JOURNEY TO THE MOON
And
COMIC HISTORY OF THE STATES AND EMPIRES OF THE SUN

Cyrano de Bergerac - Comic history of the states and empires of the sun


The moon was in full swing, the sky was open, and nine o'clock in the evening had struck when, returning from Clamart, near Paris (where Mr. de Cuigny the son, who is lord, had entertained several of my friends and me), the various thoughts that this ball of saffron gave us helped us along the way. So that with their eyes drowned in this great star, sometimes one took it for a skylight through which one glimpsed the glory of the blessed; sometimes another, convinced of ancient fables, imagined that Bacchus possibly kept a tavern up there in the sky, and that he had hung the full moon as a sign; sometimes another assured that it was the plate of Diana which raises the flaps of Apollo; another, that it could well be the sun itself, which having stripped itself of its rays in the evening, looked through a hole at what was done to the world when he was not there. “and I,” I said to them, “who wishes to mix my enthusiasms with yours, I believe without amusing myself in the sharp imaginations with which you tickle time to make it go faster, that the moon is a world like this, which ours serves as the moon. Some of the company treated me to a great burst of laughter. “So perhaps,” I said to them, “we are now making fun of someone else in the moon who maintains that this globe is a world. » But in vain I alleged to them that Pythagoras, Epicurus, Democritus and, of our age, Copernicus and Kepler, had been of this opinion, I only made them laugh more.

This thought, however, whose boldness skewed to my mood, strengthened by contradiction, plunged so deeply into my home that, throughout the rest of the way, I remained pregnant with a thousand definitions of the moon, which I could not give birth to; so that by dint of supporting this burlesque belief with almost serious reasoning, I was very close to abandoning it already, when the miracle or the accident, Providence, fortune, or perhaps what we will call vision, fiction, chimera, or madness if you like, provided me with the occasion which engaged me in this speech: Having arrived at home, I went up to my study, where I found an open book on the table which I had not put there. It was Cardan's; and although I had no intention of reading there, I came across, as if by force, precisely a story by this philosopher, who says that studying one evening by candlelight,

I remained so surprised, both at seeing a book which had been brought there by itself, and at the time and the sheet on which it had found itself open, that I took this whole chain of incidents for an inspiration to make known to the men that the moon is a world.

" What ! I said to myself, after having spoken all today about one thing, a book which is perhaps the only one in the world where this subject is treated so particularly, to fly from my library onto my table, to become capable of reason, to open oneself precisely to such a wonderful adventure; train my eyes on it, as if by force, and then provide my imagination with the reflections, and my will with the designs that I make!... Without doubt, I continued, the two old men who appeared to this great man, are the same ones who disturbed my book, and who opened it to this page, to save themselves the trouble of giving me the harangue they made to Cardan.

-But, I added, I cannot clear up this doubt if I do not go up there?

-And why not? I replied immediately. Prometheus was once in the sky stealing fire.

Am I less bold than him? And have I reason not to hope for such favorable success?

These jokes, which we will perhaps call attacks of hot fever, were followed by the hope of making such a beautiful journey a success: so that I locked myself up, to get through it, in a country house quite remote. , where after having flattered my reveries with some means proportionate to my subject, this is how I gave myself to heaven. I had tied around me a quantity of vials full of dew, on which the sun darted its rays so violently, that the heat which attracted them, as it does the largest clouds, raised me so high, that finally I found above the average region.

But as this attraction made me rise too quickly, and instead of approaching the moon, as I claimed, it seemed further away than in my area, I broke several of my vials,


My opinion was not wrong, because I fell there some time later, and from the time I left, it must have been midnight. However, I recognized that the sun was then at the highest point on the horizon, and that it was noon. I leave you to think how surprised I was: certainly I was so surprised that, not knowing what to attribute this miracle to, I had the insolence to imagine that in favor of my boldness, God still had a once nailed the sun to the heavens, in order to illuminate such a generous enterprise.

What increased my astonishment was not knowing the country where I was, since it seemed to me that having gone up straight, I must have descended to the same place from which I had started. Equipped as I was, however, I headed towards a sort of cottage, where I saw smoke; and I was barely within pistol range when I saw myself surrounded by a large number of completely naked men.

They seemed very surprised at my encounter; for I was the first, I think, that they had ever seen dressed in bottles. And to further reverse all the interpretations that they could have given to this crew, they saw that while walking I almost did not touch the ground: also they did not know that with the slightest movement that I gave to my body, the heat of the midday rays lifted me with my dew, and that without my vials no longer being in sufficient number, I would have been possible to see them lifted into the air.

I wanted to approach them; but as if fear had changed them into birds, for a moment they were lost in the nearby forest. I caught one, however, whose legs had undoubtedly betrayed the heart. I asked him with great difficulty (for I was quite out of breath) how long it was from there to Paris, and since when in France people went naked, and why they fled from me with so much terror.

This man to whom I spoke was an olive-colored old man, who first threw himself at my knees; and clasping his hands behind his head, opened his mouth and closed his eyes. He muttered for a long time between his teeth, but I did not discern that he uttered anything; so that I took his language for the hoarse babbling of a mute.
Some time later, I saw a company of soldiers arrive, drums beating, and I noticed two separate from the main body to recognize me. When they were close enough to be heard, I asked them where I was.

-You are in France, they answered me; but what devil put you in this state? and why do we not know you? Have the ships arrived? Are you going to give notice to the Governor? And why did you divide your brandy into so many bottles?

To all this I told them that the devil had not put me in this state; that they did not know me, because they could not know all men; that I did not know that the Seine carried ships to Paris; that I had no advice to give to M. le Maréchal de l’Hôpital; and that I was not loaded with water of life.

-Ho, ho, they said to me, taking my arm, are you acting like a guy? Mr. Governor will know you well!

They took me to their big place, where I learned that I was really in France, but in La Nouvelle, so that some time later I was presented to the Viceroy, who asked me my country, my name and my quality; and after I had satisfied him by telling him the pleasant success of my trip, whether he believed it or pretended to believe it, he was kind enough to give me a room in his apartment. My happiness was great to meet a man capable of high opinions, and who was not surprised when I told him that the earth must have rotated during my elevation; since having started to climb two leagues from Paris, I had fallen by an almost perpendicular line into Canada.

We had conversations of a similar nature the next day and the following days. But as some time later the embarrassment of affairs caught our philosophy, I fell back again on the intention of going to the moon.

I left as soon as she was up, dreaming among the woods, about the conduct and success of my enterprise, and finally, one day before Saint-Jean, a council was held in the fort to determine if the we would give aid to the savages of the country against the Iroquois, I went alone behind our dwelling to the ridge of a small mountain, where this is what I carried out:

I had made a machine that I imagined was capable of lifting me as high as I wanted, so that nothing of what I thought was necessary was missing, I sat down in it and threw myself into the air. from the top of a rock. But because I had not taken my measurements correctly, I fell sharply in the valley.

Still bruised as I was, I returned to my room without losing courage, and I took some beef marrow, with which I anointed my whole body, for I was bruised from head to toe. and after fortifying my heart with a bottle of cordial essence, I went back to get my machine. But I did not find it, because certain soldiers, who had been sent into the forest to cut wood to make the Midsummer fire, having encountered it by chance, had brought it to the fort, where after several explanations of what it could be, when the invention of the spring was discovered, some said that it was necessary to attach quantities of flying rockets, so that, their speed having lifted them very high, and the spring agitating its large wings ,

I looked for it for a long time, however, but finally I found it in the middle of the Place de Québec, just as they were setting it on fire. The pain of encountering the work of my hands in such great danger transported me so much that I ran to grab the arm of the soldier who was lighting the fire. I tore off her hair, and threw myself furiously into my machine to break the artifice with which she was surrounded; but I arrived too late, because I had barely reached both feet when I was carried away into the clouds.

The horror with which I was dismayed did not so overthrow the faculties of my soul that I have not since remembered everything that happened to me at that moment.

Because as soon as the flame had devoured a row of rockets, which had been arranged six by six, by means of a primer which bordered each half-dozen, another level ignited, then another; so that the saltpeter catching fire kept the danger away by increasing it. The material, however, being worn out, meant that the artifice was lacking; and when I was only thinking of leaving my head on that of a few mountains, I felt (without moving at all) my elevation continuing, and my machine taking leave of me, I saw it fall back towards the earth.

This extraordinary adventure filled my heart with such unusual joy that, delighted to see myself delivered from assured danger, I had the imprudence to philosophize about it. As I sought with my eyes and my thoughts what could be the cause, I saw my flesh blistered, and still greasy with the marrow with which I had coated myself for the bruises of my stumble; I knew that being then in the background, and the moon during this quarter having been accustomed to sucking the marrow of animals, she drank that with which I had coated myself with all the more force as her globe was closer to me, and that the interposition of the clouds did not weaken its vigor.

When I had penetrated, according to the calculation that I have since made, much more than three-quarters of the way which separates the earth from the moon, I suddenly saw myself falling with my feet up, without having tumbled. no way. Even if I had not felt my head weighed down by the weight of my body, I would not have noticed it. I knew well in truth that I was not falling back towards our world; for although I found myself between two moons, and I noticed very clearly that I moved away from one as I approached the other, I was assured that the larger was our globe; so that after a day or two of travel, refractions away from the sun confuse the diversity of bodies and climates, it no longer seemed to me anything other than a large plate of gold; this made me imagine that I was falling towards the moon, and I was confirmed in this opinion when I came to remember that I had only begun to fall after three quarters of the way. “For,” I said to myself, “this mass being less than ours, the sphere of its activity must also have less extent, and consequently, I must have felt later the force of its center . » I later felt the strength of its center. » I later felt the strength of its center. »

Finally, after having been falling for a very long time, as I suspected (because the violence of the precipice prevented me from noticing it), the furthest I remember is that I found myself under a tree embarrassed with three or more four fairly large branches that I had broken when I fell, and the wet face of an apple that had crashed against it.

Fortunately, this place was, as you will soon know, the Earthly Paradise, and the tree on which I fell happened to be the Tree of Life. So you can well judge that without this chance, I would have died a thousand times over. Since then, I have often reflected on what the common people assure us that when rushing from a very high place, one is suffocated before touching the earth; and I concluded from my adventure that he had lied about it; or else it was necessary that the energetic juice of this fruit, which had flowed into my mouth, had recalled my soul which was not far from my corpse, still quite warm, and still disposed to the functions of life.

In fact, as soon as I was on the ground my pain went away before it even appeared in my memory; and the hunger, with which I had suffered greatly during my journey, made me find in its place only a slight memory of having lost it.

Barely when I was relieved, had I observed the widest of four great rivers which form a lake by blocking it, than the spirit or the invisible soul of the simple which exhales in this country came to delight my sense of smell. ; and I knew that the stones there were neither hard nor rough; and that they were careful to soften when walked on. I first encountered a five-pointed star, whose trees, by their excessive height, seemed to lift a parterre of high forest to the sky. As I ran my eyes from the root to the top, then darting them from the ridge to the foot, I doubted whether the earth supported them, or if they themselves did not carry the earth hanging from their roots; their superbly elevated forehead also seemed to bend as if by force under the gravity of the celestial globes whose load one would say only by groaning; their arms stretched towards the sky testified by kissing it to ask the stars for the pure benignity of their influences, and to receive them before they had lost none of their innocence, in the bed of the elements.

There, on all sides, the flowers, without having had any other gardener than nature, breathe a breath so sweet, although wild, that it awakens and satisfies the sense of smell; there the crimson of a rose on the rosehip, and the dazzling azure of a violet under brambles, leaving no freedom for choice, make one judge that they are both more beautiful than the other. 'other; there spring composes all the seasons; there no poisonous plant germinates unless its birth betrays its preservation; there the streams with a pleasant murmur tell their journeys to the pebbles; there a thousand little feathered gullets make the forest resound with the sound of their melodious songs; and the vibrant assembly of these divine musicians is so general, that it seems as if each leaf in the wood has taken on the tongue and face of a nightingale; and even the echo takes so much pleasure in their tunes that one would say to hear them repeated to her that she wanted to learn them. Next to this wood are two meadows, the continuous gay green of which forms an emerald as far as the eye can see. The confused mixture of colors that spring attaches to a hundred little flowers misplaces the nuances one into the other with such pleasant confusion that one does not know if these flowers, agitated by a gentle zephyr, rather run after themselves that they do not flee to escape the caresses of this playful wind. Next to this wood are two meadows, the continuous gay green of which forms an emerald as far as the eye can see. The confused mixture of colors that spring attaches to a hundred little flowers misplaces the nuances one into the other with such pleasant confusion that one does not know if these flowers, agitated by a gentle zephyr, rather run after themselves that they do not flee to escape the caresses of this playful wind. Next to this wood are two meadows, the continuous gay green of which forms an emerald as far as the eye can see. The confused mixture of colors that spring attaches to a hundred little flowers misplaces the nuances one into the other with such pleasant confusion that one does not know if these flowers, agitated by a gentle zephyr, rather run after themselves that they do not flee to escape the caresses of this playful wind.

We would even take this meadow for an ocean, because it is like a sea which offers no shore, so that my eye, terrified at having run so far without discovering the edge, sent my thoughts to it keenly; and my thoughts, doubting that this was the end of the world, wanted to persuade that such charming places had perhaps forced the sky to join the earth. In the middle of a carpet so vast and so pleasant, runs with silver bubbles a rustic fountain which crowns its edges, with a lawn enamelled with sinets, violets, and a hundred other small flowers, which seem to crowd around will be the first to see it: she is still in the cradle, because she has only just been born and her young and polished face does not show just a wrinkle. The great circles she walks, returning to oneself a thousand times shows that it is with regret that she leaves her native country; and as if she would have been ashamed to see herself caressed near her mother, she murmured away my hand which wanted to touch her. The animals who came there to quench their thirst, more reasonable than those of our world, expressed surprise at seeing that it was broad daylight towards the horizon, while they looked at the sun at the antipodes, and did not dare to look at it. the edge of fear they had of falling into the firmament

I must admit to you that at the sight of so many beautiful things I felt tickled by those pleasant pains that they say the embryo feels when it is infused with its soul. The old hair fell out to make room for other, thicker and looser hair. I felt my youth reignited, my face turning ruddy, my natural warmth gently mixing with my radical humidity; finally put it back to my age about fourteen years.
I had walked half a league through the forest of jasmine and myrtle, when I saw lying in the shade something moving; he was a young adolescent, whose majestic beauty almost forced me into adoration. He stood up to stop me:

-And it is not to me, he cried, it is to God that you owe these humility!

-You see a person, I replied, dismayed by so many miracles, that I do not know where to begin my admiration, because coming from a world that you undoubtedly take here for a moon, I thought I would be approached in another let those of my country call the moon too; and now I find myself in paradise, at the feet of a god who does not want to be worshipped, and a stranger who speaks my language.

-Apart from the quality of God, he replied, of whom I am only the creature, what you say is true; this earth is the moon that you see from your globe; and this place where you are walking is paradise, but it is the earthly paradise where only six people have ever entered: Adam, Eve, Enoch, I who am old Helie, Saint John the Evangelist and you. You know well how the first two were banished, but you do not know how they arrived in your world. Know then that after having both tasted the forbidden apple, Adam, who feared that God, irritated by his presence, would not increase his punishment, considered the moon, your earth, as the only refuge where he could find refuge. shelter from the prosecution of its creator.

