Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English

by Cyrano de Bergerac

  CHAPTER VII.

  _Being cast out from that Country, of the new_ _Adventures which Befellhim; and of the_ Demon _of_ Socrates.

  At length I resolved to march forwards, till Fortune should affordme the company of some Beasts, or at least the means of Dying. Shefavourably granted my desire; for within half a quarter of a League,I met two huge Animals, one of which stopt before me, and the otherfled swiftly to its Den; for so I thought at least; because that sometime after, I perceived it come back again in company of above Sevenor Eight hundred of the same kind, who beset me. When I could discernthem at a near distance, I perceived that they were proportioned andshaped like us. This adventure brought into my mind the old Wives Talesof my Nurse concerning _Syrenes, Faunes_ and _Satyrs_: Ever now andthen they raised such furious Shouts, occasioned undoubtedly by theirAdmiration[1] at the sight of me, that I thought I was e'en turned aMonster. At length one of these Beast-like men, catching hold of me bythe Neck, just as Wolves do when they carry away Sheep, tossed me uponhis back and brought me into their Town; where I was more amazed thanbefore, when I knew they were Men, that I could meet with none of thembut who marched upon all four.

  When these People saw that I was so little, (for most of them areTwelve Cubits long,) and that I walked only upon Two Legs, they couldnot believe me to be a Man: For they were of opinion, that Naturehaving given to men as well as Beasts Two Legs and Two Arms, theyshould both make use of them alike. And, indeed, reflecting uponthat since, that scituation of Body did not seem to me altogetherextravagant; when I called to mind, that whilst Children are stillunder the nurture of Nature, they go upon all four, and that they risenot on their two Legs but by the care of their Nurses; who set them inlittle running Chairs, and fasten straps to them, to hinder them fromfalling on all four, as the only posture that the shape of our Bodynaturally inclines to rest in.

  They said then, (as I had it interpreted to me since) That I wasinfallibly the Female of the Queens little Animal. And therefore assuch, or somewhat else, I was carried streight to the Town-House,where I observed by the muttering and gestures both of the People andMagistrates, that they were consulting what sort of a thing I could be.When they had conferred together a long while, a certain Burgher, whohad the keeping of the strange Beasts, besought the Mayor and Aldermento commit me to his Custody, till the Queen should send for me tocouple me to my Male. This was granted without any difficulty, and thatJuggler carried me to his House; where he taught me to Tumble, Vault,make Mouths, and shew a Hundred odd Tricks, for which in the Afternoonshe received Money at the door from those that came in to see me.

  But Heaven pitying my Sorrows, and vext to see the Temple of its Makerprofaned, so ordered it, that one day [when] I was tied to a Rope,wherewith the Mountebank made me Leap and Skip to divert the People,I heard a Man's voice, who asked me what I was, in Greek. I was muchsurprised to hear one speak in that Country as they do in our World. Heput some Questions to me, which I answered, and then gave him a fullaccount of my whole design, and the success of my Travels: He took thepains to comfort me, and, as I take it, said to me: "Well, Son, atlength you suffer for the frailties of your World: There is a Mobile[2]here, as well as there, that can sway with nothing but what they areaccustomed to: But know, that you are but justly served; for had anyone of this Earth had the boldness to mount up to yours, and callhimself a Man, your Sages would have destroyed him as a Monster."

  [Sidenote: The Demon of Socrates]

  He then told me, That he would acquaint the Court with my disaster;adding, that so soon as he had heard the news that went of me, hecame to see me, and was satisfied that I was a man of the World ofwhich I said I was; because he had Travelled there formerly, andsojourned in _Greece_, where he was called the _Demon of Socrates_:That after the Death of that Philosopher, he had governed and taught_Epaminondas_ at _Thebes_: After which being gone over to the _Romans_,Justice had obliged him to espouse the party of the Younger _Cato_:That after his Death, he had addicted himself to Brutus: That allthese great Men having left in that World no more but the shadow oftheir Virtues, he with his Companions had retreated to Temples andSolitudes. "In a word," added he, "the People of your World became sodull and stupid, that my Companions and I lost all the Pleasure thatformerly we had had in instructing them: Not but that you have heardMen talk of us; for they called us _Oracles, Nymphs, Geniuses, Fairies,Houshold-Gods, Lemmes_,[3] _Larves_[4] _Lamiers_,[5] _Hobgoblins,Nayades, Incubusses, Shades, Manes, Visions_ and _Apparitions_: Weabandoned your World, in the Reign of _Augustus_, not long after I hadappeared to _Drusus_ the Son of _Livia_, who waged War in _Germany_,whom I forbid to proceed any farther. It is not long since I came fromthence a second time; within these Hundred Years I had a Commission toTravel thither: I roamed a great deal in _Europe_, and conversed withsome, whom possibly you may have known. One Day, amongst others, Iappeared to _Cardan_,[6] as he was at his Study; I taught him a greatmany things, and he in acknowledgment promised me to inform Posterityof whom he had those Wonders, which he intended to leave in writing.[7]There I saw _Agrippa_[8] the Abbot _Trithemius_[9] Doctor _Faustus_,_La Brosse_, _Caesar_,[10] and a certain Cabal of Young Men, who arecommonly called _Rosacrucians_[11] or _Knights of the Red Cross_, whomI taught a great many Knacks and Secrets of Nature, which without doubthave made them pass for great Magicians: I knew _Campanella_[12] also;it was I that advised him, whilst he was in the Inquisition at _Rome_,to put his Face and Body into the usual Postures of those whose insidehe needed to know, that by the same frame of Body he might excitein himself the thoughts which the same scituation had raised in hisAdversaries; because by so doing, he might better manage their Soul,when he came to know it; and at my desire he began a Book, which weEntituled, _De Sensu Rerum_.[13]

