Chapter II: Part 2

The _Love-Letters_ are made of clever and wholly frigid conceits, which glitter and clink like chains of icicles; nothing could be farther from the language of genuine feeling. The Satirical Letters are abusive and filled with "clenches." They do not denounce types, they blackguard individuals. The _Lettres Diverses_ are mostly descriptive pieces on themes like the seasons, a lady with red hair, a country house; written in the highly conceited vein then affected by Cyrano. Some of them are vigorous and well-expressed. They are well translated as to style by the anonymous person who published _Bergerac's Satyrical Characters_ in 1658. The first edition of these Letters is dated 1654, but one of them was published as early as 1648; others may have been written earlier. They were probably rewritten before publication and were certainly censored.

Cyrano de Bergerac is the author of a comedy, _Le Pédant Joué_, written 1645, published 1654, probably never played; and of a tragedy, _La Mort d'Agrippine_, written in 1646, published 1654, played in 1653 or 1654 and revived for one performance on the 10th November 1872.

These plays alone would provide a theme for a very long essay; but here I must necessarily be brief.

Corneille, Racine, and Molière were not isolated literary phenomena without predecessors and contemporaries; any more than Shakespeare. There is a large pre-Corneille and pre-Molière drama.[17] Du Ryer, Rotrou, Gombaud, Scudéry, Hardy, Théophile de Viau, Boisrobert, are some of the best known dramatists of the thirties and forties of the seventeenth century. Among them was Cyrano de Bergerac. I cannot wholly share the contempt expressed by official French criticism for early French drama, though my acquaintance with it is superficial; I certainly cannot agree with the contemptuous estimates of Cyrano's plays. The fact that the plot of _The Pedant Outwitted_ is taken from Lope de Vega seems very unimportant, when one considers the amazing gusto and energy Cyrano put into his uncouth comedy. Here his curious fustian style of ranting hyperbole serves him admirably; in _The Pedant Outwitted_ bombast, exaggeration and caricature are carried to a superlative degree. Nothing could be more pedantic than Granger, the pedant, or more bombastic than the bragging poltroon, Chasteaufort. Some of the best scenes, situations and scraps of dialogue in _The Pedant Outwitted_ have been appropriated by more famous dramatists, particularly by Molière. This may be seen in _Le Dépit Amoureux_, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and particularly in _Les Fourberies de Scapin_, where the whole of the famous "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère" scene is imitated from Cyrano.

[Footnote 17: See Rigal's _Le Théâtre Français avant la Période classique_.]

The theme of the comedy is the outwitting of Granger by his son, Charlot. Both wish to marry Genevotte; Granger attempts to send his son away from Paris, and on various pretexts Charlot remains; by the device of a play within a play Charlot marries Genevotte before Granger's eyes. The whole is quite incredible, but amusing. The character Cyrano most enjoyed was Granger, a caricature of his old schoolmaster. It must be admitted that the long speeches of Granger and Chasteaufort, ingenious and fertile as they are, grow somewhat tedious in a play; all the characters, even the heroine, are infected with preciosity and burlesque. Extraordinary hyperbolical epithets are piled one upon another until the whole heap topples to absurdity; as for the rant of Chasteaufort, it leaves that of Tamburlaine a mild understatement; Bobadil and Bessus are realistic sketches in comparison with this. With all its faults the play is a remarkable piece of work and ought to interest anyone who likes Elizabethan drama.

The tragedy _The Death of Agrippina_ provides us with another surprise. Whereas _The Pedant Outwitted_ seems extremely archaic for 1645, _The Death of Agrippina_ has been compared favourably with Corneille's minor tragedies. All the "precious" affectations of style, the recondite allusions which make _The Pedant Outwitted_ a test of one's knowledge of old French, all the oddities, the quiddities, the "humours", disappear and we have a formal French tragedy written in good Alexandrines, moving according to the rules and containing a well-concerted action as well as good subsidiary scenes. Nothing could better illustrate the versatility of Cyrano's literary personality; the plays seem to have been written by two totally different persons. The subject of the tragedy is the conspiracy of Sejanus against Tiberius; Sejanus is in love with Agrippina, Livilla with Sejanus; Agrippina takes part in the conspiracy to avenge herself upon Tiberius with the hope of destroying Sejanus afterwards; the conspiracy is revealed by Livilla and both Sejanus and Agrippina lose their lives. There is one very fine scene at the end, where Sejanus is taunted by Agrippina; this contains the "horrible impieties" complained of by Tallemant; but why Sejanus should have talked like a Christian not even Cyrano's severest censurers have yet explained. The play is well-written and impressive.

Cyrano's fragmentary treatise on Physics needs only the remark that it is almost identical with Rohault's similar work and was either derived from it or from a common source. It was in part to popularize these studies and the sceptical ideas they inspired in him that Cyrano wrote his famous _Voyages to the Moon and Sun_, so often reprinted in France.