“Now, at that time, the imagination in man was so strong, not yet having been corrupted, neither by debauchery, nor by the rawness of food, nor by the alteration of diseases, that 'being then excited by the violent desire to approach this asylum, and his mass having become light by the fire of this enthusiasm, he was taken there in the same way as philosophers have seen themselves, their imagination strongly strained to something, to be carried into the air by raptures that you call ecstatic. Eve, whom the infirmity of her sex made weaker and less hot, would undoubtedly not have had the imagination vigorous enough to overcome the weight of matter by the restraint of her will, but because there was very little that she had been taken from the body of her husband, the sympathy with which this half was still linked to its whole, carried it towards him as it rose as amber is followed by straw, as the magnet turns to the north from which it was torn, and attracted this part of himself as the sea attracts the rivers that flowed from it. When they arrived in your land, they settled between Mesopotamia and Arabia; the Hebrews knew him under the name of Adam, the idolaters under that of Prometheus, whom the poets pretended to have stolen fire from heaven, because of his descendants whom he engendered with a soul as perfect as that whose God had filled it. as the magnet turns to the north from which it was torn, and attracts that part of itself as the sea attracts the rivers which issue from it. When they arrived in your land, they settled between Mesopotamia and Arabia; the Hebrews knew him under the name of Adam, the idolaters under that of Prometheus, whom the poets pretended to have stolen fire from heaven, because of his descendants whom he engendered with a soul as perfect as that whose God had filled it. as the magnet turns to the north from which it was torn, and attracts that part of itself as the sea attracts the rivers which issue from it. When they arrived in your land, they settled between Mesopotamia and Arabia; the Hebrews knew him under the name of Adam, the idolaters under that of Prometheus, whom the poets pretended to have stolen fire from heaven, because of his descendants whom he engendered with a soul as perfect as that whose God had filled it.

“So to inhabit your world, the first man left this one deserted; but the All-Wise did not want such a happy home to remain without inhabitants, he allowed, a few centuries later, that Enoch, bored with the company of men, whose innocence was corrupting, wanted to abandon them. This holy character, however, did not consider retirement assured against the ambition of his parents who were already slaughtering themselves for the sharing of your world, if not the blessed earth, of which Adam, his ancestor, had spoken to him so much in the past. . However, how to get there? Jacob's ladder was not yet invented! The grace of the Most High supplied this, for it made Enoch perceive that fire from heaven was descending on the burnt offerings of the righteous and of those who were acceptable before the face of the Lord, according to the word of his mouth: “The odor of the sacrifices of the righteous has come up to me. »

“One day when this divine flame was determined to consume a victim that he was offering to the Eternal, with the vapor that was exhaled he filled two large vases which he sealed tightly, and tied them under his armpits. The smoke immediately which tended to rise straight towards God, and which could only by miracle penetrate the metal, pushed the vases upwards, and in this way carried away with them this holy man. When he had ascended to the moon, and cast his eyes upon this beautiful garden, a blossoming of almost supernatural joy made him know that it was the earthly paradise where his grandfather had once dwelt. He promptly untied the vessels which he had girded like wings around his shoulders, and did so with so much happiness, that he was barely in the air four toises above the moon when he took leave of his fins. The elevation, however, was great enough to hurt him greatly, were it not for the great turn of his robe, where the wind rushed in, and the ardor of the fire of charity which also sustained him until he had set foot. down. For the two vessels they ascended until God set them in heaven where they remained; and this is what today you call Libras, which show us every day that they are still full of the odors of the sacrifice of a righteous person through the favorable influences that they inspire on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had Libra as his ascendant. The elevation, however, was great enough to hurt him greatly, were it not for the great turn of his robe, where the wind rushed in, and the ardor of the fire of charity which also sustained him until he had set foot. down. For the two vessels they ascended until God set them in heaven where they remained; and this is what today you call Libras, which show us every day that they are still full of the odors of the sacrifice of a righteous person through the favorable influences that they inspire on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had Libra as his ascendant. The elevation, however, was great enough to hurt him greatly, were it not for the great turn of his robe, where the wind rushed in, and the ardor of the fire of charity which also sustained him until he had set foot. down. For the two vessels they ascended until God set them in heaven where they remained; and this is what today you call Libras, which show us every day that they are still full of the odors of the sacrifice of a righteous person through the favorable influences that they inspire on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had Libra as his ascendant. For the two vessels they ascended until God set them in heaven where they remained; and this is what today you call Libras, which show us every day that they are still full of the odors of the sacrifice of a righteous person through the favorable influences that they inspire on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had Libra as his ascendant. For the two vessels they ascended until God set them in heaven where they remained; and this is what today you call Libras, which show us every day that they are still full of the odors of the sacrifice of a righteous person through the favorable influences that they inspire on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had Libra as his ascendant.

“Enoch was not yet in this garden; he did not arrive there until some time later.

It was then that the flood overflowed, for the waters, in which your world was swallowed up, rose to such a prodigious height that the ark sailed in the heavens next to the moon. The humans saw this globe through the window, but the reflection of this large opaque body weakened because of their proximity which shared its light, each of them believed that it was a canton of the earth which had not been drowned. There was only one daughter of Noah, named Ahab, who, perhaps because she had noticed that as the ship rose, they were approaching this star, loudly maintained that certainly it was the moon. It was in vain to represent to him that, with the probe thrown away, only fifteen cubits of water had been found, she replied that the iron had therefore encountered the back of a whale which they had taken for land, that, for her part, that she was well assured that it was the moon itself that they were going to approach. Finally, as everyone agreed with their fellow man, all the other women then convinced themselves. So here they are, despite the defense of the men, who throw the skiff into the sea. Ahab was the most risky; so she wanted to be the first to try the danger. She happily threw herself into it, and her entire penis would join her, without a wave separating the boat from the ship. No matter how much we shouted at her, called her lunatic a hundred times,

“Here she is sailing out of the world. The animals followed his example, because most of the birds who felt strong enough to risk the journey, impatient for the first prison from which their freedom had yet been arrested, gave in until then.

Even the bravest quadrupeds took to swimming. Nearly a thousand had left before the sons of Noah could close the stables which the crowd of escaping animals held open. Most approached this new world. For the skiff, he went against a very pleasant hillside where the generous Ahab descended, and, joyful at having known that in fact this land was the moon, did not want to embark again to join his brothers.

“She got used to living in a cave for a while, and as one day she was walking with me, wondering whether she would be upset at having lost the company of her people or whether she would be happy about it, she saw a man who was killing acorn. The joy of such an encounter made him rush into embraces; she received reciprocal comments, because it was even longer since the old man had seen the human face. It was Enoch the Righteous. They lived together, and without the impious nature of his children, and the pride of his wife, forcing him to retire into the woods, they would have completed their days together with all the sweetness with which God blessed the marriage of fair.

“There, every day, in the wildest retreats of these terrible solitudes, this good old man offered to God, with a purified mind, his heart as a holocaust, when from the Tree of Knowledge, which you know which is in this garden, one day having fallen an apple into the river on the banks of which it is planted, it was carried to the mercy of the waves outside paradise, to a place where poor Enoch, to sustain his life, caught fish at home. fishing. This beautiful fruit was caught in the net, he ate it. Immediately he knew where the earthly paradise was, and, through secrets that you would not be able to understand if you had not eaten the apple of knowledge like him, he came to live there.

“I must now tell you how I came there: You have not forgotten, I think, that my name is Elie, because I told you so recently. You will therefore know that I was in your world and that I lived with Elisha, a Hebrew like me, on the banks of the Jordan, where I lived, among books, a life sweet enough not to regret it, although 'it flowed. However, the more the lights of my mind grew, the more the knowledge of those that I did not have grew. Our priests never mentioned the illustrious Adam to me until the memory of his perfect philosophy made me sigh. I despaired of being able to acquire it, when one day, after having sacrificed for the expiation of the weaknesses of my mortal being, I fell asleep and the angel of the Lord appeared to me in a dream. As soon as I was awake, I did not fail to work on the things he had prescribed for me; I took about two square feet of the magnet, which I put in a furnace, then when it was well purged, precipitated, and dissolved, I took out the calcined attractant, and reduced it to the size of about a mediocre ball.

“Then from these preparations, I had a very light iron cart built and, a few months from then, all my machines being completed, I entered my industrious cart.

You ask me, what is the point of all this paraphernalia? Know that the angel told me in a dream that if I wanted to acquire perfect knowledge as I desired, I would go up to the world of the moon, where I would find inside the paradise of Adam, the tree of knowledge, because as soon as I had tasted its fruit my soul would be enlightened with all the truths of which a creature is capable. So this is the trip for which I built my cart. Finally I got in and when I was very firm and well supported on the seat, I kicked this ball of magnet high into the air. Gold the iron machine, which I had purposely forged more massive in the middle than at the ends, was removed immediately, and in perfect balance, because it was always pushing itself faster through this place. So as I arrived where the magnet had attracted me, I immediately threw my ball back into the air above me.

- But, I interrupted him, how did you throw your ball so straight above your cart that it was never next to it?

- I see no wonder in this adventure, he said to me; because the magnet pushed, that it was in the air, attracted the putter to itself; and therefore it was impossible that I should ever go up next to it. I will even tell you that, holding my ball in hand, I kept going up, because the cart was always running towards the magnet that I held above it, but the projection of this iron to unite with my The ball was so violent that it made me bend my body double, so that I only dared to try this new experience once. In truth, it was a very astonishing spectacle to see, because the steel of this flying house, which I had polished with great care, reflected on all sides the light of the sun so bright and brilliant, that I believed myself to be all on fire. Finally, after much rushing and flying after my blow, I arrived as you did at a point where I fell towards this world; and because at that moment I held my ball tightly in my hands, my machine whose seat pressed me to approach its attractant did not leave me; all that remained for me to fear was that I would break my cervix; but to protect myself, I threw my ball back from time to time, so that the violence of the machine held by its attractant slowed down, and so that my fall was less harsh, as in fact it happened. For, when I saw myself two or three hundred toises near the ground, I threw my ball on all sides flush with the cart, sometimes to this side, sometimes to that side, until my eyes discovered the earthly paradise. Immediately I threw it above me, and my machine having followed it,

“I will not represent to you the astonishment which seized me at the sight of the marvels which are here, because it was almost similar to that with which I have just seen you dismayed. You will only know that I encountered, the next day, the tree of life by means of which I prevented myself from growing old. It soon consumed and caused the serpent to exhale in smoke.

To these words:
- Venerable and sacred patriarch, I said to him, I would be very glad to know what you mean by this serpent which was consumed.

He, with a laughing face, answered me thus:

I forgot, my son, to reveal to you a secret of which you cannot have been informed. You will therefore know that after Eve and her husband had eaten the forbidden apple, God, to punish the serpent who had tempted them, relegated it to the body of man. Since then, no human creature has been born who, as punishment for the crime of his first father, did not nourish a serpent in his belly, descended from this first. You call it the intestines and you believe them to be necessary for the functions of life, but learn that they are nothing other than snakes folded on themselves into several doubles. When you hear your insides screaming, it is the serpent that hisses, and which, following this gluttonous nature with which it once incited the first man to eat too much, asks to eat too, because God who, to punish you, wanted to make you mortal like other animals, made you obsess over this insatiable, so that if you fed him too much, you would suffocate; or if, when with the invisible teeth with which this hungry man bites your stomach, you refused him his pittance, he screamed, he stormed, he disgorged this venom that your doctors call bile, and heated you so much, by the poison he inspires to your arteries, that you would soon be consumed by them. Finally to show you that your intestines are a snake that you have in your body, remember that they were found in the tombs of Aesculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England who still fed on the corpses of their hosts. you were choking; or if, when with the invisible teeth with which this hungry man bites your stomach, you refused him his pittance, he screamed, he stormed, he disgorged this venom that your doctors call bile, and heated you so much, by the poison he inspires to your arteries, that you would soon be consumed by them. Finally to show you that your intestines are a snake that you have in your body, remember that they were found in the tombs of Aesculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England who still fed on the corpses of their hosts. you were choking; or if, when with the invisible teeth with which this hungry man bites your stomach, you refused him his pittance, he screamed, he stormed, he disgorged this venom that your doctors call bile, and heated you so much, by the poison he inspires to your arteries, that you would soon be consumed by them. Finally to show you that your intestines are a snake that you have in your body, remember that they were found in the tombs of Aesculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England who still fed on the corpses of their hosts. by the poison that it inspires in your arteries, that you would soon be consumed by it. Finally to show you that your intestines are a snake that you have in your body, remember that they were found in the tombs of Aesculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England who still fed on the corpses of their hosts.

by the poison that it inspires in your arteries, that you would soon be consumed by it. Finally to show you that your intestines are a snake that you have in your body, remember that they were found in the tombs of Aesculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England who still fed on the corpses of their hosts.

-Indeed, I said, interrupting him, I noticed that as this snake always tries to escape from the human body, we see its head and neck coming out of our bellies.

But also God did not allow the man alone to be tormented, he wanted him to bandage himself against the woman to throw his venom at her, and for the swelling to last nine months after having stung her. And to show you that I speak according to the word of the Lord, he said to the serpent to curse him that even if he made the woman stumble by stiffening against her, she would make him bow his head.

I wanted to continue these jokes, but Elijah stopped me: -Remember, he said, that this place is holy.

As we finished this, we arrived under a sort of hermitage made of palm branches ingeniously intertwined with myrtles and orange trees. There I saw in a small recess heaps of a certain thread so white and so fine that it could pass for the soul of the snow. I also saw cattails scattered here and there. I asked my driver what they were for.

To spin, he replied. When good Enoch wants to break away from meditation, sometimes he dresses this tow, sometimes he spins it into thread, sometimes he weaves canvas which is used to make shirts for the eleven thousand virgins. It is not that you have not sometimes encountered in your world something white that flutters in autumn, around the sowing season; the peasants call it “cotton de Notre-Dame”, it is the stuffing from which Enoch purges his linen when he cards it.

We hardly stopped, without taking leave of Enoch, whose cell this cabin was, and what obliged us to leave him immediately was that, from six o'clock to six o'clock, he prays and that there was well that he had finished the last one.
On the way I begged Elijah to finish the story of the assumptions that he had begun for me, and told him that he had remained, it seemed to me, with that of Saint John the Evangelist.

- So since you do not have, he said to me, the patience to wait for the apple of knowledge to teach you all these things better than me, I am willing to learn them.
- Know then that God...

At this word, I don't know how the Devil got involved, so much so that I couldn't help but interrupt him to mock:

- I remember that, I told him. God was once warned that the soul of this evangelist was so detached that he could only hold it by clenching his teeth, and yet the hour in which he had foreseen that he would be taken up here had almost expired by so that, not having time to prepare a machine for him, he was forced to get him there quickly without having the leisure to get him there.

Elijah, throughout this speech, looked at me with eyes capable of killing me, if I had been able to die of anything other than hunger:

-Abominable, he said, stepping back, you have the imprudence to mock holy things, at least it would not be with impunity if the All-Wise did not want to leave you to the nations as a famous example of his mercy. Go, impious, out of here, go publish in this little world and in the next, because you are predestined to return there, the irreconcilable hatred that God has for atheists.

Barely had he finished this imprecation when he grabbed me and roughly led me towards the door. When we had arrived near a large tree whose branches laden with fruit bent almost to the ground:

- Here is the tree of knowledge, he said to me, where you would have exhausted inconceivable lights without your irreligion.

