the top of a hill which was close at hand. There, I spread out my shirt around the globe, but I could not clothe it, because the mirrors at once began their office and I perceived my cabin already wriggling to fly. I had only time to step nimbly in and to shut myself up as before.

The sphere of our World appeared to me no more than a planet about the size the Moon appears to us; and, as I continued to rise, it lessened first into a star, then into a spark and then into nothing; this luminous point grew so fine, to equalize itself with that which ended the last ray of my sight, that finally it merged into the colour of the sky. Some may perhaps be astonished that I was not overtaken by sleep during this long voyage; but, since sleep is only produced by the soft exhalation of meats evaporating from the stomach to the brain or by a need felt by Nature to knit up our soul in order to repair during rest the spirits consumed by labour, I had no need to sleep, seeing that I did not eat and that the Sun gave me much more radical heat than I expended. However, I continued to rise and as I approached that burning world I felt a certain joy flowing in my blood, which rectified it and passed into the soul. From time to time I looked up to admire the brightness of the tints which shone in my little crystal dome; and I still remember that as I directed my eyes towards the glass ball I felt with a start something heavy fly out from all the parts of my body. A whirlwind of very thick and almost palpable smoke suffocated my glass with darkness; I stood up to examine this darkness which blinded me and I saw no vessel, no mirrors, no glass, no covering to my cabin. I looked down to see what was making my masterpiece fall in ruins, but in its place and in place of the four sides and the floor I found nothing but the sky about me. What terrified me still more was to feel some invisible obstacle repulsing my arms when I tried to extend them, as if the air had been petrified. It came into my mind then that I had risen so high I must have reached the part of the firmament which certain philosophers and some astronomers have said is solid.

I began to feel I should remain enshrined there, but the horror which overwhelmed me at the strangeness of this accident was increased by those which followed; for, as my sight ranged here and there, it fell on my breast and, instead of stopping at the outer surface of my body, passed through it; then a moment afterwards I perceived that I was looking backwards with hardly any interlapse. As if my body had become nothing but an organ of sight I felt my flesh, purged of its opacity, carry objects to my eyes, and my eyes to objects by its means. At last, after striking a thousand times without seeing them, the roof, the floor and the walls of my chair, I understood that my cabin and I had become transparent, owing to some secret necessity of light at its source. Although it was diaphanous I might still have perceived it, since we clearly perceive glass, crystal and diamonds, which are also diaphanous; but I imagine that in a region so near the Sun that luminary purges bodies much more perfectly of their opacity by arranging the imperceptible channels of matter straighter than in our world, where its strength is almost exhausted by so long a journey and is scarcely capable of transpiring its light into precious stones; yet on account of the interior equality of their superficies it causes them to cast back through their glasses (as if through little eyes) either the green of emeralds, the scarlet of rubies or the violet of amethysts as the different pores of the stone, whether straighter or more sinuous, extinguish or rekindle this enfeebled light by the quantity of the reflections. One difficulty may embarrass the reader, which is how I could see myself and yet not see my box, since I had become as diaphanous as it was. To this I reply that the Sun doubtless acts differently upon living than upon inanimate bodies, since no portion of my flesh, of my bones, or of my entrails lost its natural colour though they were transparent; on the contrary, my lungs preserved their soft delicacy in an incarnadine red; my heart, still vermilion, swung easily between the systole and the diastole; my liver seemed to burn in a fiery purple and heating the air I breathed continued the circulation of my blood; in short, I saw, touched and smelt myself the same and yet I was not the same.

While I considered this metamorphosis my journey grew continually shorter, but at that time much more slow on account of the serenity of the ether, which grew rarefied the nearer I approached the source of the daylight; for, since at this stage matter is very subtle on account of the great amount of void with which it is filled, and since this matter is consequently very idle because of the void which is not

## active, the air, as it passed through the hole of my box, could only

produce a little wind barely able to sustain me.