  "I likewise haunted, in _France, La Mothe le Vayer_[14] and_Gassendus_;[15] this last hath written as much like a Philosopher,as the other lived: I have known a great many more there, whom yourAge call _Divines_[16] but all that I could find in them was a greatdeal of Babble and a great deal of Pride. In fine, since I past overfrom your Country into _England_, to acquaint my self with the mannersof its Inhabitants, I met with a Man, the shame of his Country; forcertainly it is a great shame for the Grandees of your States toknow the virtue which in him has its Throne, and not to adore him:That I may give you an Abridgement of his Panegyrick, he is allWit, all Heart, and possesses all the Qualities, of which one alonewas heretofore sufficient to make an Heroe: It was _Tristan_ theHermite.[17] The Truth is, I must tell you, when I perceived so exalteda Virtue I mistrusted it would not be taken notice of, and thereforeI endeavoured to make him accept Three Vials, the first filled withthe Oyl of Talk,[18] the other with the Powder of Projection,[19] andthe third with _Aurum Potabile_;[20] but he refused them with a moregenerous Disdain than _Diogenes_ did the Complements of _Alexander_. Infine, I can add nothing to the Elogy[21] of that Great Man, but that heis the only Poet, the only Philosopher, and the only Freeman amongstyou: These are the considerable Persons that I conversed with; allthe rest, at least that I know, are so far below Man that I have seenBeasts somewhat above them.

  "After all, I am not a Native neither of this Country nor yours, I wasborn in the Sun; but because sometimes our World is overstock'd withpeople, by reason of the long Lives of the Inhabitants, and that thereis hardly any Wars or Diseases amongst them: Our Magistrates, from timeto time, send Colonies into the neighbouring Worlds. For my own part,I was commanded to go to yours; being declared Chief of the Colonythat accompanyed me. I came since into this World, for the Reasons Itold you; and that which makes me continue here, is, because the Menare great lovers of Truth; and have no Pedants among them; that thePhilosophers are never perswaded but by Reason, and that the Authorityof a Doctor, or of a great number, is not preferred before the Opinionof a Thresher in a Barn, when he has right on his side. In short, noneare reckoned Madmen in this Country, but Sophisters and Orators." Iasked him how they lived? he made answer, three or four thousand Years;and thus went on:

  "Th
ough the Inhabitants of the Sun be not so numerous as those of thisWorld; yet the Sun is many times over stocked, because the People beingof a hot constitution are stirring and ambitious, and digest much."

  "You ought not to be surprised at what I tell you; for though our Globebe very vast, and yours little, though we die not before the end ofFour thousand Years, and you at the end of Fifty; yet know, that asthere are not so many Stones as clods of Earth, nor so many Animals asPlants, nor so many Men as Beasts; just so there ought not to be somany Spirits as Men, by reason of the difficulties that occur in theGeneration of a perfect Creature."

  I asked him, if they were Bodies as we are? He made answer, That theywere Bodies, but not like us, nor any thing else which we judged such;because we call nothing a Body commonly, but what we can touch: That,in short, there was nothing in Nature but what was material; and thatthough they themselves were so, yet they were forced, when they had amind to appear to us, to take Bodies proportionated to what our Sensesare able to know; and that, without doubt, that was the reason why manyhave taken the Stories that are told of them for the Delusions of aweak Fancy, because they only appeared in the night time: He told mewithal, That seeing they were necessitated to piece together the Bodiesthey were to make use of, in great haste, many times they had notleisure enough to render them the Objects of more Senses than one at atime, sometimes of the Hearing, as the Voices of _Oracles_, sometimesof the Sight, as the _Fires_ and _Visions_, sometimes of the Feeling,as the _Incubusses_; and that these Bodies being but Air condensed insuch or such a manner, the Light dispersed them by its heat, in thesame manner as it scatters a Mist.