_The Moon_ is supposed to have been written as early as 1648; _The Sun_ was begun about 1650 and was left unfinished. Two versions of _The Moon_ exist. One is contained in the MSS. of Paris and Munich and the other in the first edition, on the last of which all editions before Gourmont's incomplete reprint were founded. The MSS. undoubtedly contain the work as Cyrano wrote it and privily circulated it. The 1657 edition was heavily censored by Henry Le Bret, who was afraid to publish many passages reflecting upon the Church, of which he was a comfortably settled pillar. The early editions--and consequently all previous English translations--mark the places of some of these omissions with dots or the word "hiatus". The effect of this expurgation was in some cases to make nonsense; in most to destroy the point of Cyrano's sarcasm. Apart from merely variant readings and single words or phrases (which often, by the way, greatly alter the point of a passage), there are no less than fourteen out of a total of ninety-six pages in M. Lachèvre's edition omitted by Le Bret, and these are precisely the most daring and satirical parts of the whole work. The last four pages are different in MSS. and in the printed editions; I have given the MSS. These MSS. have only been recently available in France and have never before been translated into English. Thus, if the reader were familiar with Lovell's (1687) version and had also read the French Bibliothéque Elzivirienne or Garnier editions, he would yet find that about one-seventh of the matter given in this translation of _The Moon_ would be new to him.

The MS. of _The Sun_ has disappeared; were it ever discovered we should no doubt find that the printed editions had been mutilated, while if the lost _Story of the Spark_ were recovered, we might find a still more daring satire on Christianity. The first printed edition of _The Voyage to the Sun_ appeared in 1662.

These imaginary voyages are often described by French writers as 'Utopias'; they are no more Utopias than _Pantagruel_ and _Gulliver's Travels_. They lack the political system of the Utopian romance, whose purpose is to recommend speciously some abominable form of tyranny under the pretext of making everybody happy. At different times I have read the _Republic_ of Plato, the _Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More, Campanella's _Città del Sole_, William Morris's _News from Nowhere_, and Hudson's _A Crystal Age_; and I am bound to say, with all reverence to these great men, that Morris's _Nowhere_ sounded least unendurable, while the rest were nightmares, visions of meddlesome cranks. I have a deep reverence for Plato so far as I am able to comprehend him, but I think I would rather die than be enslaved by his ideal state.

Now, Cyrano de Bergerac had no intention of creating one of these ideally unpleasant tyrannies. His purpose was similar to that of Rabelais and Swift. He wanted to satirise existing institutions, humbugs and prejudices; he wanted to mock at a literal belief in the Old Testament; he wanted to hold up to odium the fundamental villainy of man; and he wanted to convey amusingly a number of quasi-scientific and philosophical ideas which it was highly dangerous then to publish and still more dangerous to try to popularise. Even then Cyrano dared not publish the book in his lifetime; and it was mutilated when it appeared after his death. The censorship of the _ancien régime_ was almost exactly the antithesis to the police interference of to-day; great licence in morals and personalities was allowed, obscenities and even blasphemies were tolerated, but when an author, however eminent and serious, trenched upon the authority of the Church or the State, or offered new ideas which seemed likely to prove subversive, he was certain of persecution and punishment. Both systems have their defects. The tremendous hubbub raised against _Tartuffe_, the self-exile of Descartes,[18] the prosecution of Théophile de Viau, the outcry against Cyrano, the fact that Gassendi's _Syntagma_ did not appear in print until after his death; all show the working of the ancient censorship and the prejudices it appealed to in the populace. One feels that many of the deplorable traits in Cyrano's character are the result of a deliberate and high-spirited revolt against what he thought was oppressive. He attacked the Church and war and paternal authority as fiercely and recklessly as he attacked the _bravi_ at the Porte de Nesle.

[Footnote 18: I know Descartes was patronised by Mazarin and made a visit to Paris "to be honoured"; but he soon returned to Holland.]

