part I

admit that the comprehension of such a miracle passes my capacity."

I was awaiting his reply to this explanation, when he said:

"As I am the king of the nation which makes up this tree, you will not take it ill if I call them to follow me."

When he had spoken thus I noticed that he collected himself in meditation. I do not know if he wound up the interior springs of his will and thus excited outside himself the movement, which was the cause of what you are about to hear, but it is certain that immediately afterwards all the fruits, all the flowers, all the leaves, all the branches, in short, the whole tree, fell apart into little seeing, feeling and walking men, who began to dance around me as if to celebrate their birthday at the very moment of their birth. The nightingale alone retained its shape and was not metamorphosed; it came and perched on the shoulder of the little monarch, where it sang an air so melancholy and so amorous that the whole assembly, including the prince himself, were moved by the gentle languors of its dying voice and shed a few tears. My curiosity to learn whence this bird came caused me so extraordinary a longing to speak that I could not contain it.

"Seigneur", said I, addressing myself to the king, "if I did not fear to importune your majesty I should ask you why among so many metamorphoses the nightingale alone has kept its being?"

The little prince listened to me with a benevolence which showed his natural kindness; and, understanding my curiosity, he replied:

"The nightingale has not changed its form like us, because it could not. It is a real bird and is no more than it appears to be. But let us walk towards the opaque regions and on the way I will relate to you who I am, together with the story of the nightingale."

I had scarcely showed the satisfaction I received from his offer, when he bounded lightly on to one of my shoulders. He raised himself on his little toes to bring his mouth level with my ear; and sometimes hanging by my hair and sometimes sliding down it, he said:

"By my faith, you must excuse a person who is already out of breath. I have crowded lungs in a little body and my voice is consequently so weak that I am forced to strain to make myself heard. I hope the nightingale will speak for himself. Let him sing if he wishes, and we shall at least have the pleasure of hearing his story in music."

I replied that I was not yet sufficiently practised in the language of birds; that, indeed, a certain philosopher whom I had met on my way to the Sun had given me some general principles to understand that of the beasts, but that they were not enough to understand all words in general, nor enough for me to be moved by all the delicate points which would be met with in an adventure such as this must be.

"Well", said he, "since you will have it so, your ears shall be deprived not only of the nightingale's beautiful songs, but of almost all its adventure, whereof I can only tell you that part which has come to my knowledge; however, you must be content with this fragment, because, even if I knew it all, the brevity of our journey to its country, whither I am about to conduct you, would not permit me to take my story further."

Having spoken thus, he jumped from my shoulder to the ground. He then gave his hand to his little subjects and began to dance with them in a kind of movement which I cannot describe, because nothing like it has ever been seen. But hearken, nations of the Earth, to that which I do not compel you to believe, because it passed for a miracle in a world where your miracles are only natural effects! As soon as these little men began to dance I seemed to feel their motion in myself and my motion in them. I could not look upon this dance without being distinctly moved from where I was, as if a whirlwind agitated all the parts of my body with the same dance and the particular movement of each one; and I felt the same joy expanding upon my face which a similar movement had spread upon theirs. As the dance drew closer, the dancers became confused with a much more rapid and more imperceptible motion; it seemed that the object of the ballet was to represent an enormous giant; for as they drew nearer each other and redoubled the swiftness of their movement they became so closely mingled that I perceived nothing but a great, open and almost transparent colossus; and yet my eyes perceived them interlinked with each other. At this moment I began to be unable to distinguish any more the diversity of the movements of each, on account of their extreme rapidity and also because this rapidity shrank as it approached the centre, and thus each vortex at last occupied so little space that it escaped my sight. Yet I think these parts drew still closer together; for this once unwieldy human mass gradually reduced itself until it formed a young man of moderate height, all of whose limbs were proportioned with a symmetry to which perfection at its strongest idea could never have flown. He was beautiful beyond everything to which all painters have raised their fantasy; but what I thought very marvellous was that the connection of all the parts which completed this perfect microcosm took place within the twinkling of an eye. The most agile of our little dancers leaped up with a flourish to the height and into the position needed to form a head; others hotter and not so loose formed the heart; and others much heavier only supplied the bones, the flesh and the plumpness.