He had not finished this word when, pretending to languish with weakness, I let myself fall against a branch where I deftly stole an apple. I was still several steps away from leaving this delightful park; However, hunger pressed on me with such violence that it made me forget that I was in the hands of a wrathful prophet. This made me take out one of those apples with which I had filled my pocket, where I bit my teeth; but instead of taking one of those that Enoch had given me as a present, my hand fell on the apple that I had picked from the tree of knowledge and of which unfortunately I had not stripped the bark.

I had barely tasted it when a thick cloud fell on my soul; I no longer saw anyone near me, and my eyes did not recognize in the whole hemisphere a single trace of the path I had taken, and with all this I left no memory of all that had happened to me. When I subsequently reflected on this miracle, I imagined that the rind of the fruit where I had bitten had not completely stunned me, because my teeth passing through it felt a little of the juice that it covered, whose energy had dissipated the malignancy of the bark.

I was very surprised to see myself all alone in the middle of a country that I did not know. No matter how much I wandered my eyes and cast them across the countryside, no creature offered itself to console them. At last I resolved to walk, until Fortune brought me into the company of some beasts, or of death.

She heard me because, after half a quarter of a league, I encountered two very large animals, one of which stopped in front of me, the other lightly fled to the shelter (at least I thought so) because some time later I saw him return accompanied by more than seven or eight hundred of the same species who surrounded me. When I could see them up close, I knew that they had the size and face like us. This adventure made me remember what I had once heard my nurse tell, about mermaids, fauns, and satyrs. From time to time they raised such furious boos, no doubt caused by admiration at seeing me, that I almost thought I had become a monster. Finally one of these beast-men having grabbed me by the collar, just as wolves do when they kidnap sheep,

When these people saw me so small (for most of them are twelve cubits long), and my body supported by only two feet, they could not believe that I was a man, because they held that, nature having given both men and animals had two legs and two arms, they had to use them as they did. And, in fact, since dreaming about it, I thought that this physical situation was not too extravagant, when I remembered that children, when they are still only taught by nature, walk in fours. feet, and that they only get up on two by the care of their nurses who place them in small carts, and attach straps to them to prevent them from falling on four, like the only plate on which the figure of our mass inclined to rest.

They therefore said (what I have since interpreted) that I was infallibly the female of the queen's little animal. So I was, in the capacity of this or that, taken straight to the town hall, where I noticed, according to the buzz and the postures made by both the people and the magistrates, that they were consulting together what I could be. When they had conferred for a long time, a certain bourgeois who looked after the rare animals, begged the aldermen to commit me to his care, while waiting for the queen to send for me to live with my male.

There was no difficulty, and this mountebank took me to his lodgings, where he introduced me to doing the godenot, doing somersaults, and making grimaces; and in the afternoons he had a certain price taken at the door from those who wanted to see me. But heaven, humbled by my sorrows, and angry to see the temple of its master desecrated, willed that one day, as I was tied to the end of a rope, with which the charlatan made me jump to entertain the onlooker, one of those who were looking at me, after having considered me very attentively, asked me in Greek who I was. I was very surprised to hear it spoken in that country as in our world. He questioned me for some time, I answered him, and then generally related to him the whole enterprise and success of my journey. He consoled me,

- Well ! my son, you finally bear the pain of the weaknesses of your world. There are vulgar people here as there who cannot bear the thought of things to which they are not accustomed. But know that you are only treated the same, and that if anyone from this earth had climbed into yours, with the boldness to call himself a man, your doctors would have him suffocated like a monster or like a monkey. possessed by the devil.

He then promised me that he would inform the court of my disaster; and he added that as soon as he heard the news about me, he had come to see me; and recognized me as a man of the world of whom I told myself that my country was the moon and that I was a Gaul; because he had formerly traveled and remained in Greece, where he was called the demon of Socrates; that since the death of this philosopher, Epaminondas had governed and instructed at Thebes; that then, having gone to the Romans, justice had attached him to the party of young Cato; that after his death he gave himself to Brutus. That all these great characters having left in this world only the ghost of their virtues,

Finally, he added, the people of your land became so stupid and so crude that my companions and I lost all the pleasure we had formerly taken in instructing them. It is not that you have not heard of us, for we were called oracles, nymphs, genies, fairies, gods, homes, lemures, larvae, lamias, leprechauns, naiads, incubi, shadows, manes, specters and ghosts ; and we abandoned your world during the reign of Augustus, a little after I had appeared to Drusus, son of Livia, who was carrying the war into Germany, and had forbidden him to go further. It is not long since I arrived there for the second time; for a hundred years in this, I have been commissioned to make a trip there, I have wandered a lot in Europe, and conversed with people you may have known. A day, among other things, I appeared to Cardan as he studied; I instructed him in quantities of things, and as a reward he promised me that he would testify to posterity from whom he got the miracles that he expected to write. I saw Agrippa there, Abbot Tritème, Doctor Faust, La Brosse, Caesar and a certain cabal of young people whom the common people knew under the name of “Knights of the Rose-Croix”, to whom I taught quantity of natural flexibility and secrets, which will undoubtedly have made them pass among the people for great magicians. I also knew Campanella; it was I who advised him, while he was in the inquisition in Rome, to style his face and body in the ordinary postures of those whose interior he needed to know, in order to excite, at home on the same plate the thoughts that this same situation had called into his adversaries, because thus he would better treat their souls when he knew it, and he began at my request a book which we entitled De Sensu rerum. I also frequented La Mothe Le Vayer and Gassendi in France. This second is a man who writes as much as a philosopher as this first lives there. I knew a number of other people there, whom your century treats as divine, but I found in them only a lot of chatter and a lot of pride. This second is a man who writes as much as a philosopher as this first lives there. I knew a number of other people there, whom your century treats as divine, but I found in them only a lot of chatter and a lot of pride. This second is a man who writes as much as a philosopher as this first lives there. I knew a number of other people there, whom your century treats as divine, but I found in them only a lot of chatter and a lot of pride.

“Finally, as I was crossing from your country to England to study the customs of its inhabitants, I met a man, the shame of his country; for certainly it is a shame for the great ones of your State to recognize in him, without adoring him, the virtue of which he is the throne. To summarize his panegyric, he is all spirit, he is all heart, and he has all these qualities, one of which was once enough to mark a hero: he was Tristan the Hermit; I would have been careful not to name him, because I am assured that he will not forgive me for this mistake; but as I do not expect to ever return to your world, I want to give this testimony of my conscience to the truth. Truly, I must confess to you that, when I live such a high virtue, I feared that she would not be recognized; this is why I tried to make him accept three vials: the first was full of talcum oil, the other of projection powder, and the last of potable gold, that is to say of this vegetative salt of which your chemists promise eternity. But he refused them with a more generous disdain than Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander when he came to visit him at his barrel. Finally, I can add nothing to the praise of this great man, except that he is the only poet, the only philosopher, and the only free man that you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them. the first was full of talcum oil, the other of projection powder, and the last of potable gold, that is to say of this vegetative salt of which your chemists promise eternity. But he refused them with a more generous disdain than Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander when he came to visit him at his barrel. Finally, I can add nothing to the praise of this great man, except that he is the only poet, the only philosopher, and the only free man that you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them. the first was full of talcum oil, the other of projection powder, and the last of potable gold, that is to say of this vegetative salt of which your chemists promise eternity. But he refused them with a more generous disdain than Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander when he came to visit him at his barrel.

Finally, I can add nothing to the praise of this great man, except that he is the only poet, the only philosopher, and the only free man that you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them. that is to say of this vegetative salt of which your chemists promise eternity. But he refused them with a more generous disdain than Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander when he came to visit him at his barrel. Finally, I can add nothing to the praise of this great man, except that he is the only poet, the only philosopher, and the only free man that you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them. that is to say of this vegetative salt of which your chemists promise eternity. But he refused them with a more generous disdain than Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander when he came to visit him at his barrel. Finally, I can add nothing to the praise of this great man, except that he is the only poet, the only philosopher, and the only free man that you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them. the only philosopher, and the only free man you have.

These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them.

the only philosopher, and the only free man you have. These are the considerable people I have spoken to; all the others, at least those I have known, are so far below man that I have seen beasts a little above them.

“Besides, I am not from your land nor from this one, I was born in the sun. But because our world sometimes finds itself too populated, owing to the long life of its inhabitants, and because it is almost free from wars and diseases, from time to time our magistrates send colonies to the surrounding worlds. As for me, I was ordered to go to yours, and declared leader of the people who were sent with me. I have since passed into this one, for the reasons that I told you; and what makes me remain there at present is that men are lovers of truth, that people do not believe in pedants, that philosophers only allow themselves to be persuaded by reason, and that the authority of a scholar, nor the majority, do not prevail over the opinion of a thresher in a barn when he reasons so strongly. In short, in this country, we only count sophists and orators as insane. »

I asked him how long they lived, he replied:

-Three or four thousand years.

And continued in this way:
“To make myself visible as I am now, when I feel the corpse, that I am almost worn out or that the organs no longer exercise their functions perfectly enough, I breathe myself into a young body newly dead.

“Although the inhabitants of the sun are not as numerous as those of this world, the sun is very often full of them, because the people, despite being of a very hot temperament, are restless and ambitious, and digest a lot .

“What I am telling you should not seem astonishing to you, because, although our globe is very vast and yours small, although we will only die after four thousand years and you after half a century, learn that everything from even though there are not so many pebbles as earth, nor so many plants as pebbles, nor so many animals; thus there must not be so many demons as there are men, because of the difficulties encountered in the generation of such a perfect compound. »

I asked him if they were bodies like us; he replied that yes, that they were bodies, but not like us, nor like something else that we considered as such; because we commonly only call “body” what we can touch; that besides there was nothing in nature that was not material, and that although they themselves were, they were forced, when they wanted to make themselves visible to us, to take bodies proportionate to what our senses are capable of knowing, and that this was undoubtedly what made many people think that the stories that were told about them were only an effect of the daydreams of the weak, because they only appear at night. And he added, that as they were forced to hastily build the body themselves which they had to use, they very often did not have the time to make them fit only to fall under one sense, sometimes hearing like the voices of oracles, sometimes sight like the fiery ones and the spectres; sometimes the touch like the incubi and the nightmares, and that this mass being only an air thickened in this or that way, the light by its heat destroyed them, as we see that it dissipates a fog by dilating it .

So many beautiful things that he explained to me gave me the curiosity to question him about his birth and his death, if in the land of the sun the individual came to light through the channels of generations, and if he died through disorder of his temperament, or rupture of his organs.

- There is too little connection, he said, between your senses and the explanation of these mysteries. You others imagine that what you cannot understand is spiritual, or that it is not at all; but this consequence is very false, and it is a testimony that there are in the universe perhaps a million things which, to be known, would require in you a million organs, all different. I, for example, know through my senses the cause of the magnet's sympathy with the pole, that of the reflux of the sea, and what becomes of the animal after its death; you people can only achieve these lofty conceptions by faith, because you lack the proportions to these miracles, any more than a blind person can imagine what the beauty of a landscape is. , the color of a painting, and the nuances of the iris; or he will sometimes imagine them as something palpable like eating, like a sound, or like an odor. All the same, if I wanted to explain to you what I perceive through the senses that you lack, you would represent it to yourself as something that can be heard, seen, touched, smelled, or savored, and it is nothing, however, all of this. »

This was his speech when my juggernaut noticed that the barracks were beginning to get bored of my jargon which they did not understand, and which they took for an inarticulate grunt. He began to pull my rope again to make me jump, until the spectators were drunk with laughter and assured that I had almost as much wit as the beasts of their country, they each withdrew. at home.

I thus softened the harshness of my master's mistreatment by the visits paid to me by this officious witness, because by talking with those who came to see me, apart from the fact that they took me for one of the best-rooted animals in the category of brutes, neither I knew their language, nor they did not understand mine, and thus judge what proportion, because you will know that only two idioms are used in this country, one which serves the great, and the other which is special for the people.

That of the greats is nothing other than a difference of unarticulated tones, almost similar to our music, when we have not added the words to the tune, and certainly it is an invention altogether and well useful and very pleasant; for, when they are tired of betting or when they disdain to prostitute their throat for this use, they take either a lute, or another instrument, which they use as well as the voice to communicate their thoughts; so that sometimes there will be up to fifteen or twenty of a company, who will raise a point of theology, or the difficulties of a trial, with the most harmonious concert that can tickle the ear.

The second, which is used among the people, is executed by the movement of the limbs, but not perhaps as one imagines, because certain parts of the body signify an entire speech. The agitation, for example, of a finger, a hand, an ear, a lip, an arm, an eye, a cheek, will each in particular make a prayer or a period with all its members. Others serve only to designate words, such as a crease on the forehead, the various quivers of the muscles, the reversals of the hands, the beating of the feet, the contortions of the arms; so that, when they speak, with the custom they have adopted of going completely naked, their members, accustomed to gesticulating their conceptions, move so violently that it does not seem like a man who is speaking,

Almost every day, the demon came to visit me, and his marvelous conversations made me pass without boredom the violence of my captivity. Finally, one morning, I saw a man enter my cubicle whom I did not know, and who, having licked me for a long time, yelled at me gently by the armpit, and with one of the paws which he held me up in fear. that I might not injure myself, threw myself on his back, where I found myself so limp and so at ease, that with the affliction that being treated like an animal made me feel, I had no desire to run away, and then these men who walk on four feet move at a different speed than us, since the heavier ones catch the deer while running.

However, I was extremely distressed at not having any news from my courteous demon, and on the evening of the first milking, when I arrived at the lodging, I walked in the courtyard of the inn, waiting for him to eat. ready, when a very young and quite handsome man came and laughed in my face, and threw his two front feet around my neck. After I had considered it for some time:

-What? he said to me in French, you no longer knew your friend?

I leave you to think what became of me then. Certainly my surprise was so great that from then on I imagined that the whole globe of the moon, everything that had happened to me there, and everything I saw there, was only enchantment, and this man -beast being the same one who had served as my mount, continued to speak to me thus:

- You promised me that the good offices that I would render to you would never leave your memory, and yet it seems that you have never seen me!

But seeing that I remained in my astonishment
- Finally, he added, I am the demon of Socrates. This speech increased my astonishment, but to get out of it he said to me:

- I am the demon of Socrates who entertained you during your prison, and who to continue my services to you have dressed myself in the body with which I carried you yesterday.

But, I interrupted him, how can all this be done, seeing that yesterday you were extremely tall, and today you are very short; that yesterday you had a weak and broken voice, and that today you have a clear and vigorous one, that yesterday finally you were a very gray old man, and that today you are only a young man ?

What! whereas in my country we move from birth to death, animals in this country go from death to birth, and become younger as they age.

- As soon as I had spoken to the prince, he said to me, after having received the order to take you to court, I went to find you where you were, and having brought you here, I felt the body that I I was so greatly attenuated with weariness that all the organs refused me their ordinary functions, so that I inquired about the way to the hospital, where entering I found the body of a young man who had just expired. a very bizarre accident, and yet very common in this country. I approached him, pretending to still know something about the movement, and protesting to those present that he was not dead, and what was believed to have caused him to lose his life was only a simple lethargy, so that, without being noticed, I brought my mouth to his, where I entered as if by a breath. Then my old corpse fell, and as if I had been this young man, I got up and came to get you, leaving the assistants there to cry miracle.