Even in Cyrano's time there was nothing original in a fanciful voyage to the Moon. Brun quotes a formidable list of predecessors--most of whom one has never heard of--whose work Cyrano may or may not have known. All probably derive directly or indirectly from Lucian of Samosate. It is certain that Cyrano copied Rabelais, that he took whole paragraphs and many ideas from Sorel's _Francion_ and several hints from Bishop Godwin's _Man in the Moon_. Campanella furnished him with numerous hints. The philosophic and quasi-scientific passages came from Descartes, Gassendi, and Rohault. Cyrano is a Gassendist in _The Moon_ and a Cartesian towards the end of _The Sun_. To trace these in detail would be laborious; it is sufficient to say that the theory which made Cyrano the predecessor of Rohault is now wholly disproved, while those who have compared Cyrano with Gassendi and Rohault declare that the author of the Voyages advances little that cannot be found in their works. M. Juppont's endeavour to prove that Cyrano was a marvellous scientific genius anticipating modern discoveries will hardly bear investigation; to make his points he has to attribute to Cyrano ideas derived from others and to wrest his language from the scientific jargon of one period into the worse jargon of another. After translating the Voyages, which implies a certain familiarity with them, I conclude that when Cyrano attempts to be scientific he often fails to understand thoroughly what he is talking about. As soon as he begins to discourse of atoms, or attraction, or the magnet, his language becomes vague, involved and hesitating; he is metaphorical at the moment he should not be, and the thought obviously is not his own; the lack of clarity in his speech suggests that he failed to comprehend the ideas he pretends to expound, that he did not think them for himself but was indoctrinated with them by others. He makes use of the anacoluthon too often for a translator's comfort; for though the practice may be defended in poetry, sermons and other inspired works, it is unsuitable to the logical exposition of science. Finally, a certain lack of common-sense often precipitates him into absurdity; he chooses grotesque illustrations, wrecks ingenious ideas by some incongruity he might easily have avoided. It is significant that when great men like Molière and Swift have borrowed from Cyrano they improve on him chiefly by purging him of what is grotesque and absurd.

I must confess I view Cyrano's plagiarisms more coolly than recent French commentators; for Cyrano criticism has violently revolted from the theory that he was a perfect, beplumed hero, the most original man of his age, to the other extreme of a theory that he had no originality whatever, that he was affected, vain, debauched, dirty, hypocritical; ending up with a sort of Johnsonian "let us hear no more on't". Cyrano deserves some severity in the matter of plagiarism on account of his own stupid boast that he only read books to detect the plagiarisms of the authors. We are all plagiarists; every word we use is the creation of a poet; and a completely original author would probably be completely incomprehensible. This scientists' prejudice about priority of ideas is out of place in literature; we are engaged in creating a temper of the mind, in civilizing, not in riding an intellectual steeplechase. In works intended for amusement what matters plagiarism? Cyrano took an idea, say, from Sorel; Cyrano amuses us, Sorel bores us; are we not to read Cyrano because he plagiarized? And, in any event, these sarcasms of his which are merely amusing to-day were perilous matters then; if Cyrano had published an unexpurgated _Moon_ in 1650, exile, imprisonment or some other torture might easily have been his lot. The ideas in the Voyages are derived indeed, but they were then new and worth circulating. Cyrano has been sneered at because, when he had written these dangerous matters, he evaded the possibility of martyrdom by refraining from publication; I confess I think he was wise; Naaman bowed himself in the house of Rimmon, and there is no obligation upon any man to sacrifice his life for his opinions.

Moreover, when we read an author whose purpose is "to instruct by entertaining" we care little for the origins of the instruction so long as the entertainment be there. Examined from this point of view the Voyages emerge very well. In spite of all their faults, real and alleged, they are entertaining. One would certainly rather spend an evening with Cyrano than with his enemy, Father Garasse, that terrific old bore, the "flail of the libertins". Moreover, the dullest passages in _The Voyages_ are those he stole from his scientific friends and the most entertaining those he took from Rabelais or Godwin or Sorel or invented himself. By far the best part of _The Voyages_ is contained in the early pages of _The Sun_, where Cyrano relates the persecutions and inconveniences supposed to arise from the publication of _The Moon_, together with his adventures with the police. The whole thing bustles along admirably, reminding one of the adventures of the boys in the _Satyricon_, and it is a dismal moment when Cyrano produces an "icosahedron mirror" and we know we are in for some more quasi-science. The satire on mankind in the story of the birds is very happy and furnished Tom d'Urfey with an opera. The talking trees are quite good until they get on to loadstones and iron filings and the poles and such trash.

A large part of the opening of _The Moon_ is occupied with a parody of the Old Testament, which Cyrano and his friends probably found more amusing than we do. The influence of the burlesque school on Cyrano has been noticed. Travesties then were a kind of craze; Virgil, Ovid, all the classics were burlesqued. There was one book it was dangerous to parody and Cyrano with his usual impetuosity rushed into a burlesque of the Old Testament. Here indeed he may claim to have given Voltaire several hints for his wickedly witty _Romans_.

It is not my intention to discuss _The Voyages_ at greater length. The reader has here the full text before him and will form his own opinion. He has in the introduction sufficient information to understand at least in outline the writer of the book and his work, the _milieu_ in which it was produced, the intellectual movement which helped to create it and its historical position.

The text used for the translation is that printed by M. Lachèvre in his _Œuvres Libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac_, 2 vols., Champion, Paris, 1921. I wish to thank M. Lachèvre for the generosity with which he has allowed me to make use of his book and his kindness in answering my queries and supplying me with information. I am also indebted to the work of Brun, Gourmont, Perrens, Lacroix, Juppont, Magne and of course Cyrano's friend Le Bret. The only English work I have examined is an essay by Henry Morley, which should be read with great caution.

