20 Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque was first published, anonymously, in 1699—a date that is far too late to be consistent with the information that the present narrator subsequently gives of his life, or with the datable events in the stories of Simeon and Antonin.
21 Charles II returned to England in 1660, twenty-five years before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, so the chronology of Odgermont’s story is somewhat awry.
22 Author’s note: “It is easy to perceive that the man who is speaking here is a Protestant embittered by the persecutions that forced him into exile from his homeland. It is impossible to judge things soundly when one’s mind is troubled by the resentment of a violent outrage.”
23 Author’s note: “The reader might care to observe that this reform in religion is proposed for a kind of human who is very close to the nature of angels. [Note by the Editor]”
24 Author’s note: “This distinction is false. The courage that defends the state is no less honorable than the wisdom that governs or administers it. The error arises from the fact that the matter at stake is insufficiently explained. The soldier was doubtless culpable if the order had been given to spare no ne, but it is, on the contrary, very probably that his commiseration had been calumniated, because there is reason to believe that, in conformity with the rules of war, the order to kill only applies to those who had taken up arms. [Editor’s Note]”
25 The reference is to Henri II d’Orléans, Duc de Longueville (1595-1663), who was reported by Turenne to have uttered the words in question immediately before being shot dead.
26 The lines are from Corneille’s tragedy Cinna (1641).
27 The Battle of Seneffe was fought on 11 August 1674.
28 Charles de Saint-Maure, Duc de Montausier (1610-1690) was given responsibility for Louis XVI’s eldest son, Louis “le Grand Dauphin” (1661-1711) in 1668. The latter died before his father, so the throne passed to his own son, who did not have the same educational advantages.
29 Paul Pellisson (1624-1693)
30 François Fénelon (1651-1715), some time before writing the Aventures de Télémaque, was appointed to a mission to convert protestants in Saintonge in 1686-87, and used a mild approach that contrasted strongly with the violent and oppressive methods applied elsewhere
31 Author’s note: “I am omitting here various events of an interest concentrated within the Valley; this story comprises the history of several years, but it is evident that there are few objects of general interest in the story of a people devoid of ambition, devoid of distinction of wealth, power and honors, and, in consequence, devoid of battles and heroes. Tranquil in the midst of the bloodiest wars, it only had knowledge of the one between France and Spain occasioned by Charles II’s will, in which all Europe was embroiled at the beginning of the eighteenth century. What follows is what is said about that war in the Annals. [M. de Montagnac’s note]” The war in question was part of the Nine Years’ War, usually designated as the Catalan campaign; the fighting reached a peak in 1693.
32 Author’s note: “One might be indignant at the expressions of the Aerial people, every time they have occasion to talk about war. It is necessary to pardon those extraordinary people, absolutely foreign to our mores, for not having more accurate ideas regarding the duty imposed on sovereigns to maintain their empire in such a state of strength and courage that it would be impossible for their neighbors to attack them successfully. When one is assured of perpetual peace, one can mistake the value of warriors. Everywhere else that language would be reprehensible. The placid Quakers, faithful to their religion, do not take up arms, but they are nevertheless penetrated with a profound esteem for the defenders of their homeland. Those who have studied history know that the most unfortunate of all peoples are the enervated peoples who have ended up being subject to the law of a conqueror. Such, in remote ages, were the Persians, the Carthaginians and the Egyptians, and in modern times, the Italians and the Portuguese. While wistful philosophy sees in the distant future peace and amity reigning over the entire earth, the experience of centuries will always retain the terrible phrase in the ears of subjugated peoples: Woe betide the vanquished! Honor, esteem and gratitude, then, to the brave men who protect their fellow citizens, at the expense of their own blood, from that extreme of opprobrium and misery!”
33 Author’s note: “The omission of a few events devoid of any kind of interest outside the enclosure of the Valley obliges me to leave another gap in the manuscript here. I shall resume the story with one of the great events consigned to the Annals of the Aerial people. [M. de Montagnac’s note]”
34 Again, this figure is slightly odd; given that the valley was certainly first settled in the late 1680s and the indication given shortly is that it is now 1729.
35 Author’s note: “It will be remembered that in that era, Europe had enjoyed peace for nine years, and that the general peace in question was untroubled for a further five years.”
36 This must be Simeon’s son Rubens—and subsequent events confirm that hypothesis—although it is odd that only his older companion is said to have been born outside the valley, given that he and his wife Dina were both among the original settlers. Rubens was in his teens in the late 1680s and would now be in his fifties, provided that the text’s twice-repeated interval of “fifty years” is ignored.
37 This datum leaves no doubt—and later information confirms it—that the reference is to Guillaume Dubois (1656-1723), who rose to power during the regency of Philippe II d’Orléans and retained his position after Louis XV became king, but the information given about his supposed background bears no resemblance to the biography of Dubois recorded by history.