Thereupon they came for us to sit down at table, and I followed my conductor into a magnificently furnished room, but where I saw nothing prepared for eating. Such a great loneliness of meat when I was perishing from hunger forced me to ask him where the table had been set. I did not listen to what he replied, because three or four young boys, children of the host, approached me at that moment, and with great civility stripped me down to my shirt. This new ceremony astonished me so much that I did not even dare to ask the cause of it to my handsome valets, and I do not know how my guide, who asked me where I wanted to begin, was able to extract from me these two words “A soup”, but I had barely uttered them, that I smelled the smell of the most succulent concoction that ever hit the nose of the poor rich man. I wanted to get up from my place to look on the trail for the source of this pleasant smoke, but my carrier stopped me.

Where do you want to go? he said to me, we will go for a walk later, but now it is time to eat, finish your soup, and then we will send for something else.

-And where the hell is this soup? I replied (almost angry); Did you dare to make fun of me all today?

- I thought, he replied, that you had seen, in the town from which we came, your master, or some other person taking his meals; that's why I didn't tell you how we eat here. So while you still don't know it, know that we only live in smoke. The art of cooking is to contain in large specially molded vessels the exhalation that comes out of meat while cooking it; and when we have collected several kinds and different tastes, according to the appetite of those we treat, we uncork the vessel where this odor is assembled, we discover after that another, and so until that the company is satisfied. Unless you have already lived like this, you will never believe that the nose, without teeth and without a throat, does, to feed man,

He had no sooner finished than I felt so many pleasant vapors entering the room successively, and so nourishing, that in less than half a quarter of an hour I felt completely satisfied. When we were up:

- This is not, he said, something which should cause you much admiration, since you cannot have lived so much without having observed that in your world the cooks, the pastry chefs and the roasters, who eat less than people from another shift, are however much fatter. Where does their fatness come from, in your opinion, if not the smoke with which they are constantly surrounded, and which penetrates their bodies and nourishes them? Also the people of this world enjoy much less interrupted and more vigorous health, because food generates almost no excrement, which is the origin of almost all diseases. You were perhaps surprised when before the meal you were undressed, because this custom is not used in your country; but it is the fashion for this and it is used in this way, so that the animal is more perspirable by the smoke.

“Sir,” I replied, “there is very much truth to what you say, and I myself have just experienced something of it; but I will admit to you that, not being able to debrutalize myself so quickly, I would be very happy to feel a palpable piece under my teeth.

He promised it to me, and however it was for the next day, because, he said, eating immediately after the meal would cause me indigestion. We talked for a while longer, then we went up to the bedroom to go to bed.

A man at the top of the stairs presented himself to us, and having looked at us attentively, led me into a closet, the floor of which was covered with orange flowers to the height of three feet, and my demon into another filled with carnations and jasmine; he told me, seeing that I seemed astonished at this magnificence, that these were the beds of the country. Finally we each went to bed in our cell; and as soon as I was lying on my flowers, I saw, in the light of about thirty large glowworms enclosed in a crystal (because no other candles are used) these three or four young boys who had undressed at supper, one of whom began to tickle my feet, another my thighs, another my sides, another my arms, and all with such cuteness and delicacy,

The next day I saw my demon enter with the sun: “And I want to keep my word to you,” he said to me; you will have a more solid lunch than you supped yesterday. »

At these words, I stood up, and he led me by the hand, behind the garden of the house, where one of the host's children was waiting for us with a weapon in his hand, almost similar to our rifles. He asked my guide if I wanted a dozen larks, because the maggots (he thought I was one) fed on this meat. I had barely answered yes when the hunter fired a shot, and twenty or thirty larks fell at our feet, all roasted. This, I immediately imagined, is what we say by proverb in our world about a country where the larks fall all roasted! No doubt someone had come back from here.

- You only have to eat, my demon said to me; They have the industry of mixing among their powder and their lead a certain composition which kills, feathers, roasts and seasons the game.

I picked up some of them, which I ate at his word, and in truth I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life.

After this lunch we prepared to leave, and with a thousand grimaces which they use when they want to show affection, the host received a paper from my demon. I asked him if it was an obligation for the value of the cost. He tells me no; that he no longer owed her anything, and that they were worms.

- What, worms? I replied, are the tavern owners here curious about rhymes?

- It is, he told me, the currency of the country, and the expense that we have just made here has been found to amount to a sixain which I have just given him. I was not afraid of remaining short; for if we feasted here for eight days, we would not be able to spare a sonnet, and I have four with me, with two epigrams, two odes and an eclogue.

- Ha! truly, I said to myself, this is precisely the coin that Sorel uses for Hortensius in Francion, I remember it. It was there, no doubt, that he stole it; but who the hell could he have learned it from? It must be from his mother, because I heard she was moody.

And would to God, I said to him, that it were the same in our world! I know many honest poets there who are dying of hunger, and who would have a good meal if the caterers were paid in this currency.

I asked him if these verses were still useful, provided they were transcribed, he replied no, and continued thus:

“When they have been composed, the author takes them to the Court of Coins, where the sworn poets of the kingdom hold their session. There these officer versifiers put the pieces to the test, and if they are judged to be of good quality, they are taxed not according to their weight, but according to their point, that is to say, a sonnet is not always worth a sonnet, but according to the merit of the piece; and so, when someone dies of hunger, it is never more than a buffalo; and intelligent people are always very expensive.

I admired, quite ecstatically, the judicious police of that country and he continued in this way

-There are still other people who run cabaret in a very different way. When one leaves their home, they ask in proportion to the expenses a receipt for the other world; and as soon as it has been given to them, they write in a large register which they call the accounts of God, approximately in these terms: Item, the value of so many verses delivered on such a day, to such and such, that God must immediately repay the receipt received from the first fund that will be found there", and when they feel in danger of dying, they have these registers chopped into pieces, and swallow them because they believe that if they do not were thus digested, God could not read, and it would benefit them nothing.

This conversation did not prevent us from continuing to walk, that is to say my carrier on all fours beneath me, and me astride him. I will not further detail the adventures which stopped us on the way, which finally we ended at the city where the king makes his residence. I had no sooner arrived there than I was taken to the palace, where the nobles received me with more moderate admiration than the people had shown when I had passed through the streets. But the conclusion that I was undoubtedly the female of the queen's little animal was that of large ones like that of the people. My guide interpreted it to me like this; and yet he himself did not understand this enigma, and did not know who this little animal of the queen was; but we were soon cleared of it, because the king, some time after considering it, ordered him to be brought in and half an hour later I saw enter, in the middle of a troop of monkeys wearing ruffs and breeches, a small, built man. almost just like me, because he walked on two feet. As soon as he saw me, he approached me with a “criado de nuestra merced.” I returned his bow in almost the same terms. But alas, no sooner had they seen us talking together than they all had the real prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. ordered him to be brought in and half an hour later I saw enter, in the middle of a troop of monkeys wearing ruffs and breeches, a little man built almost exactly like me, because he walked on two feet. As soon as he saw me, he approached me with a “criado de nuestra merced.” I returned his bow in almost the same terms. But alas, no sooner had they seen us talking together than they all had the real prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. ordered him to be brought in and half an hour later I saw enter, in the middle of a troop of monkeys wearing ruffs and breeches, a little man built almost exactly like me, because he walked on two feet. As soon as he saw me, he approached me with a “criado de nuestra merced.” I returned his bow in almost the same terms. But alas, no sooner had they seen us talking together than they all had the real prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. a little man built almost exactly like me, because he walked on two feet. As soon as he saw me, he approached me with a “criado de nuestra merced.” I returned his bow in almost the same terms. But alas, no sooner had they seen us talking together than they all had the real prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. a little man built almost exactly like me, because he walked on two feet. As soon as he saw me, he approached me with a “criado de nuestra merced.” I returned his bow in almost the same terms. But alas, no sooner had they seen us talking together than they all had the real prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. that they all had the true prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum. that they all had the true prejudice; and this conjecture was careful not to produce another success, because the one of the assistants who opined for us with more favor protested that our conversation was a grunt that the joy of being joined by a natural instinct made us hum.

This little man told me that he was European, a native of Old Castile; he had found a way with birds to be carried to the world of the moon where we were then; that having fallen into the hands of the queen, she had taken him for a monkey, because they, by chance, in that country, dress monkeys in the Spanish style, and that having him in her When she arrived and found dressed in this way, she had no doubt that he was of the species.

-It must be said, I replied, that after having tried all kinds of clothes on them, they have not encountered any more ridiculous, and that it is only because of that that they equip them in this way, maintaining these animals only to give pleasure to them.

This is not to know, he continued, the dignity of our nation in whose favor the universe only produces men to give us slaves, and for whom nature can only generate fodder for laughter.

He then begged me to tell him how I had dared to venture to the moon with the machine I had told him about, I told him that it was because he had taken the birds I was thinking about go. He smiled at this mockery, and about a quarter of an hour later the king ordered the monkey keepers to bring us back, with express orders to have the Spaniard and I sleep together, to multiply our species in his kingdom.

The will of the prince was carried out from point to point, with which I was very happy for the pleasure I received from having someone who spoke to me during the solitude of my brutalization. One day, my male (because I was taken for his female) told me that what had really forced him to run all over the earth, and finally abandon it for the moon, was that he had not been able to find a the only country where imagination itself was free.

-You see, he said to me, unless you wear a bonnet, whatever beautiful thing you can say, if it is against the principles of the cloth doctors, you are an idiot, a madman (and something worse). ). They wanted to put me in the inquisition in my country because, under the noses of pedants, I had maintained that there was a void in nature and that I knew of no matter in the world heavier than that. one than the other.

These are more or less the things we used to amuse ourselves with; because this little Spaniard had a pretty mind. Our conversation, however, was only at night, because from six o'clock in the morning until evening the great crowd of people who came to gaze upon us at our lodgings had distracted us; for some threw stones at us, others nuts, others grass.

Every day we were served food at our times, and the queen and the king themselves often took the trouble to feel my stomach to see if I was not full, because they were burning with an extraordinary life of have a breed of these small animals. I don't know if it was because I was more attentive than my male to their pretenses and tones; but I learned earlier than him to understand their language, and to hang on to it a little, which meant that we were considered in a different way than we had been, and the news immediately spread throughout the kingdom. that we had found two wild men, smaller than the others, because of the bad food that the solitude had provided us, and who, through a defect in the seed of their fathers,

This belief would take root as it progressed, without the priests of the country who opposed it, saying that it was terrible impiety to believe that not only beasts, but monsters were of their species.

“It would be much more likely,” added the less passionate, “that our domestic animals participate in humanity's privilege of immortality, consequently because they were born in our country, than a monstrous beast which said to be born I don't know where in the moon; and then consider the difference which is noticed between us and them. The rest of us walk on all fours, because God did not want to be proud of something so precious on a less firm footing, and he was afraid that going otherwise would bring about the fortune of man; that is why he took the trouble to seat it on four pillars, so that it could not fall; but disdaining to take part in the construction of these two brutes, he abandoned them to the caprice of nature, which, not fearing the loss of so little,

“The birds themselves,” they said, “have not been so mistreated as they, because at least they have received feathers to provide for the weakness of their feet, and to throw themselves into the air when we turn them away from home. We; whereas nature, by removing both feet from these monsters, has put them in a position to be unable to escape our justice.

“Besides that, see how their heads are turned towards the sky! It is the scarcity in which God has placed them in all things which has placed them in this way, for this suppliant posture testifies that they complain to heaven of Him who created them, and that they ask Him for permission to make do with our leftovers. But we others have our heads bent to contemplate the goods of which we are lords, and as there being nothing in heaven which our happy condition could cause envy. »

Every day, in my lodge, I heard the priests telling these stories, or others similar to them; and finally they restrained the minds of the people so well on this article, that it was decided that I would at most only pass for a parrot without feathers, because they confirmed the persuaded on the fact that no more than a bird I only had two feet. This resulted in me being put in a cage by express order from the Council above.

There, every day, the queen's fowler took care to come and whistle at me as they do to starlings here; I was indeed happy in that I did not lack food. However, among the nonsense with which the spectators were annoying me, I learned to speak like them, so that, when I was sufficiently versed in the idiom to express the majority of my conceptions, I told some of the most beautiful ones. Already the companies were only talking about the kindness of my good words, and the esteem that people had for my spirit. It came so far that the Council was forced to publish a decree, by which it was forbidden to believe that I had reason, with a very express command to all persons of whatever quality or condition they were, to imagine,

However the definition of what was divided the city into two factions. The party which supported my favor grew day by day, and finally in spite of the anathema and the excommunication of the prophets who thereby tried to terrify the people, those who supported me requested an assembly of the States, to resolve this religious problem. For a long time there was agreement on the choice of those who would vote; but the arbitrators pacified the animosity by the number of interested parties which they matched, and who ordered that I would be brought into the assembly as was done; but I was treated there as severely as one can imagine. The examiners questioned me about philosophy among other things; I explained to them everything in good faith what my regent had previously taught me, but they did not bother to refute it to me with many convincing reasons. When I found myself completely convinced, I invoked as my last refuge the principles of Aristotle which did not serve me any more than the sophisms; because in two words, they revealed to me the falsity of it. “This Aristotle,” they said to me, “whose science you praise so highly, undoubtedly adapted the principles to his philosophy instead of adapting his philosophy to the principles, and even if he had to prove them at least more reasonable than those of others sects, which he could not do.

This is why the good lord will not think it bad if we kiss his hands. » I relied on the principles of Aristotle as my last refuge, which did not serve me any more than the sophisms; because in two words, they revealed to me the falsity of it.

“This Aristotle,” they said to me, “whose science you praise so highly, undoubtedly adapted the principles to his philosophy instead of adapting his philosophy to the principles, and even if he had to prove them at least more reasonable than those of others sects, which he could not do. This is why the good lord will not think it bad if we kiss his hands. » I relied on the principles of Aristotle as my last refuge, which did not serve me any more than the sophisms; because in two words, they revealed to me the falsity of it. “This Aristotle,” they said to me, “whose science you praise so highly, undoubtedly adapted the principles to his philosophy instead of adapting his philosophy to the principles, and even if he had to prove them at least more reasonable than those of others sects, which he could not do. This is why the good lord will not think it bad if we kiss his hands. » undoubtedly adapted the principles to his philosophy instead of adapting his philosophy to the principles, and even then he had to prove them at least more reasonable than those of the other sects, which he was unable to do.

This is why the good lord will not think it bad if we kiss his hands. » undoubtedly adapted the principles to his philosophy instead of adapting his philosophy to the principles, and even then he had to prove them at least more reasonable than those of the other sects, which he was unable to do. This is why the good lord will not think it bad if we kiss his hands. »

Finally, as they saw that I was talking about nothing else, except that they were no more learned than Aristotle, and that I had been forbidden to discuss against those who denied the principles, they all concluded with one voice , that I was not a man, but possibly some kind of ostrich, seeing that like her I carried my head upright, that I walked on two feet, and that finally, apart from a little down, I was completely similar, so much so that the fowler was ordered to put me back in the cage. I spent my time there with quite a bit of pleasure, because because of their language, which I mastered correctly, the whole court enjoyed making me talk. The Queen's daughters, among others, always stuffed something into my basket; and the kindest of all having conceived some friendship for me,

One day early in the morning, having woken up with a start, I saw her drumming against the sticks of my cage:

-Rejoice, she said to me, yesterday, in the Council, we concluded the war against King X. J I hope among the embarrassment of the preparations, while our monarch and his subjects are far away, to create the opportunity to save you.

