“The sentence was carried out. I fought twelve lions in the presence of Indolent’s entire court; you were a witness, reluctantly, to that frightful spectacle. I had the joy of seeing you there, and the mortal displeasure of not being able to tell you about my misfortunes. Then I was taken to the black forest. There I discovered the cavern that served you as a retreat and made it my habitation.
“A few days later I encountered you. On seeing you, I experienced an incredible joy, but it was not of long duration because I could not make myself known to you, and, in spite of all the cares I took to enable to you avoid death, you were exposed to a thousand dangers.
“Those thoughts caused me a great deal of sadness and made me shed tears, which you noticed. Several times I heard you say things that proved to me that you still loved me. I saw with extreme satisfaction the dolor you experienced when you had seen me wounded by the boar. I have never sensed the malevolence of Vicious more sharply than when I was forced to draw away from you at a time when you were offering me your help with so much generosity.
“In sum, until now I have been the most unfortunate of men. It is you, divine Constance, who can render me the most fortunate. Do not delay, then, and let me read in your eyes that I still possess your heart entirely; I flatter myself that the king, your father, touched by my troubles, will not disapprove of you.”
Judicious immediately spoke, assuring him that he would not raise any objection if his daughter wanted to give him her heart and her hand.
Constance, seeing that her lover was faithful, promised to love him as long as she lived. That assurance compensated him for all that he had suffered. Virtue told the king that it was necessary to unite those lovable individuals immediately, but that, as the place where they were as inappropriate to such a beautiful celebration, she was going to take them to the Tranquil Isle, which was a thousand times more charming than the Isle of Roses; nothing would trouble their felicity there.
As she finished speaking they saw a magnificent chariot appear carried on a shining cloud, which came to settle at their feet. She made the princes and the princess climb into it, and took her place with them. They were all carried into the air and taken to the island that was to be their abode.
That island was a land of delights; nothing was lacking there. The beauty of the gardens, arbors and waters surpassed anything that they had seen thus far. Palaces of flowers, diamonds and crystal were built in different places The Fountain of Youth flowed in that beautiful place. Virtue made Judicious drink from it, and the prince became again what he had been in his early youth.
Tendrebrun, who still conserved a veritable amity for his father, begged the amiable sovereign to permit him to drink that marvelous water too. She wanted to take charge of that personally; she departed immediately, and returned with him two hours later.
The good emperor blessed the day a hundred times that had enabled him to find his dear son again; he gave Constance a thousand caresses, as well as her father, and urged them both to render his son happy. He drank the water of youth and recovered the strength and the features that the great number of years had taken away from him.
Those illustrious individuals reposed for two or three days, in order to recover from the fatigues they had endured, after which the two lovers were taken to the temple of Hymen, where they swore an eternal love to one another joyfully.
Virtue rendered them immortal, as well as their fathers, and promised always to dwell with them. There were charming fêtes for an infinite time. The inhabitants of the island were delighted with the princes and the princess that Virtue had given them. They were all subjects of that divine daughter, and had always loved her; that is what had brought them to assemble in that beautiful abode.
After the first days of the happy marriage, Virtue proposed to the two spouses to accompany them in the voyage they wanted to make in the world. They consented to that with pleasure and departed, each mounted on a white eagle.
First they went to the Isle of Roses where Vicious had made her abode, but they no longer found her there. She had returned to her mountain. They therefore took the road there, and found her boiling in a huge cauldron a quantity of spiders and vipers with quicksilver, in order to make a spell that she wanted to use that same evening. She uttered a frightful screech when she perceived Constance and Tendrebrun and trembled on seeing the person who was accompanying hem.
Her design then was to flee and hide, but Virtue said to her: “Remain attached to this mountain until the end of centuries, and stay there without it being permitted for you to do the slightest harm. That is what I order you to do to punish you for all the crimes you have committed; but I want you to give me the little box that you keep in your pocket.”
The malevolent fay, finding herself powerless against her enemy, was obliged to obey; she therefore gave her the box and remained chained next to her cauldron, without being able to move.
Virtue knocked her down, tore up all her magic books and left her in that horrible place uttering howls that could be heard for at least a league around. Then she opened the box, and showed the prince and princess the little magician of the island of Tintarinos, whom the malevolent Vicious had imprisoned there some time ago.
Beneficent, charmed to find himself among friends again, made them a thousand amities and begged Virtue to permit him to follow her everywhere. She consented to that with pleasure, and traveled with that amiable company through several realms, which she found governed by Vices. She could have expelled them if she had wanted to do so, but the people of whom they had rendered themselves the masters were so wicked and corrupt that she resolved to punish them for not having followed her by leaving them under the domination of those monsters.
She renounced thereafter the empire that she had once had over the earth, and only formed the design to make a voyage from time to time to remove the small number of men and women who had an extreme aversion to the Vices in order to transport them to her island—which she has executed until the present day, and that is why there are so few virtuous people to be found in the world.