RICHARD ALDINGTON

VOYAGE TO THE MOON

The moon was full, the sky clear, and the clocks had just struck nine as I was returning with four of my friends from a house near Paris.[19] Our wit must have been sharpened on the cobbles of the road for it thrust home whichever way we turned it; distant as the moon was she could not escape it. The various thoughts provoked in us by the sight of that globe of saffron diverted us on the road and our eyes were filled by this great luminary. Now one of us likened her to a window in Heaven through which the glory of the blessed might be faintly seen; then another, inspired by ancient fables, imagined that Bacchus kept a tavern in Heaven and had hung out the Full Moon for his sign; then another vowed that it was the block where Diana set Apollo's ruffs; another exclaimed that it might well be the Sun himself who, having put off his rays at night, was watching through a hole what the world did when he was not there. For my part, said I, I am desirous to add my fancies to yours and without amusing myself with the witty notions you use to tickle time to make it run the faster, I think that the Moon is a world like this and that our world is their Moon. The company gratified me with a great shout of mirth.

[Footnote 19: Ed. 1657: "returning from Clamard, near Paris (where M. de Cuigny the younger, who is its Seigneur, had entertained several of us....)".]

"Perhaps in the same way", said I, "at this moment in the Moon they jest at some one who there maintains that this globe is a world."

But though I showed them that Pythagoras, Epicurus, Democritus and, in our own age, Copernicus and Kepler had been of this opinion, I did but cause them to strain their throats the more heartily.

This thought, whose boldness jumped with my humour, was strengthened by contradiction and sank so deep in me that all the rest of the way I was pregnant with a thousand definitions of the Moon of which I could not be delivered. By supporting this fantastic belief with serious reasoning I grew well-nigh persuaded of it. But hearken, reader, the miracle or accident used by Providence or Fortune to convince me of it:

I returned home and scarcely had I entered my room to rest after the journey when I found on my table an open book which I had not put there. I recognised it as mine, which made me ask my servant why he had taken it out of the book-case. I asked him but perfunctorily, for he was a fat Lorrainer, whose soul admitted of no exercises more noble than those of an oyster. He swore to me that either the Devil or I had put it there. For my own part I was sure I had not handled it for more than a year.

I glanced at it again; it was the works of Cardan[20]; and though I had no idea of reading it I fell, as if directed to it, precisely upon a story told by this philosopher. He says that, reading one evening by candle-light, he perceived two tall old men enter through the closed door of his room and after he had asked them many questions they told him they were inhabitants of the Moon; which said, they disappeared. I remained so amazed to see a book brought there by itself as well as at the time and the leaf at which I found it open that I took this whole train of events to be an inspiration of God urging me to make known to men that the Moon is a world.

[Footnote 20: Girolamo Cardan, 1501-1576, Italian mathematician and astrologer, a man of remarkable scientific attainments. There is an interesting article on him in _The Retrospective Review_.]

"What!" quoth I to myself, "after I have talked of a matter this very day, a book, which is perhaps the only one in a world that treats of this subject, flies down from the shelf on to my table, becomes capable of reason to the extent of opening at the very page of so marvellous an adventure and thereby supplies meditations to my fancy and an object to my resolution. Doubtless", I continued, "the two old men who appeared to that great man are the same who have moved my book and opened it at this page to spare themselves the trouble of making me the harangue they made Cardan. But", I added, "how can I clear up this doubt if I do not go there? And why not?" I answered myself at once, "Prometheus of old went to Heaven to steal fire!"

These feverish outbursts were followed by the hope of making successfully such a voyage.

I shut myself up to achieve my purpose in a rather lonely country-house where, after I had flattered my fancy with several methods which might have borne me up there, I committed myself to the heavens in this manner:

I fastened all about me a number of little bottles filled with dew, and the heat of the Sun drawing them up carried me so high that at last I found myself above the loftiest clouds. But, since this attraction caused me to rise too rapidly and instead of my drawing nearer the Moon, as I desired, she seemed to me further off than when I started, I broke several of my bottles until I felt that my weight overbore the attraction and that I was falling towards the earth. My opinion was not wrong; for I reached ground sometime later when, calculating from the hour at which I had started, it ought to have been midnight. Yet I perceived that the Sun was then at the highest point above the horizon and that it was midday. I leave you to conjecture my surprise; indeed it was so great that not knowing how to explain this miracle I had the insolence to fancy that in compliment to my boldness God had a second time fixed the Sun in Heaven to light so glorious an enterprise. My astonishment increased when I found I did not recognise the country I was in, for it appeared to me that, having risen straight up, I ought to have landed in the place from which I had started. Encumbered as I was I approached a hut where I perceived some smoke and I was barely a pistol-shot from it when I found myself surrounded by a large number of savages. They appeared mightily surprised at meeting me; for I was the first, I think, they had ever seen dressed in bottles. And, to overthrow still more any explanation they might have given of this equipment, they saw that as I walked I scarcely touched the ground. They did not know that at the least movement I gave my body the heat of the midday sun-beams lifted me up with my dew; and if my bottles had been more numerous I should very likely have been carried into the air before their eyes. I tried to converse with them; but, as if terror had changed them into birds, in a twinkling they were lost to sight in the neighbouring woods. Nevertheless I caught one whose legs without doubt betrayed his intention. I asked him with much difficulty (for I was out of breath) how far it was from there to Paris, since when people went naked in France and why they fled from me in such terror. This man to whom I spoke was an old man, yellow as an olive, who cast himself at my knees, joined his hands above his head, opened his mouth and shut his eyes. He muttered for some time but as I could not perceive that he said anything I took his language for the hoarse babble of a dumb man.