-What, war? I interrupted him. Do quarrels arise between the princes of this world here as between those of ours? Hey! Please tell me about their way of fighting!

-When the arbitrators, she continued, elected at the discretion of the two parties, designated the time granted for arming, that of the march, the number of combatants, the day and the place of the battle, and all this with such of equality, that there is not in one army a single man more than in the other. The crippled soldiers on one side are all enlisted in a company, and when it comes to fighting, the field marshals take care to expose them to the crippled ones; on the other side, the giants have the colossi in mind; the fencers, the skillful; the valiant, the courageous; the feeble, the weak; the indisposed, the sick; the robust, the strong, and if someone undertakes to strike someone other than his designated enemy, unless he can justify that it was by mistake, he is condemned as a coward. After the given battle, the wounded, the dead, the prisoners are counted; because for the fugitives, there are none; if the losses are equal on both sides, they draw straws to whoever proclaims themselves victorious.

“But even if a kingdom had defeated its enemy in good war, it is almost nothing advanced, because there are other armies, few in number, of scholars and men of intellect, on whose disputes the triumph entirely depends. or state servitude.

“A scholar is opposed to another scholar, a wise man to another wise man, and a judicious man to another judicious man. Moreover, the triumph that a State wins in this way is counted as three victories by open force. After the proclamation of victory, the assembly is broken up, and the victorious people choose to be their king, or that of the enemies, or their own. »

I couldn't help but laugh at this scrupulous way of fighting; and I cited as an example of a much stronger policy the customs of our Europe, where the monarch was careful not to omit any of his advantages in order to win and this is how she spoke to me: -Teach me, she said to
me , If your princes do not pretext their armaments by the right of force?

- Yes, I replied, and the justice of their cause.

-Why then, she continued, do they not choose unsuspected arbiters to be granted?

And if it turns out that they have as much right as each other, whether they remain as they were, or whether they play the city or province over which they are in dispute in a single move? And while they are making more than four million men who are better than them break the heads, they are in their office mocking the circumstances of the massacre of these onlookers. But I am wrong to blame the valor of your brave subjects in this way; they do well to die for their country; the matter is important, because it involves being the vassal of a king who wears a ruff or one who wears a flap!

-But you, I replied, why all these circumstances in your way of fighting? Is it not enough for armies to have the same number of men?

- You have little judgement, she replied. Would you believe, by your faith, having defeated your enemy alone in the field, to have defeated him in good war, if you were mailed, and he was not; if he only had a dagger, and you a blow; finally what if he was one-armed, and you had two arms? However, with all the equality that you so recommend to your gladiators, they never fight the same; for one will be large, the other small; one will be skillful, the other will have never wielded a sword; one will be strong, the other weak; and even if these disproportions were equal, if they were as skillful and as strong as each other, they would still not be the same, because one of the two will perhaps have more courage than the other; and under the shadow that this madman will not consider the danger, that he will be bilious, that he will have more blood, that his heart is tighter, with all these qualities which make up courage, as if it were not was not as good as a sword, a weapon that his enemy does not have, he interferes to rush madly at him, to frighten him and to take the life of this poor man who foresees the danger, whose heat is stifled in the pituit, and whose heart is too vast to unite the minds necessary to dissipate this ice which we call "cowardice". Thus you praise this man for having killed his enemy with advantage, and praising him for boldness, you praise him for an unnatural sin, since his boldness tends to his destruction. And regarding this, I will tell you that a few years ago a remonstrance was made to the War Council, to bring about a more circumspect and more conscientious regulation of the battles. And the philosopher who gave the opinion spoke thus:

“You imagine, Gentlemen, having well matched the advantages of two enemies, when you chose them both great, both dexterous, both full of courage; but this is still not enough, since the winner must finally overcome by skill, by strength, and by fortune. If it was by skill, he undoubtedly struck his adversary in a place where he did not expect it, or more quickly than was probable; or, pretending to catch him on one side, he assailed him on the other. However, all this is refinement, it is deception, it is betrayal, and deception and betrayal should not bring esteem to a truly generous person. If he triumphed by force, will you consider his enemy defeated, since he was violated? No, undoubtedly, nor will you say that a man has lost the victory, although he has been overwhelmed by the fall of a mountain, because he was not able to gain it. All the same, this one was not overcome, because he was not at that moment disposed to be able to resist the violence of his adversary. If it was by chance that he defeated his enemy, it is Fortune and not him who should be crowned; he has contributed nothing to it; and finally the vanquished is no more blameworthy than the dice player, who out of seventeen points sees score eighteen.” because at that moment he was not prepared to resist the violence of his adversary. If it was by chance that he defeated his enemy, it is Fortune and not him who should be crowned; he has contributed nothing to it; and finally the vanquished is no more blameworthy than the dice player, who out of seventeen points sees score eighteen.” because at that moment he was not prepared to resist the violence of his adversary. If it was by chance that he defeated his enemy, it is Fortune and not him who should be crowned; he has contributed nothing to it; and finally the vanquished is no more blameworthy than the dice player, who out of seventeen points sees score eighteen.”

They confessed to him that he was right: but that it was impossible, according to human appearances, to put things in order, and that it was better to suffer one small inconvenience than to abandon oneself to a hundred others of greater importance. .

She did not speak to me further this time, because she feared being found alone with me this morning. It is not that in this country impudence is a crime; on the contrary, apart from convicted culprits, every man has power over every woman, and a woman could still bring a man to justice who had refused her. But she did not dare to associate with me publicly, what she told me, because the priests had preached at the last sacrifice that it was mainly women who published that I was a man, in order to cover under this pretext the desire execrable which burned them to mingle with the animals, and to shamelessly commit unnatural sins with me. This caused me to go a long time without seeing her, or any of her sex.

However, someone had to have rekindled the quarrels over the definition of my being, because as I was only thinking of dying in my cage, someone came to me once again to give me an audience. I was therefore questioned, in the presence of a large number of courtiers, on certain points of physics, and my answers, as I believe, did not satisfy in any way, because the one who presided explained to me at great length his opinions on the structure of the world. They seemed ingenious to me; and without him going to his origin which he maintained was eternal, I would have found his philosophy much more reasonable than ours. But as soon as I heard him sustain a reverie so contrary to what faith teaches us, I asked him what he could say to the authority of Moses and that this great patriarch had expressly said that God had created him in six days. This ignorant man only laughed instead of answering me; which forced me to tell him that since it had come to this, I was beginning to believe that their world was only a moon. “But,” they all said to me, “you see land, rivers, seas, what would all that be?

-No matter, I replied, Aristotle assures us that it is only the moon; and if you had said the opposite in the classes where I studied, you would have been whistled at.

He burst out laughing at this. It is not necessary to ask whether it was their ignorance; but nevertheless I was taken to my cage.

The priests, however, more carried away than the first, informed that I had dared to say that the moon from which I came was a world, and that their world was only a moon, believed that this provided them with a fairly good pretext. just to get me sentenced to water; This is the way to exterminate atheists. For this purpose, they went in a body to make their complaint to the king who promised them justice, and ordered that I would be put back in the hot seat.

So here I am released for the third time, and then the oldest spoke and pleaded against me. I do not remember his harangue, because I was too frightened to receive the essence of his voice without disturbance, and because he also used an instrument to declaim, the noise of which stunned me: it was a trumpet that he had chosen on purpose, so that the violence of this martial sound would warm their minds at my death, and in order to prevent through this emotion that reasoning could do its job, as happens in our armies, where the din of trumpets and drums prevents the soldier from reflecting on the importance of his life.

When he had said this, I rose to defend my cause, but I was delivered from it by an adventure which will surprise you. As my mouth was open, a man who had had great difficulty getting through the crowd, came and fell at the King's feet, and dragged himself for a long time on his back in his presence. This way of doing things did not surprise me, because I knew that this was the posture they put themselves in when they wanted to speak in public. I only sheathed my harangue, and this is what we got from him:

“Righteous people, listen to me! you cannot condemn this man, this monkey, or this parrot, for having said that the moon is a world from which he came; for if he is a man, even if he did not come from the moon, since every man is free, is he not also free to imagine what he wants?

What? can you force him not to have your visions? You will force him to say that the moon is not a world, but he will not believe it; because to believe something, certain possibilities must present to one's imagination that are greater for yes than for no; unless you provide him with this probability, or unless it comes to his mind of his own accord, he will tell you that he believes, but he will not believe it for that.

I now have to prove to you that he should not be condemned if you place him in the categories of beasts.

For, supposing he were an animal without reason, would you not yourselves accuse him of having sinned against her? He said the moon was a world; now, animals only act by natural instinct; therefore it is nature which says it, and not him. To believe that this learned nature which made the world and the moon does not know what it is itself, and that you others who have no knowledge except what you get from it, know it more certainly, that would be very ridiculous. But even if passion makes you renounce your principles, and you suppose that nature does not guide animals, at the very least blush for the worries that the caprices of an animal cause you. In truth, gentlemen, if you met a middle-aged man who was policing an anthill,

What then, venerable pontiffs, will you call the interest you take in the whims of this little animal? Fair, I said. »

As soon as he had finished, a sort of music of applause made the whole room resound, and after all the opinions had been debated for a full quarter of an hour, the king pronounced: “That from now on I would be considered a man,
as such person released, and that the punishment of being drowned would be modified, into a shameful fine (for there is no honorable one in that country), in which fine I would publicly renounce myself for having maintained that the moon was a world, because of the scandal that the novelty of this opinion could have brought into the souls of the weak.

This sentence being pronounced, I was taken from the palace, and out of ignominy I was dressed very magnificently; I am carried on the platform of a magnificent chariot; and dragged as I was by four princes who had been tied to the yoke, this is what they forced me to pronounce at the crossroads of the city:

“People, I declare to you that this moon is not a moon, “but a world; and that this world is not a world, but a moon. This is what the Priests see fit for you to believe. »

After I had shouted the same thing in the five main squares of the city, I saw my lawyer holding out his hand to help me get down. I was very surprised to recognize, when I had considered it, that it was my demon. We spent an hour kissing.

The next day, around nine o'clock, I saw my demon enter, who told me that he came from the palace where Z, one of the queen's young ladies, had asked him to go and find her, and that she She inquired about me, testifying that she still persisted in the intention of keeping my word, that is to say that with all her heart she would follow me, if I wanted to take her with me to the other world.

- What edified me greatly, he continued, was when I recognized that the main motive for his journey was to become a Christian. So I promised him to help his design with all my strength, and to invent for this purpose a machine capable of holding three or four people, in which you will be able to climb together from today. I am going to apply myself seriously to the execution of this enterprise: this is why, in order to entertain you although I will not be with you, here is a book that I leave you. I brought it formerly from my native country; it is entitled: The States and Empires of the Sun, with an addition of the History of the Spark. I still give you this one which I value much more; it is the great Work of Philosophers, that one of the strongest spirits of the sun composed. He proves therein that all things are true, and declares the way of physically uniting the truths of each contradictory, as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be a mountain without valleys, that nothingness is something, and that all things that are are not. But notice that he proves all these incredible paradoxes, without any captious or sophistical reason. When you get bored of reading, you can take a walk, or talk to our host's son; his mind has many charms; what displeases me about him is that he is impious. If he happens to scandalize you, or to cause your faith to falter through some reasoning, do not fail to come and propose it to me immediately, I will resolve the difficulties for you. Another would order you to break company when he wanted to philosophize on these matters: but, as he is extremely vain, I am assured that he would take this flight for a defeat, and he would imagine that our belief would be without reason, if you refused to hear his. Consider living freely.

He left me while finishing this word because it is the farewell, with which in this country, we take leave of someone, like the “hello” or the “Mr. your servant” expressed by this compliment: “Love me, wise, since I love you. »

But he had barely gone out when I began to carefully consider my books, and their boxes, that is to say their covers, which seemed admirable to me for their richness; one was cut from a single diamond, incomparably more brilliant than ours; the second seemed only a monstrous split pearl of that world; but because I don't have any from their printing house, I'm going to explain the process of these two volumes.

When I opened the box, I found inside something of metal almost similar to our clocks, full of I don't know a few small springs and imperceptible machines. It is indeed a book, but it is a miraculous book which has neither leaves nor characters; finally it is a book where to learn, the eyes are useless; we only need the ears. When someone therefore wishes to read, he bends this machine with a large quantity of all kinds of little nerves, then he turns the needle on the chapter he wishes to listen to, and at the same time it comes out as if from the mouth of a a man, or a musical instrument, all the distinct and different gifts which serve, among the great lunars, for the expression of language.

When I have since reflected on this miraculous invention of making books, I am no longer surprised to see that the young men of that country possessed more knowledge, at sixteen and eighteen years of age, than the gray beards of the OUR; because, knowing how to read as well as speak, they are never without reading; in the bedroom, on a walk, in town, on a trip, they can have in their pocket, or hanging on their belt, around thirty of these books of which they only have to pull out a spring to hear just one chapter, or several, if they are in the mood to listen to a whole book: thus you have eternally around you all the great men, both dead and alive, who talk to you in person. This present occupies me for more than an hour; finally, having attached them to me in the form of earrings, I went out for a walk; but I was no sooner at the end of the street than I encountered a fairly large group of sad people.

Four of them carried on their shoulders a kind of coffin wrapped in black. I inquired about one, looking at what this convoy meant, similar to the funeral directors of my country; he replied to me that this wicked W... and named by the people by a flick on the right knee, who had been convicted of envy and ingratitude, had died the previous day, and that Parliament had condemned him there had over twenty years to die a natural death and in his bed, and then to be buried after his death. I found myself laughing at this response; and he questioning me why:

- You surprise me, I said, to say that what is a mark of blessing in our world, like long life, a peaceful death, an honorable burial, serves in this one as a 'an exemplary punishment.

- What! you take the burial for a mark of blessing! this man told me. And by your faith, can you imagine anything more terrible than a corpse walking under the worms with which it is full, at the mercy of the toads which chew its cheeks; finally the plague dressed in the body of a man? Good God! the mere imagination of having, although dead, my face covered with a sheet, and a spade of earth on my mouth makes it difficult for me to breathe! This wretch that you see carrying, besides the infamy of being thrown into a pit, has been condemned to be assisted in his convoy by one hundred and fifty of his friends, and command over them, as punishment for having loved an envious and an ungrateful person, to appear at his funeral with a sad face; and without the Judges having pity, imputing his crimes in part to his lack of wit, they would have ordered people to cry there. Apart from criminals, everyone is burned here: this is also a very decent and reasonable custom, because we believe that, the fire having separated the pure from the impure, the heat brings together by sympathy this natural heat which made the 'soul; and gives it the strength to always rise, and ascend to some star, the land of certain peoples more immaterial than us and more intellectual, because their temperament must respond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit, and that this radical flame, having been further rectified by the subtlety of the elements of this world, it comes to compose one of the bourgeois of this fiery country. everyone is burned here: also it is a very decent and very reasonable custom, because we believe that, the fire having separated the pure from the impure, the heat brings together by sympathy this natural heat which made the soul; and gives it the strength to always rise, and ascend to some star, the land of certain peoples more immaterial than us and more intellectual, because their temperament must respond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit, and that this radical flame, having been further rectified by the subtlety of the elements of this world, it comes to compose one of the bourgeois of this fiery country. everyone is burned here: also it is a very decent and very reasonable custom, because we believe that, the fire having separated the pure from the impure, the heat brings together by sympathy this natural heat which made the soul; and gives it the strength to always rise, and ascend to some star, the land of certain peoples more immaterial than us and more intellectual, because their temperament must respond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit, and that this radical flame, having been further rectified by the subtlety of the elements of this world, it comes to compose one of the bourgeois of this fiery country. heat brings together by sympathy this natural warmth which made the soul; and gives it the strength to always rise, and ascend to some star, the land of certain peoples more immaterial than us and more intellectual, because their temperament must respond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit, and that this radical flame, having been further rectified by the subtlety of the elements of this world, it comes to compose one of the bourgeois of this fiery country. heat brings together by sympathy this natural warmth which made the soul; and gives it the strength to always rise, and ascend to some star, the land of certain peoples more immaterial than us and more intellectual, because their temperament must respond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit, and that this radical flame, having been further rectified by the subtlety of the elements of this world, it comes to compose one of the bourgeois of this fiery country.