After having traveled all over the world, she returned to the Tranquil Isle with the prince, the princess and Beneficent. Their return caused extreme joy to the Emperor, the king and all the inhabitants of the beautiful country. Constance augmented that joy a short time afterwards by bringing into the world a charming princess, who was subsequently as perfect as those who gave her life.
The happiness of all those individuals has not deteriorated since; they live content in that unknown land, because they refuse entry to the children of Vicious. Only Virtue makes their felicity; they love her and respect her, and never ceases to say that those she protects and who do not abandon her are fortunate.
GUILLAUME-HYACINTHE BOUGÉANT: THE MARVELOUS VOYAGE OF PRINCE FAN-FÉRÉDIN TO ROMANCIA
I. The Departure of Fan-Férédin for Romancia
I could, following a sufficiently common custom, begin this story with an account of my youth and all the cares that my mother, Queen Fan-Férédine, took in my education; she was the most virtuous princess in the world, and, without vanity, I have sometimes heard it said that by the sagacity of her education she was able to render me, in no time, one of the most accomplished princes that had ever been seen. I am even persuaded that the story, full of fine maxims for the education of young princes, would figure quite well in this work; but as my design is less to talk about myself as to recount the admirable things that I have seen, I believe I ought to omit that detail and every other circumstance unnecessary to my project.
Queen Fan-Férédine did not like romances much, but having read by chance in I know not what work,11 composed by an author of respectable character, that nothing is more appropriate to form the hearts and minds of young persons, she felt obliged by conscience to make me read as many romances as I could, in order to inspire in me as soon as possible a love of virtue and honor, a horror of vice, flight from passions and an appetite for the true, the great, the solid an
d everything that is most estimable.
In fact, as I was, it is said, born with fortunate dispositions, I soon felt the fruits of such a praiseworthy education. Agitated my a thousand unknown movements, my heart full of fine sentiments and my mind filled with great ideas, I began to be disgusted by everything that surrounded me.
What a difference there is, I thought, between what I see and hear and what I read in romances! I see here everyone occupied with objects if interest, fortune, establishment or frivolous pleasures. No singular adventures, no heroic enterprises. A lover, if one can believe him, goes straight to the denouement without the embarrassment of any preliminaries. What a way to behave! Why was it necessary for me to be born in a climate where fine sentiments are so unfamiliar?
But why, I added, should I condemn myself to spend my days sadly in a land where heroic virtues are not esteemed? I reign here, it is true, but what satisfaction is there for a great heart to reign over barbarians? Let us abandon their vulgarity and go in search of a glorious establishment in the marvelous land of romances, where even the proletariat is made up of heroes.
Such were the thoughts that came to my mind, and I did not take long to put them into execution. After having equipped myself secretly with everything necessary for my voyage, I departed by moonlight one beautiful night, in order to attempt, by traveling, the discovery that I was meditating.
I traversed many plains, passed over many mountains, encountered castles and cities without number on my route, but, only finding everywhere lands similar to those I already knew and people who had nothing singular about them, I finally began to find the length of my search tedious. I sought in vain for information and news of the land of Romances; some people replied that they did not even known the name; other told me that they had, in truth, heard mention of it, but that they did not know in what part of the world it was situated. The only thing that sustained my courage in the length and difficulty of the enterprise was the reflection that, after all, it was necessary for Romancia to be somewhere, and that it could not be a chimera.
For in the end, I said, if that country did not really exist, it would be necessary to treat as ridiculous visions and puerile fables everything that one reads in romances. What an illusion! Is it imaginable that so many otherwise reasonable people, who love that reading, and so many intelligent people, would employ their talents composing such works?
In spite of those reflections, however, I confess that I was sometimes on the point of repenting of my enterprise, and it would not have taken much for me to make the resolution to turn back. But no, I said to myself, yet again, after having done so much, it would be shameful to retreat. How do I know whether I might not be nearing the goal so much desired?
I was, in fact, nearing it without knowing it, and this is how it happened, by virtue of a bizarre accident that might have cost me my life anywhere else.
After having been climbing the great mountains of Troximania for some hours, with a great deal of difficulty, I finally arrived at their summit, leading my horse by the bridle. There I suddenly felt the earth give way beneath my feet; in fact, my horse slid down one side of the mountain and I fell on the other, without knowing what became of me from that moment until I found myself at the bottom of a frightful precipice, surrounded on all sides by terrible crags. It is evident that some good genius sustained me in my fall in order to prevent me from perishing, and I would have perceived it then if I had had all the knowledge that I acquired subsequently, but the thought did not occur to me and I attributed to a fortunate hazard what was in fact a particular protection of some fay, favorable genius or one of the petty divinities that flutter around the land of Romances in greater numbers than the butterflies of spring in our countryside.
It is, however, not difficult to understand that in the situation in which I found myself, after having looked upwards to contemplate he enormous height from which I had fallen, and having envisaged the horror of my surroundings, that I abandoned myself to the saddest reflections.