I never think of the malicious caprices of Fortune, who continued to oppose the success of my enterprise with such obstinacy, but I wonder how it was my brain was not turned. But hearken now a miracle, which future ages will find it difficult to believe. Shut up in a transparent box, of which I had lost sight, with my movement so slackened that I did well not to fall back, in a state where all that the whole machine of the world encloses was powerless to aid me, I was reduced to the height of extreme misfortune; yet, just as when we are dying we are inwardly moved to desire to embrace those who gave us our being, so did I lift my eyes to the Sun, our common father. This ardour of my will not only bore up my body, but hurled it toward the thing which it desired to embrace. My body thrust on my box and in this fashion I continued my journey. As soon as I perceived this I stiffened all the faculties of my soul with more attention than ever to attach them in the imagination to what attracted me, but the efforts of my will forced me against the roof in spite of myself and the weight of my cabin on my head so incommoded me that finally the burden forced me to grope for its invisible door. Fortunately I found it, opened it and threw myself outside; but that natural apprehension of falling, which all animals have when they find themselves supported by nothing, made me stretch out my arm suddenly to catch hold of it. I was only guided by Nature, which cannot reason, and therefore Fortune, her enemy, maliciously thrust my hand against the crystal roof. Alas! What a thunder-clap it was in my ears when I heard the noise of the icosahedron breaking into fragments! So great a disorder, so great a misfortune, so great a terror are beyond all expression. The mirrors attracted no more air, for there was no more vacuum; the air ceased to become a wind by hastening to fill it; the wind ceased to urge my box upwards; in short, soon after this breakage I saw it falling far across the vast fields of the world and in that region it regained the opaque darkness it had exhaled. Since the energetic strength of the light diminished there, the box eagerly rejoined the dark density which was, as it were, essential to it, just as we see souls long after their separation return to seek their bodies, and, in trying to rejoin them, wander about their sepulchres for a hundred years. I surmise that it lost its transparency in this way, for I saw it afterwards in Poland in the same state as it was when I first entered it. I have since learned that it fell in the Kingdom of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; that a Portuguese merchant bought it from the islander who found it and that, passing from hand to hand, it came into the possession of the Polish engineer who now flies in it.[59]

[Footnote 59: It has been held that this refers to the "flying dragon" experimented with by Buratini at Warsaw in 1648. The evidence that Cyrano himself had visited Poland is very flimsy.]

Thus suspended in the airy regions of the sky, filled with consternation at the death I expected by my fall, I turned my sad eyes to the Sun, as I have already told you. My sight carried my thought with it and my looks fixedly attached to its globe marked out a way whose traces were followed by my will to lift my body there. This vigorous bound of my soul will not be incomprehensible to any one who will consider the most simple effects of our will; it is well known, for example, that when I wish to leap, my will, borne up by my fantasy, raises the whole microcosm and tries to carry it to the point desired, and if it does not always reach this, the reason is that the principles of Nature, which are universal, prevail over individuals, and, since the power of will is peculiar to sentient things and that of falling to the centre is common to all matter, my leap is forced to end when its mass, having conquered the insolence of the will which surprised it, draws near the point to which it tends.

I shall say nothing more of what happened on the rest of my journey for fear of taking as long to tell it as to make it; let it suffice that at the end of twenty-two months I landed very happily upon the great plains of the day. This land is like burning snow-flakes, so luminous is it. Yet it is an incredible thing which I have never been able to understand whether, after my box fell, I rose to or descended upon the Sun. I only remember that when I arrived there I walked lightly upon it; I only touched the ground by a point and I often rolled like a ball without finding it any more uncomfortable to walk with my head than with my feet. Although my legs were sometimes turned towards the sky and my shoulders towards the ground, I felt as naturally placed in this position as if my legs had been upon the ground and my shoulders towards the sky. On whatever part of my body I placed myself, on the belly, on the back, on an elbow, on an ear, I found myself upright. By this I perceived that the Sun is a world which has no centre and that, since I was far outside the active sphere of our world and all those I had met with, it was consequently impossible that I should still weigh, since weight is only the attraction of a centre within the sphere of its activity.