  So many fine things as he told me, gave me the curiosity to questionhim about his Birth and Death; if in the Country of the Sun, the_individual_ was procreated by the ways of Generation, and if it diedby the dissolution of its Constitution, or the discomposure of itsOrgans? "Your senses," replied he, "bear but too little proportionto the Explication of these Mysteries: Ye Gentlemen imagine, thatwhatsoever you cannot comprehend is spiritual, or that it is not atall; but that Consequence[22] is absurd, and it is an argument, thatthere are a Million of things, perhaps, in the Universe, that wouldrequire a Million of different Organs in you to understand them. Forinstance, I by my Senses know the cause of the Sympathy that is betwixtthe Load-stone and the Pole, of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea, andwhat becomes of the Animal after Death; you cannot reach these highConceptions but by Faith, because they are Secrets above the power ofyour Intellects; no more than a Blind-man can judge of the beauties ofa Land-skip, the Colours of a Picture, or the streaks of a Rainbow; orat best he will fancy them to be somewhat palpable, to be like Eating,a Sound, or a pleasant Smell: Even so, should I attempt to explain toyou what I perceive by the Senses which you want, you would representit to your self as somewhat that may be Heard, Seen, Felt, Smelt orTasted, and yet it is no such thing."

  He was gone on so far in his Discourse, when my Juggler perceived, thatthe Company began to be weary of my Gibberish, that they understoodnot, and which they took to be an inarticulated Grunting: He thereforefell to pulling my Rope afresh to make me leap and skip, till theSpectators having had their Belly-fulls of Laughing, affirmed that Ihad almost as much Wit as the Beasts of their Country, and so broke up.

  [1] Astonishment.

  [2] Mobile = people, populace. _Cf_. p. 145. (Search: start p. 145:"... there he entertained me till Suppertime...")

  [3] Lemures; malicious spirits of the dead. _Cf_. Milton:

  "The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint."

  [4] Lars, larvas; ghosts, spectres.

  [5] Lamias; female demons or vampires.

  [6] _Cf_. p. 12 (Search: start p. 12: "... Accident, Providence, Fortune,or what...")

  [7] "Jerome Cardan pretended to have written most of his books underthe dictation of a Familiar Spirit ... but, in his treatise _De RerumVarietate_, he ingenuously declares that he had never had any othergenius but his own: _Ego certe nullum daemonem aut genium mihi adessecognosce_" (Note of Paul Lacroix.)

  [8] Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, 1486-1535, philosopher,astrologer, and alchemist. Cyrano introduces him in his _Lettre XII_.,"Pour les Sorciers."

  [9] Jean Tritheme (or Johann Tritheim), Abbot of Spanheim; a man ofuniversal scholarship, and an experimenter in alchemy; also accused ofsorcery.

  [10] Cesar de Nostradamus, physician and astrologer of the earlysixteenth century.

  [11] A famous occult order which probably never existed, but aboutwhich much was written in the first half of the seventeenth century.It was supposed to have been founded early in the fifteenth century byRosenkrenz, a pilgrim who had acquired all the wisdom of the Orient.

  [12] Tomaso Campanella, 1568-1639, Italian poet and philosopher, whocame to Paris in 1634. His philosophy was much admired by Cyrano, sincehe rejected the Aristotelism of the schools, advocated empiricismas the only method of arriving at truth, and insisted on the "fourElements" as the origin of all things.

  He appears as an important character in Cyrano's _Voyage to theSun_, where he is Cyrano's companion and guide to the Land of thePhilosophers.

  [13] Campanella's principal work, published in 1620.

  [14] Francois de La Mothe le Vayer, 1588-1672. He was the tutor of theDue d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., and, after 1654, of Louis XIV.himself. In philosophy he was a free-thinker, in literature a discipleof Montaigne. He nevertheless concealed his scepticism in philosophy,even in his chief work, the _Doutes sceptiques_, under a pretendedorthodoxy in religion, and so was never persecuted. Possibly it is tothis that Cyrano refers in saying, that he "_lived_ as much like aphilosopher, as Gassendi wrote."

  [15] _Cf_. p 28, n. 1. (See note 5 chap. III)

  [16] _Divine_. The translator has mistaken an adjective for a noun.

  [17] Francois Tristan Thermite, 1601-1655, a French dramatist ofimportance. His tragedy of _Mariamne_, in date contemporary withCorneille's _Cid_, marks him as a predecessor of Racine in method andmanner. He is also the author of fugitive verse, but neither that norhis plays make him quite worthy of Cyrano's exalted "Elogy."

  He was compelled to pass the years 1614-1620 in England, on account ofa duel fought at the age of thirteen!

  [18] Talc, silicate of magnesia.

  [19] The "Philosopher's Stone," in form of powder, for chemical"projection" upon baser metals, to transmute them into gold.

  [20] The "Elixir of Life," or the "Philosopher's Stone" in liquid form.

  [21] _Eulogy_. Still so used at the end of the eighteenth century.

  [22] Consequence = _conclusion_, deduction. Cf. Matthew Prior:

  "Can syllogisms set things right? No, majors soon with minors fight. Or both in friendly consort joined The consequence limps false behind."