“I was not immediately designated for the furies of intolerance; I had no fortune susceptible of encouraging the zeal of persecutors, and I belonged, in any case, to a family accredited in a court that there was too much interest in sparing. But the sudden cooling of my beloved’s parents, the insulting politeness of the ministers and the circumspect and reserved welcome of the courtiers informed me that I ought not to count on the political regard that I had, and that, sooner or later, I would swell the list of the unfortunates targeted by the furies of fanaticism.
“I did not wait for that last moment. I retired into these mountains, to which cruel maladies, the fruit of my zeal in the service of the king, had already brought me for two years in succession. Undecided as to the choice of a third fatherland to replace the one I which I was born and the one I had adopted, the retreat that you are offering me is the most fortunate I can encounter. We have all been battered by the same tempest, we are now united in the same haven. I bless my misfortunes, since they have procured me such a consolation.”
A short time later I sent one of my hosts’ domestics with a few letters, some to arrange my friends and the others to bid my friends an eternal adieu. On his return, the man was to bring a few effects that I had left.
In the interval, my hosts made me party to the project they had conceived in order to ensure the inviolable tranquility of our refuge. It was to mine, by means of holes hollowed out and intervals and filled with powder, the remains of the cornice that still associated the refuge with France. To each of those holes a fuse was attached, which descended from the top of the rock. Thus, by setting fire to those fuses, the perpendicular face of the rock would be flattened, in such a manner as to render it absolutely inaccessible.
The holes had already been bored for some time, it was no longer a matter of anything but filling them with powder and placing the fuses. That was what we did the following day, and, mounted on the rampart of the valley, we were waiting for the return of our messenger to set fire to the fuses when tumultuous cries suddenly rose up from the base of the rock. It was all the inhabitants of the Protestant village that had served as a refuge for the two friends, whose faces and voices they immediately recognized.
One of them having gone down and climbed up again a short time later, we learned that the unfortunates had fled, with a great deal of difficulty, the fury of dragoons while the latter were occupied in looting and burning their homes. They had brought a part of their flocks and some mules, loaded with everything they had been able to save. They implored hospitality, submitting to any conditions that might be imposed upon them.
Their request was easily granted. We immediately hastened to establish planks across the interruptions in the cornice, in order to give passage to the animals and to facilitate that of the women and children. When the entire troop had passed over and reached the summit, we climbed up after them and set fire to the fuses. They had scarcely been lit when we saw the dragoons coming, sabers in hand. A few moments later, the mines exploded.
That unexpected detonation, and the blocks of stone that it launched at the satellites of fanaticism doubtless struck them with fear and despair, for since that day we have seen a few observers measuring our inaccessible ramparts with their eyes, but none has approached with the insensate project of scaling them.
Here my story ends. I had only begun to tell it with the intention of making known to the public, on my return from the valley, the truly astonishing things that I had seen there. Now there is no more public for me. The whole earth is the valley that I inhabit, and my two hosts form the population of the entire world. It is, therefore, to them that I am giving this manuscript; they will dispose of it as they see fit.
V
After several days of interruption I am resuming this written account, no longer on my own behalf but that of the Aerial Valley.
The savage inhabitants of a few recently discovered islands, ignorant of their origin, have made up a chimerical account of it. The reports of voyagers on that matter have often given rise to scholarly dissertations. The Aerial Valley is like an island, but its situation and the fluid that surrounds it, impracticable to human industry, will doubtless hide it forever from all the research of curiosity. It is not, therefore for scholars foreign to our refuge that I am writing, but only for our descendants, fellow inhabitants of the valley.
One of the fundamental principles of our new government being not to mislead the people with lies, and, on the contrary, always to tell them the truth, it is indispensable that they should know that of their origin.
Henceforth, this account will bear the title Annals of the Aerial Valley. I have been given the responsibility of drafting it by the new governors. Eternally separated from the rest of the earth, praise and criticism are absolutely foreign to me, and I hope that the truth of my writings will always conform to the purity of my conscience.
10 September 16**
The inhabitants of the village of Garringue, pursued by the satellites of fanaticism, who wanted, under pain of death, to make them renounce the religion of their fathers, have run to ask us for shelter at the moment when we were about to destroy the rest of the cornice that, snaking over the perpendicular face of the French rock, still kept open a communication between our Valley and the people of the exterior. Having consented to their requests, we have facilitated their passage by placing planks over all the breaches in the cornice.
This is the number of humans and animals who have been introduced:
102 persons, as many men as women and children.
52 cows.
5 bulls.
20 mules.
10 horses.
400 sheep.
52 goats.
10 dogs.
22 cats.
Plus several plows and other agricultural implements, and tools appropriate to several métiers.
When everything had been taken up to the rampart of the Valley we said an eternal adieu to the rest of the earth, and broke the unique route of communication that we still had with it.