Sometime afterwards I saw coming towards me a band of soldiers with drums beating and I noticed that two left the main body to reconnoitre me. When they were near enough to hear I asked them where I was.

"You are in France", replied they, "but who the Devil put you in this condition? How does it happen that we do not know you? Has the fleet arrived? Are you going to warn the Governor of it? Why have you divided your brandy into so many bottles?"

To all this I replied that the Devil had not put me in that condition; that they did not know me because they could not know all men; that I did not know there were ships on the Seine; that I had no information to give Monsieur de Montbazon[21] and that I was not carrying any brandy.

[Footnote 21: Monsieur de Montbazon was governor of Paris in 1649. (Lachèvre).]

"Oh! Ho!" said they taking me by the arm, "you are pleased to be merry! The Governor will understand you!"

They carried me towards their main body as they spoke these words and I learned from them that I was indeed in France, but not in Europe, for I was in New France.

I was brought before the Viceroy, Monsieur de Montmagnie. He asked me my country, my name and my rank, and when I had satisfied him by relating the happy success of my voyage, whether he believed it or only feigned to believe it, he had the kindness to allot me a room in his house. I was happy to fall in with a man capable of lofty ideas, who was not scandalised when I said that the earth must have turned while I was above it, seeing that I had begun to rise two leagues from Paris and had fallen by an almost perpendicular line in Canada.

That evening just as I was going to bed he came into my room.

"I should not have interrupted your rest", said he, "had I not believed that a man who travels nine hundred leagues in half a day can easily do so without being weary. But you do not know", added he, "the merry dispute I have just had on your behalf with our Jesuit Fathers?[22] They are convinced that you are a magician and the greatest mercy you can obtain from them is to pass for no more than an impostor. And, after all, this movement you assign to the Earth is surely some neat paradox? The reason I am not of your opinion is that although you may have left Paris yesterday you could still have reached this country to-day without the Earth having turned. For the Sun, which bore you up by means of your bottles, must have drawn you hither since, according to Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe,[23] and modern philosophers it moves in a direction opposite to that in which you say the Earth moves. And then what probability have you for asserting that the Sun is motionless when we see it move, and that the Earth turns about its centre with such rapidity when we feel it firm beneath us?"

[Footnote 22: The word "Jesuit" is omitted in the early editions.]

[Footnote 23: Tycho Brahe, 1546-1601, Danish astronomer.]

"Sir", replied I, "here are the reasons which oblige us to suppose so: First it is a matter of common sense to think that the Sun is placed in the centre of the Universe, since all bodies in Nature need this radical fire, which dwells in the heart of the Kingdom to be in a position to satisfy their necessities promptly; and that the cause of procreation should be placed in the midst of all bodies to act equally upon them: In the same way wise Nature placed the genitals in the centre of man, pips in the centre of apples, kernels in the centre of their fruit; and in the same way the onion shelters within a hundred surrounding skins the precious germ whence ten million others must draw their essence. The apple is a little universe by itself whose core, which is warmer than the other parts, is a Sun spreading about it the preserving heat of its globe; and the germ in the onion is the little Sun of that little world which heats and nourishes the vegetable salt of the mass. Granted this, I say that since the Earth needs the light, the heat and the influence of this great fire, she turns about it to receive equally in every part this strength which conserves her. For it would be as ridiculous to hold that this great luminous body turns about a point of no importance to it as to imagine when we see a roasted lark that it has been cooked by turning the hearth about it.[24] Otherwise, if the Sun were made to perform this labour it would seem that the doctor needs the patient, that the strong must yield to the weak, the great serve the small, and that instead of a ship coasting the shores of a country we must make the country move around the vessel. And if you find it hard to believe that so heavy a mass can move, tell me, I pray you, are the stars and the Heavens that you make so solid any lighter? And it is easy for us who are convinced of the roundness of the earth to deduce its movements from its shape; but why suppose the sky to be round since you cannot know it and since if, of all possible shapes it has not this shape, it certainly cannot move? I do not reproach you with your eccentrics, your concentrics and your epicycles,[25] all of which you can only explain very confusedly and from which my system is free. Let us speak only of the natural causes of this movement. On your side you are compelled to invoke the aid of intelligences to move and direct your globes! But without disturbing the tranquillity of the Sovereign Being, who doubtless created Nature quite perfect and whose wisdom completed it in such a way that by fitting it for one thing He has not rendered it unfit for another--I, on my part, find in the Earth herself the power which makes it move. I declare then that the sun-beams, together with the Sun's influence, striking upon the Earth in their motion, make it turn as we turn a globe by striking it with the hand, or that the vapours which continually evaporate from the Earth's bosom on that side where the Sun shines, are repulsed by the cold of the middle regions, rush back on the Earth and, of necessity being only able to strike it obliquely, make it dance in this fashion.