When this large, beautiful young man was entirely finished, although his rapid construction had scarcely allowed me any time to notice an interval in its progress, I saw the king of the whole people enter by the mouth, yet it seemed to me he was attracted into this body by the breathing of the body itself. All this mass of little men had not yet given any sign of life; but as soon as it had swallowed its little king, it felt itself one. He remained some time looking at me and then, as if he were grown familiar by looking, he approached me, caressed me, and giving me his hand said:

"And now without damaging the delicacy of my lungs I can converse with you about the things which you long to know; but it is reasonable to reveal to you first of all the hidden secrets of our origin. Learn then that we are animals inhabiting the luminous regions of the Sun; the most general and the most useful of our occupations is to travel through the vast countries of this great world. We note carefully the habits of the nations, the peculiarity of climates and the nature of all things that can merit our attention, from which we build up an exact science of what exists. You must know that my vassals travelled under my guidance and, in order to have leisure to observe things more curiously, we did not keep the conformation particular to our body (which your senses could not perceive), whose subtlety would have caused us to move too quickly; but we made ourselves into birds. All my subjects became eagles by my command; and for fear they should grow weary I transformed myself into a nightingale to soothe their fatigue by the charms of music. I followed the rapid flight of my people without flying, for I was perched on the head of one of my vassals. We were following our road when a nightingale, dwelling in a province of the opaque country, through which we were then travelling, astonished to see me in the power of an eagle (it could only take us for what it saw us to be), began to commiserate my misfortune. I caused my followers to halt and we descended on the tops of some trees where sighed this charitable bird. I took so much pleasure in the sweetness of its mournful songs that I would not undeceive it, in order that I might enjoy them longer and more at my ease. On the spur of the moment I invented a story, in which I related to it imaginary misfortunes which had caused me to fall into the hands of the eagle; I mixed with it such surprising adventures, wherein the passions were so skilfully aroused and the music so well suited to the words, that the nightingale was beside itself.

"One after the other we sang to each other in music the story of our mutual loves. In my airs I sang that I was not only consoled for, but that I even rejoiced in, my misfortune, since it had procured me the glory of being lamented in such beautiful songs; and this inconsolable little creature replied in its airs that it would gladly accept all my esteem for it, if it knew that this could make it merit the honour of dying in my place, but that, since Fortune had not reserved so much glory for so unfortunate a creature, it would only accept of that esteem sufficiently to prevent me from blushing for my friendship. In my turn I replied again with all the transports, all the tenderness and all the caresses of so touching a passion that twice or thrice I perceived it ready to die of love on its branch. In truth, I mingled such skill with the softness of my voice and I surprised its ear with such masterly strokes and with paths so little frequented by those of its kind, that I carried off its fair soul into all the passions by which I desired to dominate it.

"We passed twenty-four hours in this exercise and I think we should never have been tired of making love if our throats had not refused us voices. This was the only obstacle which prevented us from proceeding, but feeling that the labour was beginning to hurt my throat and that I could not go further without falling into a swoon, I made it a sign to come near me. The peril in which it thought I was in the midst of so many eagles convinced it that I was calling it to my help. It flew immediately to my aid and, wishing to give a glorious proof that it dared to brave death even to his throne for a friend's sake, it came and sat proudly on the great curved beak of the eagle on which I was perched. So great a courage in so weak an animal moved me to veneration; for, even if I had called to it as it supposed and although there is a law among animals of the same kind to help another in misfortune, yet the instinct of its timid nature ought to have made it hesitate. But it did not hesitate. On the contrary, it started so hastily that I do not know which flew the first, my signal or the nightingale. Proud at seeing the tyrant's head under its feet, happy to think that it was about to be sacrificed for love of me almost within my wings and that perhaps some fortunate drops of its blood might be sprinkled on my feathers, it looked gently towards me and, having as it were said farewell by a look, which seemed to ask my permission to die, it thrust its little beak so sharply into the eagle's eyes that I saw they were crushed rather than struck. When my bird felt it was blind it made itself new sight at once. I remonstrated gently with the nightingale on its too precipitate action and, judging that it would be dangerous to hide from it any longer our real existence, I revealed myself to it and told it what we were; but the poor little creature, convinced that these barbarians, whose prisoner I was, forced me to feign this fable, would give no faith to anything I could say. When I perceived that all the reasons by which I tried to convince it were mere waste of breath, I whispered some orders to ten or twelve thousand of my subjects and immediately the nightingale perceived at its feet a river flowing under a boat and the boat floating upon the river. It was just large enough to hold me twice over. At the first signal I made to them my eagles flew off and I threw myself into the boat, whence I cried to the nightingale to embark with me if it could not yet resolve to abandon me so soon. As soon as it came in I commanded the river to flow towards the region where my people were flying; but since the fluidity of the water was less than that of the air and consequently the rapidity of their flight greater than that of our sailing, we remained a little behind.