“This is not yet our way of burying the most beautiful. When one of our philosophers comes to an age where he feels his mind softening, and the ice of his years numbing the movements of his soul, he assembles his friends for a sumptuous banquet; then, having explained the reasons which make him resolve to take leave of nature, and the little hope there is of adding something to his beautiful actions, we give him either grace, that is to say say he is ordered to die, or he is given a severe command to live. When therefore, by a plurality of voices, his breath has been placed in his hands, he warns his dearest of the day and the place: they purge themselves and abstain from eating for twenty-four hours; then arrived that they are at the house of the wise, and sacrificed that they have to the sun, they enter the room where the generous man awaits them on a state bed.

Everyone wants to kiss him; and when it is in the rank of the one he loves best, after having kissed him tenderly, he leans him on his stomach, and joining his mouth to his mouth, with his right hand he bathes a dagger in the heart. The lover does not detach his lips from those of his lover until he feels him expire; and then he removes the iron from his breast, and closing the wound with his mouth, he swallows his blood, which he sucks until a second succeeds him, then a third, a fourth, and finally the whole company ; and four or five hours later each of them is introduced to a girl of sixteen or seventeen years old and, for three or four days, they enjoy the pleasures of love, they are only nourished by the flesh of the dead, which they are made to eat raw, so that, if from a hundred embraces something can be born, they are assured that it is their friend who lives again. »

I interrupted this speech, telling the person who was giving it to me that these ways of doing things had a lot of resemblance to those of some people in our world; and continued my walk, which was so long that, when I returned, dinner had been ready two hours ago. People ask me why I arrived so late.

- It was not my fault, I replied to the cook who complained about it; I asked several times among the streets what time it was, but I was only answered by opening my mouth, clenching my teeth, and turning my face crooked.

- What! cried the whole company, “don’t you know that they showed you the time that way?

-By faith, I replied, they had exposed their big noses to the sun, before I learned about it.

- It's a convenience, they told me, which allows them to do without a clock; because with their teeth they make a dial so accurate that when they want to tell someone the time, they open their lips, and the shadow of this nose which falls on their teeth, marks like a dial the one whose curiosity is in trouble. Now, so that you know why everyone in this country has a big nose, learn that as soon as the woman has given birth, the matron carries the child to the prior of the seminary; and, precisely at the end of the year, the experts being assembled, If his nose is found shorter than a certain measure held by the trustee, he is considered camus, and placed in the hands of the people who castrate him. You will ask me the cause of this barbarity, and how can it be that we, among whom virginity is a crime, establish continence by force? But know that we do this after having observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is the sign of a spiritual, courteous, affable, generous, liberal man, and that a small one is a sign of the opposite. This is why eunuchs are built from camus, because the republic prefers not to have children, than to have ones similar to them. » because the republic prefers not to have children than to have children like them. » because the republic prefers not to have children than to have children like them. »

He was still talking when I saw a naked man enter. I sat down immediately and covered myself to do him honor, because these are the marks of the greatest respect that one can show to someone in that country. “The kingdom,” he said, “wishes that before returning to your world, you warn the magistrates, because a mathematician has just promised the council, that provided that, having returned to your home , you wanted to build a certain machine that he will teach you, he will attract your globe and join it to this one. » Which I promised not to miss. "

Hey! I beg you, said I to my host, when the other had left, to tell me why this envoy wore shameful parts of bronze in his belt? » What I had seen several times while I was in the cage, without having dared to ask, because I was always surrounded by the queen's daughters, whom I feared to offend if I had in their presence attracted the discussion of such a fatty matter. So he answered me: “The females here, any more than the males, are not ungrateful enough to blush at the sight of him who made them; and virgins are not ashamed to love on us in memory of their mother nature, the only thing that bears her name. Know therefore that the sash with which this man is honored, and on which hangs as a medal the figure of a virile member, is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner. This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. whom I feared to offend if I had in their presence attracted the discussion of such fatty matter. So he answered me: “The females here, any more than the males, are not ungrateful enough to blush at the sight of him who made them; and virgins are not ashamed to love on us in memory of their mother nature, the only thing that bears her name. Know therefore that the sash with which this man is honored, and on which hangs as a medal the figure of a virile member, is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner. This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. whom I feared to offend if I had in their presence attracted the discussion of such fatty matter. So he answered me: “The females here, any more than the males, are not ungrateful enough to blush at the sight of him who made them; and virgins are not ashamed to love on us in memory of their mother nature, the only thing that bears her name. Know therefore that the sash with which this man is honored, and on which hangs as a medal the figure of a virile member, is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner. This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. nor are males so ungrateful as to blush at the sight of him who made them; and virgins are not ashamed to love on us in memory of their mother nature, the only thing that bears her name. Know therefore that the sash with which this man is honored, and on which hangs as a medal the figure of a virile member, is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner. This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. nor are males so ungrateful as to blush at the sight of him who made them; and virgins are not ashamed to love on us in memory of their mother nature, the only thing that bears her name. Know therefore that the sash with which this man is honored, and on which hangs as a medal the figure of a virile member, is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner. This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner.” This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it. is the symbol of the gentleman, and the mark which distinguishes the noble from the commoner.” This paradox seemed so extravagant to me that I couldn't help but laugh at it.

“This custom seems very extraordinary to me,” I replied, “because in our world the mark of nobility is to carry the sword. » But the host without being moved: “O my little man! he exclaimed, what! the great people of your world are enraged to parade an instrument which designates an executioner and which is only forged to destroy us, in short the sworn enemy of all that lives; and to hide, on the contrary, a member without which we would be in the rank of what is not, the Prometheus of each animal, and the tireless repairer of nature's weaknesses!

Unhappy country, where the marks of generation are ignominious, and where those of annihilation are honorable! Yet you call this member of the shameful parts as if there were anything more glorious than giving life, and nothing more infamous than removing it! During all this speech we did not miss dinner; and as soon as we were up, we went into the garden to get some fresh air.

The occurrences and the beauty of the place entertained us for some time; but as the noblest desire with which I was then tickled was to convert to our religion a soul so highly elevated above the vulgar, I exhorted him a thousand times not to bog down with matter this beautiful genius whose Heaven had provided, that he would draw from the press of animals this spirit capable of the vision of God; finally, that he seriously considered seeing his immortality one day unite with pleasure rather than with pain.

" What! he replied to me, bursting out laughing, “you esteem your immortal soul privately with that of beasts? Without lying, my great friend, your pride is very insolent! And from where do you argue, I ask you, this immortality to the detriment of that of beasts? Could it be because we are gifted with reasoning and not them? In the first place, I deny it to you, and I will prove to you when it pleases you, that they reason like us. But even if it were true that reason had been distributed to us as a prerogative and that it was a privilege reserved only for our species, does this mean that God must enrich man with immortality? , because he has already lavished reason on him? I must therefore, on this account, give this poor man a pistole today because I gave him a crown yesterday? You yourself see clearly the falsity of this consequence, and that on the contrary, if I am just, rather than giving a pistole to this one I must give a crown to the other, since he has nothing touched me. We must conclude from this, O my dear companion, that God, even a thousand times more just than us, will not have paid everything to some in order to leave nothing to others. To cite the example of the elders of your world, who take with them almost all the goods of the house, is a weakness of the fathers who, wanting to perpetuate their name, feared that it would not be lost or lost. lost in poverty. But God, who is not capable of error, was careful not to commit such a great one, and then, having in the eternity of God neither before nor after, the younger ones with him are not younger than the elders. »

I do not deny that this reasoning shook me.

“You will allow me,” I said to him, “to break down on this matter, because I do not feel strong enough to answer you; I am going to seek the solution to this difficulty from our common tutor. »

I immediately went up, without waiting for him to reply, to the room of this clever demon, and, all preambles aside, I proposed to him what had just been objected to me concerning the immortality of our souls, and here is to which he replied:

“My son, this young fool passionate about persuading you that it is not probable that the soul of man is immortal because God would be unjust, He who calls himself the common Father of all beings, to have advantaged one species and generally abandoned all the others to nothingness or misfortune; these reasons, in truth, shine a little from afar. And whatever I could ask him as he knows that what is just to us is also just to God? as he knows that God is measured by our yardstick? as he knows that our laws and our customs, which were only instituted to remedy our disorders, also serve to cut away the pieces of God's omnipotence? I will pass over all these things, with all that the Fathers of your Church have so divinely answered on this matter,

"You know, O my son, that from the earth when a tree is made, from a tree a swine, from a swine a man, can we not believe, since all beings in nature tend to more perfect, that they aspire to become men, this essence being the completion of the most beautiful mixture, and the best imagined that is in the world, because it is the only one which makes the link between brutal life and the angelic . That these metamorphoses happen, one must be pedantic to deny it. Do we not see that a plum tree, through the heat of its germ, as through a mouth, sucks and digests the turf that surrounds it; that a swine devours this fruit and makes it become a part of itself; and that a man eating the swine, warms this dead flesh, joins it to himself, and revives this animal under a nobler species. So this great pontiff that you see with the miter on his head was perhaps sixty years ago, a tuft of grass in my garden. God then, being the common Father of all his creatures, when he would love them all equally, is it not very credible that after this metempsychosis more reasoned than Pythagorean, everything that feels, everything that vegetates finally, after all matter has passed through man, then this great day of Judgment will arrive where the prophets lead the secrets of their philosophy. » I went back down to the garden very satisfied and began to recite to my companion what our master had taught me, when the physiognomist arrived to take us to the repairs and the dormitory. a clump of grass in my garden. God then, being the common Father of all his creatures, when he loved them all equally, is it not quite credible that after this metempsychosis more reasoned than Pythagorean, everything that feels, everything that vegetates finally, after all matter has passed through man, then this great day of Judgment will arrive where the prophets lead the secrets of their philosophy. » I went back down to the garden very satisfied and began to recite to my companion what our master had taught me, when the physiognomist arrived to take us to the repairs and the dormitory. a clump of grass in my garden. God then, being the common Father of all his creatures, when he loved them all equally, is it not quite credible that after this metempsychosis more reasoned than Pythagorean, everything that feels, everything that vegetates finally, after all matter has passed through man, then this great day of Judgment will arrive where the prophets lead the secrets of their philosophy. » I went back down to the garden very satisfied and began to recite to my companion what our master had taught me, when the physiognomist arrived to take us to the repairs and the dormitory. by this metempsychosis more reasoned than Pythagorean, everything that smells, everything that vegetates finally, after all matter has passed through man, then this great day of Judgment will arrive where the prophets lead the secrets of their philosophy . » I went back down to the garden very satisfied and began to recite to my companion what our master had taught me, when the physiognomist arrived to take us to the repairs and the dormitory. by this metempsychosis more reasoned than Pythagorean, everything that smells, everything that vegetates finally, after all matter has passed through man, then this great day of Judgment will arrive where the prophets lead the secrets of their philosophy . » I went back down to the garden very satisfied and began to recite to my companion what our master had taught me, when the physiognomist arrived to take us to the repairs and the dormitory.

The next day as soon as I was awake I went to get my antagonist up. “It is as great a miracle,” I said as I approached him, “to find a strong spirit like yours buried in sleep, as to see fire without action. » He suffered from this bad compliment. “But,” he exclaimed with a passionate anger of love, “will you never free your mouth as well as your reason from these fabulous terms of miracles? Know that these names defame the name of philosopher, and that as the wise man sees nothing in the world that he does not conceive and that he does not judge can be conceived, he must abhor all these expressions of miracles, prodigies and unnatural events that stupid people have invented to excuse the weaknesses of their understanding. »

I then thought I was obliged in conscience to speak up to disabuse him. “Still,” I replied, “the fact that you don’t believe in miracles is still a matter of concern, and a lot of them. I saw it with my own eyes. I have known more than twenty patients miraculously cured. - You say, he interrupted, that these people were cured by a miracle, but you do not know that the force of the imagination is capable of curing all the illnesses that you attribute to the supernatural, because of a a certain natural balm spread in our bodies containing all the qualities contrary to all those of each evil which attacks us: which is done when our imagination, alerted by pain, seeks in this place the specific remedy it brings to the venom. This is where it comes from that a skilful doctor in our world advises the patient to rather take an ignorant doctor who will nevertheless be considered very skilful, than a very skilful one who will be considered ignorant, because he imagines himself that our imagination working for our health, provided it was aided by remedies, was capable of curing us; but that the most powerful were too weak, when the imagination did not apply them.

“Are you surprised that the first men of your world lived for so many centuries without knowing any knowledge of medicine? no, and what in your opinion could be the cause, if not their nature still in its strength and this universal balm which is not yet dissipated by the drugs with which your doctors consume you? To return to convalescence, they only had to strongly wish and imagine that they would be cured. So their vigorous fancy, plunging themselves into this vital oil, drawing in the elixir, and applying the active to the passive, they found themselves almost in the blink of an eye as healthy as before: which despite the depravity of nature still happens today, although a little rarely in truth; but the popular attributes it to a miracle. For my part, I don't believe it at all, and I base myself on the fact that it is easier for all these doctors to be wrong than it is easy to do; because I ask them: this feverish person, who has just been cured, very much wished, as is probable, during his illness to see himself in health again, he made wishes, and it was necessarily necessary that he die, or whether he remains in his illness, or whether he recovers; if he had died, one would have said that God wanted to reward him for his pains; or will perhaps mischievously equivocate by saying that, according to the prayers of the patient, he cured him of all these ills; if he had remained in his infirmity, it would have been said that he did not have faith; but because he is healed, it is an entirely visible miracle. Is it not much more probable that his fancy, excited by the violent desires of health, carried out his operation? Because I want him to survive. Why cry miracle, since we see many people who had vowed to perish miserably with their vows?