[Footnote 24: An illustration frequently used by early followers of Copernicus.]

[Footnote 25: Cartesian terms.]

"The explanation of the two other movements is still less intricate. Consider I beg of you...."

At these words the Viceroy interrupted me.

"I prefer", he said, "to excuse you from that trouble (I have myself read several books of Gassendi on the subject) provided that you will listen to what I heard one day from one of our Fathers who shared your opinion. 'Truly', said he, 'I imagine that the Earth turns, not for the reasons alleged by Copernicus but because the fire of Hell (as we learn from Holy Scripture) being enclosed in the centre of the Earth, the damned souls, flying from the heat of the fire to avoid it, clamber upwards and thus make the Earth turn, as a dog makes a wheel turn when he runs round inside it.'"

We praised the good Father's zeal and, having finished the panegyric, the Viceroy said he greatly wondered the system of Ptolemy should be so generally received, considering how little probable it is.

"Sir", I replied, "most men judge only by their senses, are convinced only by their eyes; and just as a man in a ship sailing by the coast thinks himself stationary and the shore moving, so men, turning with the Earth around the sky, believe that the sky itself turns around them. Add to this the intolerable pride of human beings, who are convinced that Nature was made for them alone--as if it were probable that the Sun, a vast body four hundred and thirty-four times greater than the Earth,[26] should have been lighted only to ripen its medlars and to head its cabbages. For my part, far from yielding to their impertinence, I believe that the planets are worlds around the Sun and that the fixed stars are suns too with planets around them, that is to say, worlds, which we cannot see from here because they are too small and because their borrowed light cannot reach us. For, in good faith, how can we suppose that globes so spacious are only huge desert countries and that ours, because we grovel on it before a dozen proud-stomached rogues, should have been made to command them all? What! Because the Sun measures our days and our years, does that mean it was created only to save us from breaking our heads against the wall? No! If this visible God lightens man it is accidental, as the King's torch accidentally lightens a porter passing in the street."

[Footnote 26: Linear diameter of sun: 109 × earth's equatorial diameter = 864,000 miles. Sun's mass = 332,000 × mass of the earth.]

"But", said he, "if, as you assert, the fixed stars are so many suns we may deduce thence that the universe is infinite since it is probable that the people in the worlds about a fixed star, which you take to be a sun, perceive above them other fixed stars which we cannot see from here and that it continues in this manner to infinity."[27]

[Footnote 27: M. Lachèvre says this notion is "accepted by science," but it is rejected by recent astronomers and assuredly by the Relativists.]

"Doubt it not", replied I, "as God was able to make the soul immortal so could He make the World infinite, if it be true that Eternity is nothing else than duration without bounds and the infinite, space without limit. And then God Himself would be finite if we believe the world not to be infinite, since He could not be where there is nothing and since He could not increase the size of the World without adding something to His own extent, by beginning to be where He had not been formerly. We must believe then that as we see Saturn and Jupiter from here we should perceive, if we were in one or the other, many worlds we do not perceive from here and that the universe is constructed in this manner to infinity."

"Faith!" replied he, "you may well talk but I cannot comprehend infinity."