"All the way I tried to undeceive my little guest; I pointed out to it that it could hope for no fruit from its passion, since we were not of the same species; that it ought to have perceived this when the eagle whose eyes it had crushed had made new eyes in its presence, and when at my command ten thousand of my vassals had metamorphosed themselves into this river and the boat in which we were sailing. My arguments were unsuccessful. The nightingale replied that as to the eagle making itself eyes as I asserted, there had been no need, because it was not blinded, since the beak had not pierced its eye-balls; and as to the river and the boat, which I said had only been created by a metamorphosis of my people, they had been in the wood since the creation of the world, only no one had noticed them. Seeing it was so ingenious in deceiving itself I agreed with it that my vassals and I would metamorphose ourselves into whatever it liked before its eyes, on condition that afterwards it would return to its own country. Sometimes it asked that this should be a tree; sometimes it wished this to be a flower, sometimes a fruit, sometimes a metal, sometimes a stone. At last to satisfy all its desires at once, when we had reached my court at the place where I had ordered it to await me, we metamorphosed ourselves before the nightingale's eyes into that precious tree, whose shape we have just abandoned, which you met with on your road.

"Now I see this little bird resolved to return into its own country, my subjects and I will renew our shape and continue our journey. But first of all it is reasonable to tell you who we are: animals, natives of the Sun in its luminous part, for there is a very remarkable difference between the nations produced by the luminous region and the nations of the opaque region. In the world of the Earth you call us Spirits and your presumptuous stupidity gave us this name because you could not imagine any animals more perfect than man, and yet you saw certain creatures perform acts above human power, and so you thought these animals were Spirits. But you are mistaken, nevertheless; we are animals like you. Although, as you have just seen, we give our matter the shape and essential form of those things into which we desire to metamorphose ourselves, whenever we please, that does not mean that we are Spirits. But hearken, and I will discover to you why it is that all these metamorphoses which seem to you so many miracles are purely natural processes. You must know that since we were born inhabitants of the bright part of this great world, where the principle of matter is

## action, our imagination is necessarily much more active than that of

the inhabitants of the opaque regions and the substance of our bodies is also much finer. Granted this, it inevitably follows that since our imagination meets with no obstacle in the matter which composes us, it arranges that matter as it desires and since it is mistress of our whole mass it causes this mass to pass, by moving all its particles, into the order necessary to create on a large scale the thing it has formed in little. Thus each of us imagined the place and part of that precious tree into which he desired to change, and by this effort of imagination we excited our matter to the movements necessary to produce them, and therefore we became metamorphosed into them. Thus, when my eagle's eyes were crushed, to re-establish them he had only to imagine himself a clear-sighted eagle, since all our transformations occur by means of movement; for this reason, when we transmuted ourselves out of leaves, flowers and fruits into men, you saw we still danced some time after, because we had not yet recovered from the movement we had to give our matter to make ourselves into men: like bells which vibrate after they stop and continue in muffled tones the same sounds which the clapper caused by striking them. For the same reason you saw us dance before we made a large man because, in order to produce it, we had to give ourselves all the general and particular movements necessary to constitute it; so that this motion, bringing our bodies little by little closer to each other and absorbing them one with another through its movement, should create in each part the specific movement it ought to have. You men cannot do the same things on account of the weight of your mass and the coldness of your imaginations."