-But at the very least, I replied, if what you say about this balm is true, it is a mark of the reasonableness of our soul, since without using the instruments of our reason, nor relying on with the help of our will, she herself applies the active to the passive as if she were outside of us. Now if, being separated from us, it is reasonable, it must necessarily be spiritual; and if you confess it to be spiritual, I conclude that it is immortal, since death only occurs in the animal through the change of forms of which matter alone is capable. »

This young man then having sat down on his bed, and having made me sit down, spoke approximately as follows: “As for the soul of beasts which is corporeal, I am not surprised that it die, seeing that it is only possible a harmony of the four qualities, a strength of blood, a proportion of well-coordinated organs; but I am very surprised that ours, intellectual, incorporeal and immortal, is forced to leave our home by the same cause that causes that of an ox to perish. Has she made a pact with our body that, when it has a sword in the heart, a lead bullet in the brain, a muskete through the body, to immediately abandon its holed house? She would still often fail to fulfill her contract, for some die of a wound from which others escape; each soul would have to have made a particular bargain with its body. Without lying, she who has so much wit, as we are led to believe, is very angry to leave a house when she sees that from there her apartment will be marked as hell. And if this soul were spiritual, and in itself reasonable, as they say, it was as capable of intelligence when it is separated from our mass, as when it is clothed with it, why are the born blind, with all the beautiful advantages of this intellectual soul, could they not imagine what it is to see? Why can't the deaf hear? Is it because they are not yet deprived of all their senses by death? What! So I won't be able to use my right hand because I have a left? They cite, to prove that it cannot act without the senses, even though it is spiritual, the example of a painter who cannot make a painting if he does not have brushes. Yes, but this does not mean that the painter who cannot work without a brush, when, with his brushes, he will have lost his colors, his pencils, his canvases, and his shells, that then he will be able to do it better TO DO. Quite the contrary! The more obstacles stand in the way of his work, the more impossible it will be for him to paint. However, they want this soul which can only act imperfectly, because of the loss of one of its tools in the course of life, to then be able to work with perfection, when after our death she will have lost them all. If they come to me again and again that she doesn't need these instruments to carry out her duties, I will tell them again that we must whip the Fifteen-Twenties, who pretend not to see a thing. - But, I said to him, if our soul died, as I see clearly that you want to conclude, the resurrection that we await would therefore only be a chimera, because God would have to recreate it, and that would not be resurrection. » He interrupted me with a nod: “Hey! by your faith! he cried, “who rocked you with this Donkey Skin? What! YOU? What! Me? What! my servant resurrect?

- It is not, I replied, a tale made up for pleasure; it is an indubitable truth that I will prove to you. - And I, he said, I will prove you the opposite: If they come to me again and again that she doesn't need these instruments to carry out her duties, I will tell them again that we must whip the Fifteen-Twenties, who pretend not to see a thing. - But, I said to him, if our soul died, as I see clearly that you want to conclude, the resurrection that we await would therefore only be a chimera, because God would have to recreate it, and that would not be resurrection. » He interrupted me with a nod: “Hey! by your faith! he cried, “who rocked you with this Donkey Skin? What! YOU? What! Me? What! my servant resurrect?

- It is not, I replied, a tale made up for pleasure; it is an indubitable truth that I will prove to you. - And I, he said, I will prove you the opposite: If they come to me again and again that she doesn't need these instruments to carry out her duties, I will tell them again that we must whip the Fifteen-Twenties, who pretend not to see a thing. - But, I said to him, if our soul died, as I see clearly that you want to conclude, the resurrection that we await would therefore only be a chimera, because God would have to recreate it, and that would not be resurrection. » He interrupted me with a nod: “Hey! by your faith! he cried, “who rocked you with this Donkey Skin? What! YOU? What! Me? What! my servant resurrect?

- It is not, I replied, a tale made up for pleasure; it is an indubitable truth that I will prove to you. - And I, he said, I will prove you the opposite:
“To begin, then, I suppose you were eating a Mohammedan; you convert it, therefore, into your substance! Is it not true that this Mohammedan, when digested, changes partly into flesh, partly into blood, partly into semen? You will kiss your wife and from the semen, taken entirely from the Mohammedan corpse, you will cast into the mold a beautiful little Christian. I ask: will the Mohammedan have his body? If the earth gives him back, the little Christian will not have his own, since he is entirely only a part of that of the Mohammedan. If you tell me that the little Christian will have his own, God will therefore steal from the Mohammedan what the little Christian only received from that of the Mohammedan. So it is absolutely necessary that one or the other lacks body!

“You will perhaps answer me that God will reproduce matter to supply those who do not have enough? Yes, but another difficulty stops us, which is that the damned Mohammedan is resurrected, and God provides him with a brand new body because of his own which the Christian has stolen from him, like the body alone, like the soul alone, does not make man, but both joined in a single subject, and as the body and the soul are as integral parts of man as the other, if God kneads to this Mohammedan body other than his own, it is no longer the same individual. Thus God damns another man than he who deserved hell; thus this body has been riotous, this body has criminally abused all its senses, and God, to punish this body, throws another fire, which is virgin, who is pure, and who has never lent his organs to the operation of the slightest crime. And what would still be very ridiculous is that this body would have deserved hell and paradise altogether, because, as a Mohammedan, it must be damned; as a Christian he must be saved; so that God cannot put him in paradise unless he is unjust, rewarding with glory the damnation he had deserved as a Mohammedan, and cannot throw him into hell unless he is also unjust, rewarding with death eternal the beatitude which he had deserved as a Christian.

It is therefore necessary, if he wants to be equitable, that he eternally damn and save this man. » it is that this body would have deserved hell and paradise together, because, as a Mohammedan, it must be damned; as a Christian he must be saved; so that God cannot put him in paradise unless he is unjust, rewarding with glory the damnation he had deserved as a Mohammedan, and cannot throw him into hell unless he is also unjust, rewarding with death eternal the beatitude which he had deserved as a Christian. It is therefore necessary, if he wants to be equitable, that he eternally damn and save this man. » it is that this body would have deserved hell and paradise together, because, as a Mohammedan, it must be damned; as a Christian he must be saved; so that God cannot put him in paradise unless he is unjust, rewarding with glory the damnation he had deserved as a Mohammedan, and cannot throw him into hell unless he is also unjust, rewarding with death eternal the beatitude which he had deserved as a Christian. It is therefore necessary, if he wants to be equitable, that he eternally damn and save this man. » and cannot cast him into hell unless he is also unjust, rewarding with eternal death the beatitude he had deserved as a Christian. It is therefore necessary, if he wants to be equitable, that he eternally damn and save this man.

» and cannot cast him into hell unless he is also unjust, rewarding with eternal death the beatitude he had deserved as a Christian. It is therefore necessary, if he wants to be equitable, that he eternally damn and save this man. »

Then I spoke: “I have nothing to respond,” I replied, “to your sophistic arguments against the resurrection, as long as God said it, God who cannot lie. - Don’t go so quickly, he replied, you are already at “God said so”; we must first prove that there is a God, because for my part I flatly deny it to you.

I will not amuse myself, I told him, by reciting to you the obvious demonstrations which philosophers have used to establish it: I would have to repeat everything that reasonable men have ever written. I only ask you what disadvantage you incur in believing it; I am quite assured that you cannot give me any excuse. Since it is therefore impossible to derive anything but utility from it, why do you not convince yourself of this? For if there is a God, apart from the fact that by not believing him, you will have miscalculated, you will have disobeyed the precept which commands you to believe in him; and if there are none, you will be no better off than us!

-Yes, he replied, I will be better off than you, because if there is none, you and I will be two players away; but, on the contrary, if there is, I could not have offended something that I believed was not wrong, since, to sin, one must either know it or want it. Don't you see that a man, even if he is not very wise, would not be upset if a picker had insulted him, if the picker had thought not to do it, if he had taken him for someone else or if it was the wine that made him speak?

All the more reason will God, all unshakeable, be angry with us for not having known him, since it is He Himself who has refused us the means of knowing him. But, by your faith, my little animal, if the belief in God were so necessary to us, finally, if it mattered to us from eternity, would not God himself have infused us all with lights as clear as the sun which hides itself from no one?

Because to pretend that he wanted to play wink among the men, to do like children "Doggie, there he is", that is to say: sometimes masking himself, sometimes unmasking himself, disguising himself from a few to manifest oneself to others, it is to forge a God who is either stupid or mischievous, seeing that if it was through the force of my genius that I came to know him, it is he who deserves and not me, 'as much as he could give me a soul or the imbecile organs which would have made me misunderstand him. And if, on the contrary, he had given me a mind incapable of understanding him, it would not have been my fault, but his, since he could give me one so vividly that I would have understood it. »These diabolical and ridiculous opinions gave me a shudder throughout my body; I then began to contemplate this man with a little more attention and I was amazed to notice something terrible on his face that I had not yet seen: his eyes were small and sunken, his complexion swarthy. , big mouth, hairy chin, black nails. “O God! I immediately thought to myself, this wretch is reprobate from this life and it is even possible that he is the Antichrist of whom there is so much talk in our world. » »These diabolical and ridiculous opinions gave me a shudder throughout my body; I then began to contemplate this man with a little more attention and I was amazed to notice something terrible on his face that I had not yet seen: his eyes were small and sunken, his complexion swarthy. , big mouth, hairy chin, black nails. “O God! I immediately thought to myself, this wretch is reprobate from this life and it is even possible that he is the Antichrist of whom there is so much talk in our world. » »These diabolical and ridiculous opinions gave me a shudder throughout my body; I then began to contemplate this man with a little more attention and I was amazed to notice something terrible on his face that I had not yet seen: his eyes were small and sunken, his complexion swarthy. , big mouth, hairy chin, black nails. “O God! I immediately thought to myself, this wretch is reprobate from this life and it is even possible that he is the Antichrist of whom there is so much talk in our world. » this wretch is reprobate from this life and it is even possible that he is the Antichrist of whom there is so much talk in our world. » this wretch is reprobate from this life and it is even possible that he is the Antichrist of whom there is so much talk in our world. »

However, I did not want to reveal my thoughts to him because of the esteem I had for his mind, and truly the favorable aspects with which nature had viewed his cradle had made me conceive some friendship for him. However, I could not contain myself so well that I did not burst out with imprecations which threatened him with a bad end. But he, returning to my anger: “Yes,” he cried, “by death…” I don’t know what he was planning for me to say, because, in the meantime, there was a knock at the door. from our room and I see a tall, hairy black man enter. He approached us and seizing the blasphemer by force of his body, he removed him through the chimney.

The pity that I felt for the fate of this unfortunate man obliged me to embrace him to rescue him from the claws of the Ethiopian, but he was so robust that he carried us both away, so that in a moment we here it is in the nude. It was no longer love of my neighbor that compelled me to hold him tightly, but the fear of falling. After spending I don't know how many days piercing the sky, without knowing what I would become, I recognized that I was approaching our world. Already I distinguished Asia from Europe and Europe from Africa, already even my eyes, by my abasement, could not bend beyond Italy, when the heart told me that this devil undoubtedly carried away my host in hell, in body and soul, and that was why he passed through our land, because hell is in its center. However, I forgot this reflection and everything that had happened to me since the devil was our car, with the fright that the sight of a mountain all on fire gave me that I almost touched. The object of this burning spectacle made me cry “Jesus Maria”. I had barely finished the last letter when I found myself lying on the heather at the edge of a small hill, and two or three pastors around me who were reciting litanies and speaking Italian to me. " Oh! I cried then, “Praise be to God! So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. However, I forgot this reflection and everything that had happened to me since the devil was our car, with the fright that the sight of a mountain all on fire gave me that I almost touched. The object of this burning spectacle made me cry “Jesus Maria”. I had barely finished the last letter when I found myself lying on the heather at the edge of a small hill, and two or three pastors around me who were reciting litanies and speaking Italian to me. " Oh! I cried then, “Praise be to God! So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. However, I forgot this reflection and everything that had happened to me since the devil was our car, with the fright that the sight of a mountain all on fire gave me that I almost touched. The object of this burning spectacle made me cry “Jesus Maria”. I had barely finished the last letter when I found myself lying on the heather at the edge of a small hill, and two or three pastors around me who were reciting litanies and speaking Italian to me. " Oh! I cried then, “Praise be to God! So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. The object of this burning spectacle made me cry “Jesus Maria”. I had barely finished the last letter when I found myself lying on the heather at the edge of a small hill, and two or three pastors around me who were reciting litanies and speaking Italian to me. "

Oh! I cried then, “Praise be to God! So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. The object of this burning spectacle made me cry “Jesus Maria”. I had barely finished the last letter when I found myself lying on the heather at the edge of a small hill, and two or three pastors around me who were reciting litanies and speaking Italian to me. " Oh! I cried then, “Praise be to God! So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me. So I finally found Christians in the moon world. Hey! tell me, my friends, in which province of your world am I now? - In Italy, they answered me.

-How, I interrupted, is there an Italy also in the world of the moon? » I had still thought so little about this accident that I had not yet noticed that they were speaking Italian to me and that I was responding in the same way.

So when I was completely disillusioned and nothing stopped me from knowing that I was back in this world, I let myself be led wherever these peasants wanted to take me. But I had not yet arrived at the gates of... when all the dogs of the city came rushing at me, and without fear throwing me into a house where I put a bar between us, I was infallibly swallowed up.

A quarter of an hour later, as I was resting in this lodging, we hear around us a sabbath of all the dogs, I believe, of the kingdom; we saw there from the mastiff to the bichon, howling with more terrible fury than if they had celebrated the birthday of their first Adam.

This adventure caused no little admiration to all the people who saw it; but as soon as I had awakened my reveries on this circumstance, I immediately imagined that these animals were fierce against me because of the world from which I came;

“for,” I said to myself, “as they are accustomed to barking at the moon for the pain it causes them from so far away, no doubt they wanted to throw it at me because I feel the moon, whose the smell annoys them. »

To purge myself of this bad air, I exposed myself naked to the sun on a terrace. I languished there for four or five hours, at the end of which I went down, and the dogs, no longer feeling the influence which had made me their enemy, each returned home.

I inquired at the port when a ship would leave for France, and when I was embarked, my mind was strained only to ruminate on the wonders of my voyage. I admired a thousand times the Providence of God who had withdrawn these men, naturally impious, to a place where they could not corrupt his beloved, and had punished them for their pride by abandoning them to their own self-importance. Also I have no doubt that he has delayed until now from sending them to preach the Gospel, because he knew that they would abuse it and that this resistance would only serve to make them deserve a harsher punishment. in the other world.

---------------------

Finally our ship appeared at the harbor of Toulon; and first of all, after having given thanks to the winds and the stars, for the happiness of the journey, everyone kissed each other in the port, and said farewell. For me, because in the world of the moon from which I arrived, money is included in the number of tales told at pleasure, and because I had lost my memory of it, the pilot was content, for the voyage , of the honor of having carried in his ship a man who fell from the sky. Nothing therefore stopped us from going as far as Toulouse, to visit one of my friends. I longed to see him, for the joy I hoped to cause him by the story of my adventures. I will not be boring to recite to you everything that happened to me on the way; I grew tired, I rested, I was thirsty, I was hungry, I drank, I ate among twenty or thirty dogs who made up his pack. Although I was in very bad shape, thin, and tanned, he still recognized me;

Transported with delight, he jumped on my neck, and, after having kissed me more than a hundred times, all trembling with ease, he took me to his castle, where as soon as the tears had given way to the voice: “Finally , he cried, we live and we will live, despite all the accidents with which Fortune has tossed our lives. But, good gods! So it is not true the rumor that went around that you had been burned in Canada, in this great fireworks display of which you were the inventor? And yet two or three credible people, among those who brought me the sad news, swore to me that they had seen and touched this wooden bird in which you were delighted. They told me that unfortunately you had entered it at the moment when it was set on fire, and that the speed of the rockets which burned all around, took you so high that the audience lost sight of you. And you were, as they protested, consumed in such a way that when the machine fell, very little of your ashes was found. - These ashes, I replied, sir, were therefore those of the artifice itself, because the fire did not damage me in any way. The artifice was attached outside, and its heat therefore could not inconvenience me.

