Great French Short Stories

by Paul Negri

  In the meantime, our two seekers after truth departed. First they jumped on to the ring, which they found rather flat, as a famous inhabitant of our small globe has very well guessed. From there they went from moon to moon. A comet passed very close to the last moon, and they threw themselves on it with their servants and instruments. When they had covered about a hundred and fifty million leagues, they came upon Jupiter’s satellites. They went on to Jupiter itself and stayed there a year during which they learned some very fine secrets which would now be in the process of being printed save for the inquisitors who found a few of the propositions a bit harsh. But I read the manuscript in the library of the famous Archbishop of . . . , who, with a generosity and a kindness which cannot be sufficiently praised, let me see his books.

  But let us come back to our travelers. After leaving Jupiter, they crossed a space of about one hundred million leagues and came alongside the planet of Mars, which, as you know, is five times smaller than our small globe. They saw two moons which serve this planet, and which have escaped the eyes of our astronomers. I know that Father Castel will deny, and even humorously, the existence of those two moons. But I rely on those who reason by analogy. Those good philosophers know how difficult it would be for Mars, which is so far from the sun, to do without at least two moons. Whatever the truth is, our friends found it so small that they were afraid of finding no sleeping quarters, and they continued on their way like two travelers who scorn a poor village inn and go on to the next town. But the Sirian and his companion soon repented. They continued for a long time and found nothing. At last they saw a faint glimmer. It was the earth. It aroused pity in people coming from Jupiter. Yet, through fear of repenting a second time, they decided to disembark. They passed along the tail of the comet, and finding an aurora borealis close at hand, they climbed into it and reached the earth on the northern coast of the Baltic Sea, the fifth of July, 1737, new style.

  Chapter IV

  WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM ON EARTH

  After resting a while, they ate a breakfast of two mountains which their servants prepared for them quite well. Then they decided to reconnoiter the small country where they were. First they went from north to south. The ordinary steps of the Sirian and his men were about thirty thousand king’s feet. The dwarf from Saturn followed at a distance, panting. He had to take about twelve steps to each stride of the other. Just imagine (if it is permissible to make such comparisons) a very small lap-dog following a captain of the guards of the Prussian king.

  As those foreigners moved quite fast, they had circled the globe in thirty-six hours. It is true that the sun, or rather the earth, accomplishes a similar journey in a day. But you must remember that one travels more easily by turning on one’s axis than when walking on foot. Here they are then back from where they left, after seeing that puddle, almost imperceptible to them, called the “Mediterranean,” and that other little pond which under the name of “Great Ocean,” encircles the molehill. The dwarf was never in deeper than the calves of his legs, and the other scarcely wet his heels. They did all they could, both going and coming back, above and below, to try to see whether this globe was inhabited or not. They stooped, they lay down, they felt everywhere with their hands. But their eyes and hands were not proportioned to the tiny beings which crawl here. They did not feel the slightest sensation which might cause them to suspect that we and our colleagues, the other inhabitants of this globe, have the honor to exist.

  The dwarf, who at times judged a bit too hastily, decided first that there was no one on the earth. His first reason was that he had seen no one. Micromegas politely made him feel that this was bad reasoning. “For,” he said, “you do not see with your small eyes certain stars of the fiftieth magnitude which I see very distinctly. Do you thereby conclude that those stars do not exist?”

  “But,” said the dwarf, “I carefully felt with my hands.”

  “But,” answered the other, “you did a bad job.”

  “But,” said the dwarf, “this globe is so badly constructed and so irregular and of a shape which seems so ridiculous to me! Everything seems in chaos here. Do you see those little brooks, no one of which goes in a straight line, and those ponds that are neither round nor square nor oval, nor in any regular form, and all those small pointed things with which this globe is studded and which took the skin off my feet? (He was referring to the mountains.) Look again at the shape of the entire globe, how flat it is at the poles, how awkwardly it turns around the sun, in such a way that necessarily the polar regions are waste lands. What really makes me believe that there is no one here, is that it seems to me that intelligent people would not want to live here.”