Poor Fan-Férédin, what will become of you in this horrible solitude? How will you get out of this profound lair? You’re going to die...
Yes, how many touching things I said, how eloquently I complained of destiny, and, by virtue of the right I have acquired in the land of Romances of making moral reflections, I would like people to learn in good time, by my example, to respect the supreme decrees that regulate my fate, and never complain about the events that seem to them to be the most contrary to their desires.
However, the approaching night redoubled my anxiety and I hastened to take advantage of what little daylight and strength remained to me to get out of the abyss that I was in, if I could. It was in vain that I would have tried to gain the heights; they were too sheer. It only remained for me to seek in the depths for an issue that might lead me to some inhabited place, or at least a habitable one.
No vestige of a path was offered to my sight. Doubtless I was the first man who had ever descended into that precipice. I was thus reduced to making a route for myself, and, in fact, I did that so well, climbing and leaping from rock to rock, sometimes hanging on to brushwood, sometimes falling backwards or forwards, that after having covered some ground in that fashion, I arrived at a place that was more open and more spacious.
The first object that struck my sight was a kind of cemetery, a charnel-house or a heap of bones of a singular kind. There were horns of all forms, huge hooked talons, the dried skins of winged dragons, and long beaks of birds of every species. I remembered immediately what I had read in romances about griffins, centaurs, hippogriffs, flying dragons, harpies, satyrs and other similar animals, and I began to flatter myself that I was not far from the land for which I was searching.
What confirmed me in that idea was that, a moment later, I saw a centaur emerging from the opening of a lair, which came straight to the place I was observing and threw down the large carcass of a hippogriff, after which he withdrew and plunged back into the lair from which he had emerged.
Although I was perfectly familiar with centaurs by virtue of the reading I had done, and, in any case, am not lacking in courage, I confess that that first sight caused me some emotion. I even hid behind a rock in order to observe the centaur until he had retired. Recovering my spirits then, however, and arming myself with resolution, I said to myself: What do I have to fear from that centaur? I have read in all romances that the centaurs are the best folk in the world. Far from being enemies of humans, they are always disposed to lend them service and to tell them a thousand curious secrets, as witness the centaur Chiron. Perhaps this one might carry me to the land of Romances; at least it won’t refuse to get me out of this horrible place.
Immediately, I marched toward the lair, and, stopping at the entrance, I called loudly: “Charitable centaur, if your heart can be touched by pity, be sensible to the misfortune of a prince who implores your generosity. It is Prince Fan-Férédin who is appealing to you.”
But I called and shouted in vain; no one appeared.
Full of anxiety and secret fear, I went into the cavern, and I saw that it was a subterranean road, which plunged a long way under the mountain. What should I do? I could not think of anything other than following the centaur, judging that it was impossible that I would not encounter him, or that I would soon make myself heard to him.
But should I confess my weakness here or not? Is it necessary to speak or be silent? This is one of those difficult situations in which I have often seen the heroes of romances who are recounting their adventures, the embarrassment of which one can only know by experiencing it oneself.
In sum, as I have remarked that, all things considered, those gentlemen always decide to confess with a good grace, I too shall confess. Scarcely had I taken a hundred steps in that profound tunnel, still following the rock that served as a wall, gripped by the horror of finding myself in such a frightful place, without knowing how I was going to get out, than I let myself collapse weakly, almost devoid of consciousness.
I retained sufficient, however, to remember that in a very similar situation the celebrated Cleveland had had the wit to go to sleep, and finding the expedient rather good, I did not hesitate to imitate him.12
After such a confession, however, it is only just that I compensate myself by means of something that does honor to my courage. Soon afterwards, therefore, I got up, and, considering that it was either necessary to resolve myself to perishing in the profound darkness of the bowels of the earth or find a means of getting out of it, I decided to continue my route as far as it could take me.
Imagine a man walking without light in a narrow tunnel in the earth, perhaps two leagues deep, often obliged to crawl or fold himself up, to slither like a snake through tight passages, only able to advance by groping with his hand and testing the ground with his foot. Such was my situation; it would doubtless be difficult to imagine a more frightful one. The memory of that adventure still fills me with so much horror that I shall cut the story short.
What I cannot help saying, however, is that I have never recognized better than I did then the verity that I have seen in all romances, that one is never closer to obtaining what one desires than at the moment when one appears to be most distant from it. That is what happened to me.
After having traveled for a long time in the fashion that I have just described, I thought that I was beginning to perceive a feeble light. I could scarcely convince myself of it at first, and I attributed it to an effect of my anxious and troubled imagination. However, I soon perceived that the light was gradually augmented, and I no longer had any doubt of it when I realized that I was beginning to distinguish objects. What joy I felt at that moment! My entire body quivered with it, and I do not know words capable of expressing it. I still do not understand how that sudden transition from an extreme sadness to such a great excess of joy did not cause me a dangerous revolution.
Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia Page 10