The respect with which I printed my steps upon this luminous country suspended for a time my burning ardour to continue my voyage. I felt myself ashamed to walk upon the daylight; my astonished body was desirous of support from my eyes and since this transparent land which they penetrated could not support them, my instinct, having mastered my thought in spite of me, drew me to the most hollow part of a depthless light. Little by little, however, my reason undeceived my instinct; I pressed assured and not trembling steps upon the plain and I counted my strides so proudly that if men could have perceived me from their world they would have taken me for the great God who walks upon the clouds. After I had walked about fifteen days, as I believe, I reached a district of the Sun less resplendent than that from which I came. I felt deeply moved by joy and I imagined that this joy was assuredly the result of a secret sympathy for its opacity retained by my being. The knowledge I had of it did not make me desist from my enterprise; for I was like those sleeping old men who, although they know that sleep is bad for them and that they have ordered their servants to deprive them of it, are nevertheless very annoyed at the time they are awakened. So, as my body grew darker when I reached more shaded provinces, it re-contracted the weaknesses brought by this infirmity of matter; I grew weary and sleep grasped me.

Those pleasing languors which possess us at the approach of sleep poured so much pleasure into my senses that, captured by pleasure, my senses forced my soul to thank the tyrant who chains his slaves; for sleep, that old tyrant of one half our days, who, on account of his old age, cannot endure the light or look upon it without swooning, had been forced to abandon me when I entered the brilliant climates of the Sun and had come to wait for me upon the borders of the shaded region of which I speak, where he caught me, arrested me his prisoner, and shut up his declared enemies, my eyes, under the dark vault of my eyelids; and, fearing lest my other senses should betray him as they had betrayed me and trouble him in the peaceable possession of his conquest, he tied down all of them to their beds. All this means in two words that I lay down very weary upon the sand. It was a flat plain, so bare that as far as I could see my sight did not even meet a bush; and yet when I woke up I found myself under a tree, in comparison with which the tallest cedars would seem like grass. Its trunk was of massive gold, its branches of silver and its leaves of emeralds, which, underneath the glittering green of their precious surface, reflected as in a mirror the images of the fruit which hung round about. But judge whether the fruit owed anything to the leaves: the burning scarlet of a large carbuncle formed one half of each and the other half was uncertain whether its material came from chrysolite or from a piece of golden amber; the open flowers were roses of very large diamonds and the buds were big, pear-shaped pearls. A nightingale, whose smooth plumage rendered him excellently beautiful, was perched on the summit and seemed with his melody desirous of forcing the eyes to confess to the ears that he was not unworthy of the throne upon which he was seated.

For a long time I remained amazed at the sight of so rich a spectacle and I could not be satiated with looking at it; but as I was occupying all my thoughts in contemplating among the other fruits an extraordinarily beautiful pomegranate, whose pulp was a cluster of several large rubies, I perceived the little crown which took the place of its head was moving and stretching out until it formed a neck. Then I saw something white seething above it which, by thickening, growing, advancing and retiring the matter in different places, at last appeared as the face of a small bust of flesh. This small bust ended in a circle about the waist; that is to say, its lower parts still kept the shape of an apple. Little by little it stretched out, its stem became two legs, and each of its legs split into five toes. This humanised pomegranate loosened itself from its stem and with a light bound fell exactly at my feet. Certainly I must admit I was impressed with veneration when I saw this little reasonable apple, this little piece of a dwarf no larger than my thumb, but strong enough to create itself, walking before me proudly.

"Human animal", he said in that mother-tongue, whereof I have formerly spoken, "after I had observed you for a long time from the branch on which I was hanging I thought I read in your face that you were not an inhabitant of this world, and for that reason I have descended to be enlightened by the truth."

When I had satisfied his curiosity about all the matters concerning which he questioned me, I said to him:

"But tell me who you are; what I have just seen is so very astonishing that I despair of ever knowing the cause unless you instruct me. What! a huge tree all of pure gold, whose leaves are emeralds, the flowers diamonds, the buds pearls, and, among all this, fruits which make themselves into men in the twinkling of an eye? For my