All those people, embarrassed with regard to nourishment and lodgings, addressed themselves to the two owners of the Valley, Antonin and Simeon, but before using the authority accorded to them, that latter wanted to it be deferred to them by ordinary means, and in consequence, for one or several chiefs to be appointed by the plurality of suffrages, invested with a superior power. After that proposal, votes were taken individually. They were all united upon Antonin and Simeon, whose names have been decorated with the particular distinction of the title of Dom. Dom Antonin and Dom Simeon have accepted the government of the Valley, but on condition that their power be limited by a constitution and laws that they will be authorized to propose.
The first care of the governors has been to take a census of what there is in the Valley of the subsistence of different species, inasmuch as the newcomers have brought with them what remains of ample harvests they had made. It was found that there was enough to nourish the whole population until the next harvest. Present needs being assured, all that remained was to provide for those of the future. They ordered, in consequence, that from the following day onwards, everyone, without distinction, would be employing in laboring and inseminating fields.
That which regards religion and mores has also been regulated by the governors. This is the substance of the various speeches that Dom Antonin made on that subject:
“A host of causes acting one upon another since the formation of empires modify them variously from one century to another, without all the science and power of humans being able either to change or anticipate the state that will succeed their present state. It is a molten metal that cannot take on any determined form because it is continuously exposed to the most ardent fire.
“Our situation is absolutely different. The people we have to govern have only just been born with virgin mores and a healthy and robust temperament. In order to conserve its mores and its health, it requires laws as simple as its aliments. Adam was governe
d solely by the word of God and nourished himself solely on the fruits of Eden so long as he was in the terrestrial paradise. This Valley is a second Eden, and its inhabitants are the children of Adam before his fall. Let us therefore accustom them to recognizing no other sovereign but God. Let them love him for the benefits that he lavishes every day; let them fear his justice, which punishes as it rewards.
“Above all, let nothing be interposed between the creator and the creature. One can say to people that the figures of stone, metal or wood that they venerate are nothing in themselves, and that it is to the object they represent that homage ought to be addressed, but the senses obscure intelligence; they take the place thereof and soon the idea of God vanishes, while the image alone captivates thought.
“It is principally to that cause that it is necessary to attribute the degeneration of Christianity. That religion, so benign and humane, has often only had for protectors imbecilic sovereigns who persecuted all those who, recognizing the creator of the universe, did not adore him as they did under a deceptive image. It was necessary not to have any religion except theirs, and to render homage not to the uncreated author of all things but to the one who was the work of their own hands. In brief, the Christians of those times were true atheists.
“It is thus that, in drawing away from its source, Christianity has been denatured. If one wants to consider its degeneration in all its horror, cast an eye upon Spain, on the Inquisition, on the massacre of Vaudois, that of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve, and finally, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of which we are the innocent and unfortunate victims.22
“Perhaps, I confess, the reestablishment of the primitive purity of Christianity among the nations of Europe aged in corruption would now be too feeble a brake, and too easily broken by the tempest of passions, but it is to a virgin people that I am offering it, to a nascent society as pure as the air it breathes.”
The minister replied: “You are only exposing your opinion to us, Monsieur le Gouverneur, in order to submit it to our examination. You will doubtless only institute it in principle if it emerges victorious from that proof. I will therefore tell you frankly that that opinion has been devastated for a long time, not only by the doctrine of Christianity but by something even more powerful, by the experience of centuries. No people has ever existed that did not have an ostensible religion.”
“That is because until now, it has been thought impossible or dangerous to teach them to do without one.”
“Teach the people to do without organized religion? How can that be one, pray?”
“By enlightening them. A savage is limited to the physical; he only has half a life, since mental life is entirely void to him. It is, however, that life which is the entirety of humanity. Without intelligence, thought and sentiment, humans cannot fulfill their destination; they vegetate like brutes, like insensitive plants. How can one develop human mentality? As one develops the physique, by exercise. What the gymnastics of the ancients did for corporeal strength, a well-extended education does for intellectual strength.
“The opinion generally spread over the world, I know, is that the common people cannot and ought not to be educated, that it is necessary not to raise their intelligence above the coarse labor to which nature has condemned them. That opinion is founded on the same reasoning that caused some northern sovereign to say that it was not necessary for a peasant to have two legs. In fact, a lame people is more easily enslaved to cultivating the fields, just as a people brutalized by ignorance is more entirely dependent on its priests and its kings. It is when a people is completely blind that it can no longer do without its guides, and it is also then that all its actions are regulated by the temporal master and all its thoughts by the spiritual master. ‘Do as I order you to,’ is cried at it from one side, and from the other, ‘Believe what I say: no examination, you are incapable of it, I alone am enlightened; obey, vile automaton.’
“That is surely the true means of making slaves and fanatics; and no one is unaware that it is from that double source, of servitude and fanaticism, that the greatest evils of the world emerge.