38 François de Neufville, Duc de Villeroi [or Villeroy] (1644-1730) had been exiled from Paris after plotting against Philippe d’Orléans, but was recalled when Louis XV came of age.
39 Yet again, this figure is odd; the regency began after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, and it was not until then that Dubois became chief minister, so the speaker cannot have been in Paris for fifteen years, given that he has already spent several in Toulouse.
40 Author’s note: “If these Annals are accurate, it is necessary to agree that the people of the Aerial Valley are superior to all the other peoples, ancient as well as modern, that we know. Everywhere else, such a revolution would have caused torrents of blood to flow. If perfidious suggestions had led our mountain folk astray, they came back immediately as soon as they surrendered to their own reasoning. That reason granted to humankind is a powerful guide. It would have the same empire everywhere if it were not stifled by social institutions. The great merit of the regulation of the Aerial Valley is that of conserving all the rectitude and all the force that the infallible guide in question obtains from nature. [Editor’s Note]”
41 “The Hermit,” by Thomas Parnell (1679-1718)—the archdeacon of Clogher and a friend of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope—was not published during his lifetime, his works being collected and published posthumously by Pope. It is a long narrative poem in heroic couplets, but “Renou’s” version is in prose, and is a paraphrase and a digest, not a translation in any strict sense of the term. It therefore seemed appropriate for the present text to back-translate that version rather than reproduce the English original—which is, of course, easily available for consultation on line.
42 Author’s note: “This small production by Parnell, which appeared at the beginning of the last century, is, in the original, a masterpiece of precision and grace. The subject is taken from the old tale of the Hermit, which every people dresses in its own fashion. Voltaire framed it in his charming romance of Zadig; he seasoned the philosophy of the English poet with cheerful and humorous jokes. But it is necessary to agree that that justification of human miseries is no better than all the other theories that have been imagined to explain the ways of Providence. One does not see Prodigals becoming more sage because their gifts have been abused, or misers rendered generous because an impulse of pity has turned t
o their advantage. The death of a tenderly cherished infant has more often inspired despairing fathers to murmurs against Providence than sentiments of gratitude and love. In general, passions, like characters, depend in part on the nature of temperament, and are not susceptible to simple modifications, but if one cannot change the elements, at least one can direct them and employ them usefully. Thus the skillful groom who subjugates an unbroken charger to the bit, takes a portion of its insensate impetuosity and converts its caprice and recklessness into noble courage. [Editor’s Note]”
43 Author’s note: “There is a contradiction here that is bound to strike all attentive readers. It is said that the Council decided not to have any communication with the earth, and yet, fifty years after that decision was made, Monsieur de Montagnac received the most amicable welcome from the inhabitants of the Valley, as we have read in his account of his voyage; and it was only after being treated for more than a day with all the marks of benevolence that a single individual came to give him the order to leave.
Struck myself by that contradiction, I asked Monsieur de Montagnac to explain it to me. He replied firstly that the Council’s decision had never been made public, because they were waiting for another expedition to be proposed, which had never happened and perhaps never would. Then he told me that it was necessary not to judge the people of the Valley too rigorously. That people has few memories because it has few troubles, for it is chagrins, primarily, that fix the epochs of the past; in that regard they are like the savage who sells his bed today without foreseeing that he will have need of it tomorrow.
Monsieur de Montagnac had conformed until now with the principle that he had very judiciously established of only giving the public the part of the Annals of the Aerial Valley susceptible of general interest. I have seen with sorrow that he had removed in transcribing it, at this point, in addition to the list of governors, the writers of the Annals and the members of the Council for several years, two adventures whose subject and style respired the antique simplicity so admirable when one encounters it in Homer or some other author of the earliest times, but which is no longer anything but ridiculous when it is applied to recent events. It then resembles a modern palace build in the Gothic genre.
I have to make Monsieur de Montagnac another reproach in the opposite direction. There he has published something that ought to be suppressed, and the passage immediately following it, which it would have been interesting to make known, he has retrenched. The passage in question relates to the war of our Revolution between France and Spain. That is the last public event of which the Valley had cognizance. I thought I ought to apply to the suppression an unnecessary or disparate filling, and render publicity to the singular manner in which the Aerial people envisaged that revolutionary war. That war was doubtless the object of the keenest curiosity of the inhabitants of the Valley, about which they must have asked the most pressing questions of Monsieur de Montagnac. However, the aeronaut does not say a word about it in his narrative. I cannot imagine what his reasons were for passing over in silence everything relating to that great event, but at any rate, I have appended what is said about it in he Annals of the people. [Editor’s Note]”
44 Author’s note: “Then concludes what the Aerial Annals present of interest. It appears that the people of that corner of the Pyrenees believed that the revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century had been afflicted by madness. That opinion was doubtless very honourable for them; it is, however, the most plausible, for the wickedness that turns to the profit of its author is self-explanatory, but depravity taken to the excess that was then manifest. The depravity that tends to destroy everything, without a plan, without a goal and without projects for the future, is evidence of a derangement of the intellectual organs—in a word, true madness.