  “Well,” said Micromegas, “perhaps those who live here are not intelligent people. But there is some indication that this was not made for nothing. You say that everything is laid out by rule and line in Saturn and in Jupiter. Well, it is perhaps for that very reason that here there is a bit of confusion. Haven’t I told you that in my travels I have always noticed variety?” The Saturnian gave answer to all these arguments. The discussion would never have ended, if fortunately Micromegas, as he grew excited with talking, had not broken the string of his diamond necklace. The diamonds fell to the ground. They were attractive small stones, quite unequal, the heaviest of which weighed four hundred pounds, and the smallest fifty. The dwarf picked up a few of them and noticed when he put them to his eye, that these diamonds, because of the way they were cut, were excellent microscopes. He therefore took a small microscope of one hundred and sixty feet in diameter and put it to his eye. Micromegas chose one of two thousand five hundred feet. They were excellent. But at first nothing could be seen with their help. They had to be adjusted. Finally the inhabitant from Saturn saw something imperceptible moving under water in the Baltic Sea. It was a whale. He picked it up very skillfully with his little finger, and putting it on the nail of his thumb, he showed it to the Sirian who began to laugh at the extreme smallness of the inhabitants of our globe. The Saturnian, convinced that our world was inhabited, quickly imagined that it was inhabited solely by whales, and since he was a great reasoner, he wished to find out from where so small an atom drew its movement and whether it had ideas and a will and freedom. This discomfited Micromegas, who examined the animal very patiently. The result of the examination was that it was impossible to believe a soul was lodged there. The two travelers were therefore disposed to believe that there was no spirit on our earth, when with the help of the microscope they saw something bigger than a whale which was floating on the Baltic Sea. It is known that at that very time, a band of philosophers were returning from the Arctic Circle where they had gone to make observations of which no one up until then had taken any notice. The newspapers said that their ship sank off the coast of Bothnia and that they had difficulty in escaping. But in this world we never know the real story. I am going to tell with great simplicity what actually took place, without adding any word of my own. This is no small effort for an historian.

  Chapter V

  EXPERIENCES AND REASONINGS OF THE TWO TRAVELERS

  Micromegas gently stretched out his hand to the spot where the object appeared, and putting out two fingers, and withdrawing them for fear of being mistaken, then opening them and closing them, he very skillfully picked up the ship carrying those gentlemen, and again placed it on his nail, without squeezing too much, for fear of crushing it. “This animal is very different from the first,” said the dwarf from Saturn. The Sirian placed the supposed animal in the hollow of his hand. The passengers and the members of the crew who had thought a cyclone had lifted them up and believed they were on a kind of rock, all started to move about. The sailors took casks of wine, threw them on to the hand of Micromegas, and jumped down after them. The geometricians took their quadrants, their sectors and some Lapp girls, and climbed down to the fingers of the Sirian. They made such a bustle that at last he felt something moving which tickled his fingers. It was an iron-shod pole which they were driving a foot de
ep into his index finger. He judged, from this prickling sensation, that something had come out from the small animal he was holding. But at first he did not suspect anything more than that. The microscope, which could hardly distinguish a whale and a ship, had no power to see beings so imperceptible as men. I have no desire to offend the vanity of anyone, but I am obliged to ask the leading citizens to make a small observation with me. When we take on the size of men of about five feet, we do not cut on the earth a bigger figure than would an animal of approximately the six hundred thousandth part of an inch in height on a ball ten feet in circumference. Imagine a being which could hold the earth in its hand, and which had organs in proportion to ours. It is quite possible that there are a large number of these beings. Then I beg you to imagine what they would think of those battles which won for us two villages which later we had to give back.

  I do not doubt that if some captain of the tall grenadiers ever reads this work, he will add two feet at least to the hats of his troop. But I warn him that this will be in vain, that he and his men will never be anything save infinitely small.

  What marvellous skill did our philosopher from Sirius need then in order to see the atoms of which I have just spoken! When Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker were the first to see or believed they saw the germ from which we are formed, they did not make, not by a long way, such a surprising discovery. What pleasure Micromegas felt in seeing those little machines move, in examining all their tricks and in following them in all their operations! He shouted with glee. How joyfully he put one of his microscopes into the hands of his traveling companion ! “I see them,” they both said at the same time. “Don’t you see them carrying bundles, bending down and standing up again?” As they said these words, their hands trembled, at the pleasure of seeing such new objects, and at the fear of losing them. The Saturnian, passing from an excess of doubt to an excess of belief, thought he saw them trying to propagate the species.

  “Ah!” he said, “I have caught nature in the act.” But he was deceived by appearances, which happens only too often whether microscopes are used or not.

  Chapter VI

  WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM WITH THE MEN

  Micromegas, a much better observer than his dwarf, clearly saw that the atoms were talking to another. He called his companion’s attention to this, who, ashamed of having been mistaken over the issue of procreation, was unwilling to believe that such species were able to communicate ideas to one another. He had the gift of languages as well as the Sirian, but he did not hear our atoms speaking and he assumed they were not speaking. Moreover, how could those imperceptible beings have organs of speech and what would they have to say? In order to speak, you have to think, or almost; but if they thought, they would then have the equivalent of a soul. Now, to attribute the equivalent of a soul to that species seemed absurd to him. “But,” said the Sirian, “you believed just now that they were making love. Do you think it possible to make love without thinking and without uttering some words, or at least without making oneself understood? Do you even suppose it is more difficult to produce an argument than a child?”

  “To me they both seem great mysteries. I no longer dare believe or deny,” said the dwarf. “I no longer have an opinion. We must try to examine these insects. We will argue afterwards.”