"Why, tell me," said I, "do you understand better the nothing which is beyond it? Not at all. When you think of this nothing you imagine at least something like wind, something like air, and that is something; but if you do not comprehend infinity as a general idea you may conceive it at least in parts, for it is not difficult to imagine beyond the earth, air and fire that we see, more air and more earth. Infinity is simply a texture without bounds. If you ask me how these worlds were made, seeing that Holy Scripture speaks only of one created by God, I reply that it speaks only of ours because this is the only world God took the trouble to make with His own hand and all the others, whether we see them or do not see them, hanging in the azure of the universe, are dross thrown off by the suns.[28] For how could these great fires continue if they were not united with matter to feed them? Well, just as fire casts off the ashes which choke it, just as gold in the crucible severs itself from the marcasite which lessens its purity, and just as our heart frees itself by vomiting from the indigestible humours which attack it; so the suns disgorge every day and purge themselves of the remnants of that matter which feeds their fire. But when these suns have altogether used up the matter which maintains them, you cannot doubt but that they will spread out on all sides to seek new fuel and will fall upon all the worlds they had thrown off before and particularly upon the nearest ones: Then these great fires again burning up all these bodies will again throw them off pell-mell on all sides as before, and being purified little by little they will begin to act as suns to these little worlds which they engender by casting them out of their spheres; doubtless it was this which made the disciples of Pythagoras predict an universal conflagration. This is not a ridiculous fancy; New France, where we are, produces a very convincing proof. This vast continent of America is one half of the Earth, and though our predecessors had sailed the ocean a thousand times they never discovered it. At that time it did not exist, any more than many islands, peninsulas and mountains which rise on our globe, until the rusts of the Sun being cleaned off and cast far away were condensed into balls heavy enough to be attracted towards the centre of our world, either little by little in small parts or perhaps suddenly in one mass. And this is not so unreasonable but that Saint Augustine would have applauded it had this country been discovered in his time, for this great personage whose genius was enlightened by the Holy Ghost asserts that in his time the Earth was as flat as an oven and that it swam upon the water like half of a cut orange; but if ever I have the honour to see you in France I will prove to you, by means of a very excellent perspective glass I have, that certain obscurities which from here seem to be spots are worlds in process of formation."

[Footnote 28: Commentators have seen in this and the following passage a hint of the "nebula theory".]

My eyes were closing as I said this, which obliged the Viceroy to bid me good-night. The next and following days we had conversations of the like nature; but since some time afterwards the press of business in the Province interrupted our philosophizing I fell back the more eagerly on my plan of reaching the Moon.

As soon as the Moon rose I went off among the woods meditating on the contrivance and issue of my undertaking. At length on Saint John's Eve when those in the fort were debating whether or no they would aid the savages of the country against the Iroquois, I went off by myself behind our house to the summit of a little hill, where I acted as follows.

With a machine I had constructed, which I thought would lift me as much as I wanted, I cast myself into the air from the top of a rock; but because I had taken my measures badly I was tumbled roughly into the valley. Injured as I was I returned to my room without being discouraged. I took beef-marrow and greased all my body with it, for I was bruised from head to foot; and after I had comforted my heart with a bottle of cordial I returned to look for my machine, which I did not find, seeing that certain soldiers who had been sent into the forest to cut wood for the purpose of building a Saint John's fire to be lighted that evening, had come upon it by chance and carried it to the fort. After several hypotheses of what it might be they discovered the device of the spring,[29] when some said they ought to bind around it a number of rockets because their rapid ascent would lift it high in the air, the spring would move its great wings and everyone would take the machine for a fire-dragon.

[Footnote 29: "Ressort". Cyrano's mechanics are vague. He may or may not have imagined some sort of propeller.]

I sought it for a long time and at last I found it in the middle of the market-place of Quebec just as they were lighting it. The pain of seeing the work of my hands in such peril affected me so much that I rushed forward to grasp the arm of the soldier who was about to fire it. I seized his slow-match and cast myself furiously into the machine to break off the fire-works which surrounded it; but I came too late, for I had scarcely set my two feet in it when I was carried off into the clouds. The fearful horror that dismayed me did not so thoroughly overwhelm the faculties of my soul but that I could recollect afterwards all that happened to me at this moment. You must know then that the flame had no sooner consumed one line of rockets (for they had placed them in sixes by means of a fuse which ran along each half-dozen), when another set caught fire and then another, so that the blazing powder delayed my peril by increasing it. The rockets at length ceased through the exhaustion of material and, while I was thinking I should leave my head on the summit of a mountain, I felt (without my having stirred) my elevation continue; and my machine, taking leave of me, fell towards the Earth. This extraordinary adventure filled me with a joy so uncommon that in my delight at finding myself delivered from certain danger I was impudent enough to philosophize about it. I sought with my eyes and intelligence the reason for this miracle and I perceived that my flesh was still swollen and greasy with the marrow I had rubbed on it for the bruises caused by my fall. I knew that at the time the Moon was waning and that during this quarter she is wont to suck up the marrow of animals; she drank the marrow I had rubbed on myself with the more eagerness in that her globe was nearer me and that her strength was not weakened by any intervening clouds.[30]

[Footnote 30: This was a popular superstition of the age.]

When I had traversed, according to the calculation I have since made, more than three-quarters the distance which separates the Earth from the Moon, I suddenly turned a somersault without my having stumbled at all; in fact I should not have perceived it had I not felt my head burdened with the weight of my body. I realised then that I was not falling towards our world, for although I was between two Moons and could see very well that I drew further from the one as I approached the other, I was certain that the larger was our Earth since after a day or two of travelling the distant reflection of the Sun confounded the diversity of bodies and climates and therefore it appeared to me like a large gold platter, similar to the other. From this I supposed I was descending upon the Moon and I was confirmed in this opinion when I remembered that I had only begun to fall when I had passed three-quarters of the distance. For, said I to myself, the Moon's mass being less than ours the sphere of its activity must be less extended and consequently I felt the attraction of its centre more tardily.