“It requires a very powerful reason to re-establish an entire great people in the possession of what it has lost. It has found one, and the reparation as prompt as it was unexpected of the evil caused by the dementia will be the most striking and most admirable prodigy in general history.
“In any case, one ought not to be surprised by the limited extent of the Annals of the Aerial Valley. A fortunate people that has no external political relations furnishes very little material to history. In that regard, it is the same for peoples as for individuals; the happier they are the less noise they make. The example of the Aerial people cannot serve as a model for any other people in Europe; its mores, its government and its social constitution are too different from everything that we know; but it is an agreeable spectacle to see the price that virtue can still obtain when it is united with courage and the love of liberty. [Editor’s Note]”
45 Charles Castel de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) was a social theorist most famous for proposing an international organization responsible for maintaining peace between nations. Although he was briefly at Louis XIV’s court when he was chaplain to the king’s sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine (whose husband, Philip II d’Orléans subsequently served as regent during Louis XV’s minority) his reformist ideas got him expelled and kicked out of the Académie. Much of this futuristic vision is a popularization of his ideas.
46 Pierre Ciceri (1782-1868) was a leading set-designer who worked at many of the Parisian theatres.
47 Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813) was an enthusiastic promoter of the potato as a source of nutrition; thanks to his efforts, the Paris Faculty of Medicine declared potatoes edible in 1772, but it was not until the late 1780s that large-scale cultivation began in the region—too late to assist in countering the famines that precipitated the Revolution.
48 The programmable loom designed by Joseph-Marie Charles, nicknamed Jacquard (1752-1834) was first exhibited in 1801, but its use only became widespread after 1815.
49 Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) founded organizations for assisting the poor that are still active.
50 Charles-Michel de l’Épée (1712-1789) was a philanthropist and educational pioneer who developed the first programs to teach sign language.
51 This anecdote appears to be original to the present story, unless the name is misrendered.
52 The Chassepot was the standard French military rifle in 1867. Dreyse was a prominent German arms manufacturer earlier in the century whose name survived his death (in that same year) as a brand. “Bonnin” is probably a misrendering of “Browning” but appears to be common to all the printed versions of the article.
53 Law (in the sense of right) against the law (in the sense of legislation).
54 This date is inconsistent with the others given in the text, and was presumably altered in the reprinted version of the story without the others being altered to match.
55 The Lion of Belfort is a huge sculpture by Fréderic Bartholdi—the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty—made to commemorate the dogged French resistance during the siege of Belfort by the Prussians between December 1870 to February 1871. It was not completed until 1880, so this inclusion suggests a latter date of first publication than 1873; smaller replicas were made for various locations including the Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris.
56 The opening of a verse from the Torah corresponding to the Biblical Deuteronomy 6:4.
57 Pleins et déliés, here translated weakly as “different kinds of strokes” is a common French phrase, originally referring to emphatic and delicate operations in calligraphy, it acquired a number of metaphorical meanings, which have a vague correlation with the uses in English of such pairings as “ups and downs” and “fast and loose,” but which do not lend themselves readily to substitution.
58 The family firm of Laligant et Guyot set up an important paper-making factory in the town of Maresquel—already well known for that kind of manufacturing—in 1859; by the 1870s, thanks to its automation, it was the most important supplier of paper to newspapers in France.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele
102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap<
br />
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
152 André Arnyvelde. The Ark
153 André Arnyvelde. The Mutilated Bacchus
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
118 Henri Austruy. The Eupantophone
119 Henri Austry. The Petitpaon Era
120 Henri Austry. The Olotelepan
130 Barillet-Lagargousse. The Final War
103 S. Henry Berthoud. Martyrs of Science
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
121 Richard Bessière. The Masters of Silence
148 Béthune (Chevalier de). The World of Mercury
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
92 Louis Boussenard. Monsieur Synthesis
39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
89 Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air
98 Emile Calvet. In A Thousand Years
40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes
91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife
133 Félicien Champsaur. Homo-Deus
143 Félicien Champsaur. Nora, The Ape-Woman
03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis
97 Michel Corday. The Eternal Flame
113 André Couvreur. The Necessary Evil
114 André Couvreur. Caresco, Superman
115 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 1)
116 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)
117 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3)
67 Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey
149 Camille Debans. The Misfortunes of John Bull
17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
The Aerial Valley Page 27