  “Well spoken,” replied Micromegas. And immediately he pulled out a pair of scissors with which he cut his nails. With a paring from his thumb nail, he made on the spot a kind of large speaking trumpet, like a gigantic funnel, whose small end he placed in his ear. The circumference of the funnel surrounded the ship and all the crew. The weakest voice entered the circular fibers of the nail, and in this way, thanks to his ingenuity, the philosopher from above heard perfectly the buzzing of our insects from below. In a short time, he was able to distinguish words, and at last to hear French. The dwarf also, although with more difficulty. The amazement of the travelers grew with each moment. They heard mites talking quite good sense, and this trick of nature seemed inexplicable to them. You can well believe that the Sirian and his dwarf burned with impatience to enter into conversation with the atoms. The dwarf feared that his thunderous voice and especially the voice of Micromegas would deafen the mites without being understood by them. They had to reduce the strength of the voice. They put in their mouths a kind of small toothpick of which the very fine end came close to the ship. The Sirian held the dwarf on his knees, and the ship with its crew on a nail. He bent his head and spoke in a low voice. At last, by means of all these precautions and many others still, he began to speak with these words:

  “Invisible insects, whom it has pleased the hand of the Creator to have born in the abyss of the infinitely small, I thank Him for having deigned to reveal to me secrets which seemed unfathomable. Perhaps at my court people would not deign to look at you, but I scorn no one, and I offer you my protection.”

  If anyone was ever surprised, it was the people who heard these words. They could not imagine from where they came. The ship’s chaplain recited prayers of exorcism, the sailors cursed, and the ship’s philosophers invented a system. But no matter what system they made, they could never guess who was speaking to them. The dwarf from Saturn, who had a softer voice than Micromegas, then told them in very few words with what species they had to deal. He told them of the journey from Saturn and made them aware what Mr. Micromegas was. After sympathizing with them for being so small, he asked them if they had always been in this miserable state so close to nonexistence, and what they did on a globe which seemed to belong to whales, if they were happy, if they multiplied, if they had a soul, and a hundred other questions of this kind.

  One reasoner in the group, bolder than the others, and shocked that it was doubted he had a soul, looked at his interlocutor through the eyelet holes on a quadrant, made two observations, and at the third, spoke thus: “So you believe, Sir, because you are a thousand fathoms tall, that you are a . . .”

  “A thousand fathoms!” cried the dwarf. “Good heavens! how can he know my height? A thousand fathoms! He is not an inch off. Why, this atom has measured me! He is a geometrician and knows my height. And I who can see him only through a microscope, don’t yet know his!”

  “Yes, I have measured you,” said the physicist, “and I can also easily measure your big friend.” The proposition was accepted. His Excellency stretched out full length, for if he had remained standing, his head would have been too far above the clouds. Our philosophers planted in him a big tree on a spot which Dr. Swift would name, but which I shall refrain from calling by its name, because of my great respect for the ladies. Then, by a series of triangles tied together, they concluded that what they saw was in reality a young man one hundred and twenty thousand royal feet long.

  At that moment Micromegas said these words, “More than ever I see that we must not judge anything by its apparent size. O Lord, who have given intelligence to beings which seem so contemptible, the infinitely small costs You as little as the infinitely great. If it is possible that there are creatures smaller than these, they may still have minds superior to those magnificent animals I have seen in the sky whose foot alone would cover the globe to which I have come.”

  One of the philosophers answered him that he might indeed believe there are intelligent beings much smaller than man. He related to him, not all the fables Virgil said about bees, but what Swammerdam discovered, and what Réaumur dissected. He taught him, in a word, that there are animals which are to bees what the bees are to man, what the Sirian himself was to those tremendous animals he had mentioned, and what those great animals are to other beings before which they seem like mere atoms. Gradually the conversations became interesting, and Micromegas spoke as follows.

  Chapter VII

  CONVERSATION WITH THE MEN

  “O intelligent atoms, in whom the Almighty was pleased to manifest His skill and His power, you must doubtless enjoy very pure pleasures on your globe, for having so little body and seeing to be all spirit, you must pass your lives in l
ove and in thought, which is the true life of spirits. I have seen real happiness nowhere, but it is doubtless here.”

  At this speech all the philosophers shook their heads, and one of them, more frank than the others, confessed with candor that apart from a small number of inhabitants who were held in very little esteem, all the rest were a crowd of fools, of wicked and unhappy men and women. “We have more matter than we need,” he said, “in order to do much evil, if evil comes from matter; and too much spirit, if evil comes from the spirit. Are you aware, for example, that at this moment when I am speaking to you, there are one hundred thousand fools of our species, wearing hats, who are killing or being killed by one hundred thousand other animals wearing turbans, and that almost throughout the entire earth this is how people have been behaving from time immemorial?” The Sirian shuddered and asked what the reason could be for those horrible disputes between such puny animals. “A few mudpiles as big as your heel,” said the philosopher, “are the issue. It is not that one of those millions of men who are slaughtering one another, claims one straw on the mudpiles. The problem is to know whether it will belong to a certain man called Sultan or to another called, I don’t know why, Caesar. Neither one has even seen or ever will see the bit of earth in question. And almost none of those animals who are mutually slaughtering one another, has ever seen the animal for which he is slaughtered.”