“But as it is not for ourselves, but for the inhabitants of this Valley that we have accepted the government, we want, not merely to conserve their reason, but also to give it all the development of which it is susceptible. The rights of our brother to intelligence will not diminish his duties toward society. He will be neither a closeted scholar what has cultivated the domain of thought nor an agriculturalist or an artisan who moves nothing but his arms, but a man who, having exercised his mind and body equally, will be able to think and work; he will be both a good laborer and a good philosopher; he will have the sentiment of his dignity, will know his place in the world; and, submissive to his chiefs without being constrained by soldiers, he will adore God without being sermonized by priests.
“It is to that last point above all that it is important to direct human enlightenment. People penetrated by the existence of a Supreme Being, the immensity of his power and his wisdom, who will be intimately persuaded that that Being sees everything and knows everything, our thoughts as well as our actions, will have no need of laws to be always just and good. It is that belief, so pure and so sublime, relegated during the reign of Mythology to the schools of a few philosophers and the temples of a few initiates, that Moses proclaimed in order to guide the people of Israel in the desert; it is the same belief—deteriorated by time, like all human institutions—that Jesus restored in its primitive purity. It is in forming the essence of Christianity that he made that religion the simplest and strongest of all religions. That beautiful institution has degenerated for a second time. Men have taken the place of God; they have lent him their vices, they have painted him with their own colors. Monstrous abuses have been substituted for the doctrine of Jesus. No one is able any longer to worship in spirit and in truth. In brief, instead of Christians there are no longer any but superstitious individuals and hypocrites.
“Will it be possible to reestablish for the third time Christianity is its primitive purity? I don’t know, relative to the rest of the world. But I believe that reestablishment to be not merely possible but very easy in this Valley.
“There is a God who created the world and who conserves it, who created humankind and is present in human thought as well as human action; that is our only symbol. Let it be engraved in the heart, not by faith but by reason, in order that it should never be effaced.”23
Such is the substance of the speeches that Dom Antonin made at various times on religion.
Since the creator of the universe is present, and interested in all the thoughts as well as all the actions of humans, he will recompense and punish the culpable, either in this life or anther that follows it. People owe to that Supreme Being a tribute of gratitude and homage, which they will render every morning and every evening; Sunday will be entirely devoted to that holy duty; they will not be distracted from it by any labor.
Independently of Sunday, two other festivals have been instituted, one for the anniversary of the first possession of the Valley by it governors, the other for the arrival of the inhabitants of the village of Garringue. Those two festivals have a character both religious and political.
The same simplicity has presided over the civil constitution. The products of all labor will be placed in common; a council of sages has been appointed for their distribution. The same council is charged with supervising mores, preventing faults and expressing those which, in spite of their direction and the good intelligence of our brothers, might escape due to human weakness.
Religious laws are only necessary to people profoundly corroded and corrupted. They are old buildings only sustained by means of stays. None are necessary for a new people, still full of innate innocence, who are just and good by sentiment, bearing, engraved in their hearts the divine precept: You shall love God with all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself. All morality is encapsulated within that dictum, and whoever is thoroughly penetrated by it has no
need of laws to be a good citizen, a good parent and a good spouse.
Thus, the interior guide leads people surely and naturally to the accomplishment of their moral duties. But society demands other services, which, not being inspired by conscience, need to be imposed by sage government.
The primary labor of the inhabitants of the Valley has been the plowing and insemination of the ground; everyone without exception, has been employed in it. That labor, commenced on the fifteenth of October, was finished before the end of the month.
That work concluded, all strength was brought to the construction of the new cabins necessitated by the augmentation of the population. Until then, it had been lodged in barns and stables. As all houses in these mountains are built of wood, and that material is found close at hand in great abundance, the number of cabins necessary has been completed before the heavy frosts.
It was only when all those public works had been done that each individual was able to devote himself to the particular labor of his métier. There were all kinds in the colony that came to us. The blacksmith has made plowshares and other agricultural implements; the carpenters have made furniture for the cabins; and all the arms not occupied with these different tasks, including those of women and children, have been spinning wool or linen, or weaving those threads into fabrics.
The morning and evening prayers have continued regularly to be made in common, as well as the solemnization of Sunday. The principal object of these acts of piety has always been the persuasion of the eternal presence of God in all our actions and all our thoughts, and of his justice is recompensing good works and punishing evil actions. The speeches relative to that great idea have not been a vain and monotonous formula that the habit of pronunciation had ended up depriving of all expression. Those speeches are improvised and vary every day. The success of those daily homilies is such that the whole population veritably seems to be a single family, marching continuously under the eye of its celestial father. The children brought up in that virginal innocence, entirely strangers to any other idea, promise a generation even better than that of their fathers. Thus, everything announces for the future a moral picture that will be the inverse of the one presented by Horace.
The Aerial Valley Page 7