He continued his proof and supported it with examples so palpable that finally I threw off a large number of badly proved opinions by means of which our pig-headed men of learning prejudice weak people's understanding. Then I began to comprehend that in very truth the imagination of these Solar people, which on account of the climate must be hotter, while for the same reason their bodies must be lighter and their entities more mobile (since in that world, unlike ours, there is no attraction from the centre to turn matter away from the movement imprinted upon it by the imagination) I conceived, I say, that without a miracle this imagination could produce all the miracles it had recently done. A thousand examples of almost similar events, witnessed by the nations of our globe, completed my conviction: Cippus, King of Italy, having witnessed a bull-fight, so filled his imagination with horns all that night that the next morning he found his forehead horned; Gallus Vitius, bending up his soul and exciting it vigorously to conceive the essence of madness, by an effort of imagination gave his matter the same movements this matter should have to constitute madness, and so became mad; King Codrus, the consumptive, fixing his eyes and his thought on the freshness of a young face and upon that flourishing happiness which the boy's youth overflowed with almost to him, and giving his body the movement by which he imagined the young man's health, became convalescent; and lastly several pregnant women made monsters of the children already formed in their wombs, because their imagination was not strong enough to give them themselves the shape of the monsters they imagined, but was strong enough to arrange the much hotter and more mobile matter of the fœtus in the order necessary for the production of these monsters. I am even convinced that, when that famous hypochondriac of antiquity imagined himself a pitcher, if his matter had not been too compact and too heavy to follow the emotion of his fantasy it would have formed a perfect pitcher out of his body, and he would really have appeared a pitcher to everyone as he appeared to himself.

So many other satisfactory examples convinced me to such an extent that I did not doubt any of the marvels related to me by the Man-Spirit. He asked me if I desired anything more of him; I thanked him with all my heart. Afterwards he had still the kindness to advise me, since I was an inhabitant of the earth, to follow the nightingale into the opaque regions of the Sun, because they were more apt for the pleasures desired by human nature. Scarcely had he finished speaking when he opened his mouth very wide and I saw the king of these little animals fly out of his throat in the shape of a nightingale. The large man fell down at once and at the same time all his limbs flew away piecemeal in the shape of eagles. This nightingale, creator of himself, perched on the head of the most beautiful of them, whence he sang an admirable air, by which I fancy he bade me farewell. The real nightingale flew away also, but not in their direction nor so high as they. I did not lose sight of it and we travelled on at about the same pace; for since I had no idea of visiting one country rather than another I was very glad to accompany it, especially since the opaque regions of the birds were more suitable to my temperament and I hoped there to meet with adventures more answerable to my humour.

With this hope I journeyed on for at least three weeks with every sort of pleasure, if I had had only my ears to satisfy, since the nightingale did not let me lack music; when it was weary it came and rested upon my shoulder and when I stopped it waited for me. At last I reached a district in the region of this little singer, which then did not trouble to accompany me further. Having lost sight of it, I sought for it and called it; but at last I grew so weary of vainly pursuing it that I resolved to rest. For this purpose I lay down upon a lawn of soft grass which carpeted the roots of a tall rock. This rock was covered with several green leafy saplings, whose shadow charmed my tired senses most delightfully and forced me to abandon them to sleep, to repair in safety my strength in so calm and cool a place.

STORY OF THE BIRDS[60]

[Footnote 60: See Appendix I, for a brief account of Tom d'Urfey's opera derived from this part of Cyrano's _Voyages_.]

I began to grow sleepy in the shade, when I perceived a marvellous bird gliding in the air above my head; it sustained itself with so light and so imperceptible a movement that I wondered several times if it were not a little universe balanced by its own centre. Nevertheless it descended little by little and at last arrived so near me that my eyes were happily filled with its image. Its tail appeared to be green, its belly of enamelled azure, its wings carnation colour and its purple head glittered, when moved, with a golden crown whose rays sprang from its eyes. For a long time it flew in the air and I was so attentive to everything it did that my soul, being as it were folded and shortened down to the single operation of seeing, scarcely reached to that of hearing for me to perceive that the bird talked by singing.

Released little by little from my ecstasy, I noticed distinctly syllables, words and the speech it articulated. Here then, to the best of my memory, are the terms in which he arranged the fabric of his song:

"You are a stranger", sang the bird very agreeably, "and you were born in a world where I was born too. That secret inclination which draws us to our compatriots is the instinct urging me to desire that you should know my life.

"I see that your mind is trying to understand how it is possible that I can express myself to you in coherent speech, seeing that although birds imitate your words they do not understand them; but when you in turn imitate the barking of a dog or the song of a nightingale you do not understand what the dog or the nightingale means. From that you may deduce that neither birds nor men are any the less reasonable on this account.

"However, just as among you there have been found men so enlightened that they understood and spoke our language, such as Apollonius Tianeus, Anaximander, Æsop[61] and several others, whose names I will not repeat, since you have never heard of them; so among us there are individuals who understand and speak your language. Some, indeed, only know the language of one nation; but just as there are some birds which say nothing, others which twitter, others which talk, so there are still more perfect birds able to use all sorts of idioms. For my