After I had been long falling, as I supposed, for the violence of my fall prevented me from observing it, I remember no more than that I found myself under a tree, entangled with three or four rather large branches which I had snapped off in my fall and my face moistened with an apple which had been crushed against it.[31]

[Footnote 31: The subsequent pages satirising the book of _Genesis_ were greatly mutilated in the early editions, to the great detriment of the sense.]

As you shall know very soon, this place was happily the Earthly Paradise and the tree I fell on precisely the Tree of Life. You may well suppose that without this miraculous chance I should have been dead a thousand times. I have often reflected since on the vulgar notion that a man who throws himself from a great height is suffocated before he reaches the ground; but from my adventure I conclude this to be false, or else this fruit's powerful juice trickling into my mouth must have recalled my soul which was yet near my warm corpse and ready to perform the functions of life. In fact as soon as I was on the ground my pain departed before it had even limned itself in my memory and I had but a slight recollection of having lost the hunger that had so tormented me during my voyage.

I got up and I had scarcely noticed the banks of the largest of the four great rivers, which there form a lake, when the spirit or invisible soul of the herbs which breathe out over that land delighted my nostrils. The little stones were neither hard nor rough except to the sight; they were soft when walked on.

I came first of all to a place where five avenues met and the oaks which formed them were so extremely tall that they appeared to support in the heavens a high garden-plot of greenery. Glancing from the root to the top and then from the summit to the foot I wondered whether the Earth bore them up or whether they themselves did not rather carry the Earth hanging from their roots. It seemed as if their heads, so proudly lifted, were bowed by force under the burden of the celestial globes and that they groaned as they supported this weight; their arms extended towards the sky seemed to embrace it and to ask from the stars the pure benignity of their influences which they receive before they lose any of their innocence in the bed of the elements. There, on all sides the flowers with no gardener but Nature exhale a wild breath which awakens and satisfies the sense of smell; there, the incarnate of a rose on the eglantine and the bright blue of a violet under the brambles leave no liberty of choice and make you think that each is more beautiful than the other; there, every season is spring; there, no poisonous plant grows but that its existence betrays its safety; there, the rivulets relate their journeys to the pebbles; there, a thousand little feathered voices make the forest ring with the sound of their songs and the flattering assembly of these melodious throats is so general that every leaf in the wood seems to have taken the tongue and form of a nightingale; Echo delights so much in their songs that to hear her repeat them one would think she wished to learn them by heart. Beside this wood two meadows are to be seen whose continuous happy green formed one emerald to the horizon. The confused mixture of colours which the Spring attaches to a hundred little flowers mingles the tints together and these waving flowers seem running to escape the caresses of the wind. This meadow looks like an ocean but, since it is a sea without shore, my eye, terrified at having wandered so far without discovering a limit, quickly sent my thought over it; and my thought wondering if it were not the end of the world would have convinced itself that so charming a scene had perhaps compelled Heaven to join itself to Earth. In the midst of this vast perfect carpet flow the silver bubbles of a rustic fountain whose banks are crowned with turf enamelled with daisies, buttercups and violets, and the crowding of these flowers all about appears as if each were thrusting forward to be the first reflected. The stream is still in its cradle, it is but just born and its young smooth face shows not one wrinkle; the large curves it makes, returning upon itself a thousand times, show how regretfully it leaves its native country, and, as if it had been ashamed to be caressed too near its mother, it repulsed murmuring the hand I put forth playfully to touch it; the animals that came there to drink, more reasonable than those of our world, showed their surprise at seeing it was full day above the horizon while yet they saw the Sun in the Antipodes and scarcely dared to lean over the brink lest they should fall into the firmament.[32]

[Footnote 32: All this long paragraph comes from an earlier work of Cyrano's, a letter called "Le Campagnard". _Œuvres Diverses._ 1654. In Jacob's edition, 1858, the title is "D'une Maison de Campagne".]

I cannot choose but admit that the sight of so many fair objects tickled me with those agreeable pangs the embryo is said to feel when the soul is infused in it! My old hair fell out and was replaced by thicker and finer tresses; I felt my youth re-lighted, my face grow rosy, my natural heat mingle gently once more with my radical moisture; in fine, my age diminished some fourteen years.

I had walked half a league through a forest of jasmine and myrtles when I perceived something that moved, as it lay in the shade; it was a young man whose majestic beauty compelled me almost to adore him. He arose to restrain me.

"'Tis not to me", he exclaimed loudly, "but to God, that you owe these acts of submission!"

"You see me", I replied, "amazed with so many miracles that I know not how to begin the expression of my wonder. First I come from a world which you here no doubt take to be a Moon; and I thought to reach another, which the people of my country call the Moon, and I find myself in Paradise at the feet of a God who refuses to be adored, of a stranger who speaks my language."