“Now you will know that as soon as the saltpeter was exhausted, the impetuous rise of the rockets no longer supported the machine, it fell to the ground. I saw her fall; and when I thought I was tumbling with her, I was very surprised to feel that I was going towards the moon. But you have to explain the cause of an effect that you would take for a miracle.

“On the day of this accident, because of certain bruises, I rubbed marrow all over my body; but because we were behind, and the moon at that time attracts the marrow, it so greedily absorbed that with which my flesh was imbued, mainly when my box had arrived above the middle region, where there was no of clouds interposed to weaken their influence, that my body followed this attraction. And I protest to you that she continued to suck me for so long, that in the end I approached this world that we call here the moon. »

I then told him at length, all the particularities of my trip; and M. de Colignac, delighted to hear such extraordinary things, implored me to write them down. I, who love rest, resisted for a long time, because of the visits that this publication was likely to attract me. However, ashamed of the reproach with which he reproached me for not paying enough attention to his prayers, I finally resolved to satisfy him.

So I put pen in hand, and as I completed a notebook, impatient for my glory which itched more than his, he went to Toulouse to advocate it in the most beautiful assemblies. As he had a reputation as one of the strongest geniuses of his century, my praises, of which he seemed to tirelessly echo, made me known to everyone. The engravers, without having seen me, had already engraved my image; and the city resounded, in every crossroads, with the hoarse throats of the peddlers who shouted at the top of their lungs: _Here is the portrait of the author of the States and Empires of the Moon._ Among the people who read my book, there were many ignorant people who leafed through it. To counterfeit the spirits of the great flock, they applauded like the others, until they clapped their hands at each word, for fear of being misunderstood, and all joyful they exclaimed: “How good he is! » in places they couldn't hear. But superstition disguised as remorse, whose teeth are very sharp, under the shirt of a fool, gnawed at their hearts so much that they preferred to renounce the reputation of philosopher (which was also an ill-fitting garment for them). ), than to answer for it on the day of judgment.

So here is the medal reversed, it is who will sing the palinody. The work that they had made so much of is nothing more than a potpourri of ridiculous tales, a pile of disjointed scraps, a repertoire of Donkey Skin to lull children; and one does not only know the syntax which condemns the author to bring a candle to Saint Mathurin.

This contrast of opinions between the clever and the idiots increased his credit. Shortly after, the manuscript copies were sold secretly; everyone, and those outside the world, that is to say from the gentleman to the monk, bought this piece: even the women took sides. Each family divided, and the interests of this quarrel went so far that the city was divided into two factions, the lunar and the anti-lunar.

We were in the skirmishes of the battle, when one morning I saw nine or ten long-robed beards enter Colignac's room, who first spoke to him thus: "Sir, you know that there is not one of us in this company which is not your ally, your relative or your friend, and that consequently, nothing shameful can happen to you that does not reflect on our front. However, we have good information that you are removing a sorcerer from your castle. - A wizard! cried Colignac; O gods! name it!

I put it in your hands. But we must be careful that this is not slander. - Hey what! sir, interrupted one of the most venerable, is there any parliament as knowledgeable in sorcerers as ours? Finally, my dear nephew, so as not to keep you in suspense any further, the sorcerer we accuse is the author of _States and Empires of the Moon_; he cannot deny that he is the greatest magician in Europe, after what he himself admits. How! to have ascended to the moon, can that be, without the intervention of... I would not dare to name the beast; because finally, tell me, what was he going to do at the moon? - Nice request! interrupted another; he was going to attend the Sabbath which was held there possible that day: and, in fact you see that he had acquaintance with the demon of Socrates.

After that, do you wonder that the devil, as he says, brought it back into this world? can this be possible, without the intervention of... I would not dare to name the beast; because finally, tell me, what was he going to do at the moon? - Nice request! interrupted another; he was going to attend the Sabbath which was held there possible that day: and, in fact you see that he had acquaintance with the demon of Socrates. After that, do you wonder that the devil, as he says, brought it back into this world? can this be possible, without the intervention of... I would not dare to name the beast; because finally, tell me, what was he going to do at the moon? - Nice request! interrupted another; he was going to attend the Sabbath which was held there possible that day: and, in fact you see that he had acquaintance with the demon of Socrates. After that, do you wonder that the devil, as he says, brought it back into this world?

But whatever it may be, you see, so many moons, so many chimneys, so many journeys by air, are worth nothing, I mean nothing at all; and between you and me (at these words, he brought his mouth to her ear) I have never seen a sorcerer who had not had dealings with the moon. »

They remained silent after these good opinions; and Colignac remained so amazed at their shared extravagance that he could never say a word. What a venerable bittern, who had not yet spoken, saw: “You see,” said he, “our kinsman, we know where the nail is; the magician is a person you like; but fear nothing; for your consideration, things will go smoothly; you just have to put it in our hands; and for the love of you, we pledge our honor to burn it without scandal. »

At these words, Colignac, although his fists were in his sides, could not contain himself; a burst of laughter seized him, which offended his parents not a little; so that it was not in his power to respond to any point of their harangue except with ha aaa, or ho ooo; So much so that our very scandalized gentlemen left, I would say with their brief shame, if it had not lasted until Toulouse. When they had left, I pulled Colignac into his study, where as soon as I had closed the door on us: “Count,” I said to him, “these long-haired ambassadors seem to me like hairy comets; I fear that the noise with which they erupted is the thunder of lightning which shakes to fall. Although their accusation is ridiculous, and possibly an effect of their stupidity, I would not be any less dead, when a dozen clever people who saw me being grilled would say that my judges are fools. All the arguments with which they would prove my innocence would not revive me; and my ashes would remain just as cold in a tomb as in the road. This is why, except for your better opinion, I would be very happy to consent to the temptation which suggests that I leave them in this province only my portrait; because I would be doubly angry to die for something in which I hardly believe. » Colignac almost didn't have the patience to wait until he had finished before responding. At first, however, he mocked me; but when he saw that I was taking him seriously:

“Ha! by death! he cried with an alarmed face, “no one will touch you on the edge of the mantle, unless I, my friends, my vassals, and all who regard me shall not perish before. My house is such that it cannot be broken into without a cannon; it is very advantageous in position, and well flanked. But I'm crazy to guard against thunders of parchment. They are, I replied, sometimes more to be feared than those of the middle region. »

From there onwards we spoke only of rejoicing. One day we hunted, another we went for a walk, sometimes we received visitors, and sometimes we returned them; finally we always left each entertainment, before this entertainment could bore us.
The Marquis de Cussan, neighbor of Colignac, a man who knows good things, was usually with us, and we with him; and to make the places of our stay even more pleasant by this change, we went from Colignac to Cussan, and returned from Cussan to Colignac. The innocent pleasures of which the body is capable were only the smallest part. Of all those that the mind can find in study and conversation, we lacked none; and our libraries, united like our minds, called all the learned into our society. We mixed reading with the interview; the maintenance of good food, the former of fishing or hunting, of walks; and in a word, we enjoyed, so to speak, both ourselves and all that nature has produced that is sweetest for our use,

However, my reputation, contrary to my rest, spread throughout the surrounding villages and even the towns of the province. Everyone, attracted by this noise, took the pretext of coming to see the lord to see the sorcerer. When I left the Castle, not only the children and women, but also the men, looked at me like the Beast, especially the pastor of Colignac, who through malice or ignorance was secretly the greatest of my enemies. This seemingly simple man, whose base and naive spirit was infinitely pleasant in its naivety, was indeed very wicked; he was vindictive to the point of rage; slanderer, as something more than a Norman; and so chicaner, that the love of chicanery was his dominant passion. Having long pleaded against his lord, whom he hated all the more because he had found it firm against his attacks, he feared resentment, and, to avoid it, had wanted to exchange his benefit. But whether he had changed his plans, or whether he had only postponed to take revenge on Colignac, in my person, during the stay he would make in his lands, he tried to persuade the contrary, although some The trips he often made to Toulouse gave some suspicion of this. There he told a thousand ridiculous tales of my enchantments; and the voice of this clever man, joining that of the simple and ignorant, brought my name into execration. or only that he had postponed to take revenge on Colignac, in my person, during the stay he would make in his lands, he tried to persuade the contrary, although the trips he very often made to Toulouse in gave some suspicion. There he told a thousand ridiculous tales of my enchantments; and the voice of this clever man, joining that of the simple and ignorant, brought my name into execration. or only that he had postponed to take revenge on Colignac, in my person, during the stay he would make in his lands, he tried to persuade the contrary, although the trips he very often made to Toulouse in gave some suspicion. There he told a thousand ridiculous tales of my enchantments; and the voice of this clever man, joining that of the simple and ignorant, brought my name into execration.

They only spoke of me as a new Agrippa, and we learned that they had even informed against me in pursuit of the priest, who had been tutor to his children. We learned of this from several people who were in the interests of Colignac and the Marquis; and although the crude mood of an entire country was a subject of astonishment and laughter to us, I was still secretly frightened by it, when I considered more closely the unfortunate consequences that this error could have.

My good genius undoubtedly inspired me with this fear, it illuminated my reason with all these lights to make me see the precipice into which I was going to fall; and not content with thus tacitly advising me, wanted to declare more expressly in my favor.

One of the most unfortunate nights ever, having followed one of the most pleasant days we had had in Colignac, I got up as soon as dawn; and to dissipate the anxieties and the clouds with which my mind was still offended, I entered the garden, where the greenery, the flowers and the fruits, the artifice and nature, enchanted the soul and the eyes, when in At the same moment I saw the marquis walking alone in a large avenue, which cut the floor in two. He had a slow walk and a thoughtful face. I was very surprised to see him, contrary to his custom, so early; This made me hasten my approach to ask him the cause. He replied to me that some unfortunate dreams which had plagued him had forced him to come earlier than usual, heal an evil that the shadow had caused him. I confessed to him that such trouble had prevented me from sleeping, and I was going to tell him the details; but as I opened my mouth, we saw, at the corner of a fence which crossed ours, Colignac walking with long steps. From so far away that he saw us:

“You see,” he cried, “a man who has just escaped the most frightful visions the spectacle of which is capable of making the brain spin. I had barely had time to put on my doublet when I came down to tell you about it; but neither of you were in your rooms anymore. That's why I ran to the garden, suspecting that you would be there. » In fact the poor gentleman was almost out of breath. As soon as he had taken it back, we urged him to unload something, which although often very light, still weighs a lot. “It is my design,” he replied; but first let us sit down. »

A jasmine cabinet introduced us all about freshness and seating; we retired there, and, each having put themselves at their ease, Colignac continued thus: “You will know that after two or three sums during which I found myself in a lot of embarrassment, in that which I made approximately the twilight of dawn, it seemed to me that my dear host there was between the marquis and me, and that we were holding him tightly, when a large black monster which was only of heads, we came suddenly to snatch. I even think he was going to throw it into a lit pyre nearby, because he was already throwing it on the flames; but a girl like that of the Muses, called Euterpe, threw herself at the knees of a lady whom she
conspired to save him (this lady had the bearing and markings that our painters use to represent nature). She had barely had the leisure to listen to the prayers of her servant when, in complete astonishment, she said: “Alas! she shouted, he's a friend of mine! » Immediately she brought a kind of blowpipe to her mouth, and blew so much through the canal, under the feet of my dear host, that she made him rise into the sky, and protected him from the cruelties of the monster with a hundred heads. I shouted at him for a long time, it seems to me, and begged him not to go away without me, when an infinity of little round angels who called themselves children of the dawn, took me away the same year. country, towards which he seemed to be flying, and made me see things that I will not tell you, because I consider them too ridiculous. » We begged him not to stop telling us them. “I imagined,” he continued, “being in the sun, and that the sun was a world.

I wouldn't even be disillusioned about it yet, if not for the neighing of my beard, which woke me up and made me see that I was in my bed. »

When the marquis learned that Colignac had finished: “And you,” he said, “Mr. Dyrcona, what was yours?” - As for mine, I replied, although it is not vulgar, I count it as nothing. I am bilious, melancholy; this is the reason why since I was born, my dreams have constantly represented caves and fire.

“In my most beautiful age it seemed to me while sleeping that, having become light, I was lifting myself up to the clouds, to avoid the rage of a troop of assassins who were pursuing me; but that at the end of a very long and very vigorous effort, he always encountered some wall, after having flown over many others, at the foot of which, overwhelmed with work, I did not fail to be arrested . Or if I imagined myself taking my flight straight up, even though I had swum with my arms for a long time in the sky, I still found myself always close to the ground; and against all reason, without it seeming to me to have become either weary or heavy, my enemies only stretched out their hand to seize me by the foot and draw me to them. I have only had dreams similar to this one, since I have known myself, except that this night after having stolen for a long time as usual, and having escaped several times from my persecutors, it seemed to me that in the end I lost sight of them, and that, in a free and brightly lit sky, my body relieved of all gravity, I continued my journey to a palace, where heat and light combine. I would no doubt have noticed many other things there; but my agitation to fly had brought me so close to the edge of the bed that I fell into the alley, my bare stomach on the plaster, and my eyes wide open. This, gentlemen, is my dream throughout, that I consider only a pure effect of these two qualities which predominate in my temperament; because although this one differs a little from those that always happen to me, in that I flew up to the sky without falling, I attribute this change to the blood, which spread through the joy of our pleasures of yesterday, wider than usual, penetrated the melancholy , and by lifting it took away this gravity which made me fall back. But after all it is a Science where there is much to guess.

-My faith, continued Cussan, you are right, it is a potpourri of all the things we have thought about while awake, a monstrous chimera, an assemblage of confused species that fantasy, which in sleep does not is more guided by reason, presents to us without order, and yet by twisting them we believe we are grasping the true meaning, and drawing from dreams like oracles a science of the future; but by my faith I found no other conformity in it, except that dreams like oracles cannot be heard. However, judge by mine, which is not extraordinary, of the value of all the others. I thought that I was very sad, I met Dyrcona everywhere asking for us. But, without further convoluting my brain with the explanation of these dark enigmas, I will develop their mystical meaning in two words. It is by my faith that at Colignac we have very bad dreams, and that if I am to be believed, we will try to have better ones at Cussan. - Let's go then, said the count to me, since this troublemaker wants it so much. » We decided to leave the same day. I begged them to set out ahead, because I was very happy (having, as they had just concluded, to stay there for a month) to have some books brought there. They agreed, and immediately after lunch, put their ass in the saddle. My faith!

However, I made a bundle of the volumes that I imagined were not in the Cussan library, with which I loaded a mule; and I left about three o'clock, mounted on a very good runner. However, I was only going at a walking pace, in order to accompany my little library, and to enrich my soul with more leisure from the liberalities of my sight. But listen to an adventure that will surprise you.

I had advanced more than four leagues when I found myself in a country which I undoubtedly thought I had seen elsewhere. Indeed, I asked my memory so much to tell me where I knew this landscape from, that the presence of the objects exciting the images, I remembered that it was precisely the place that I had seen in a dream last night. This strange encounter would have occupied my attention for more time than it did, without a strange apparition by which I was awakened. A specter (at least I took it for such), presenting itself to me in the middle of the path, seized my horse by the bridle. The size of this ghost was enormous, and from what little appeared of his eyes, he had a sad and harsh look. However, I couldn't tell if he was beautiful or ugly, for a long dress made from the leaves of a plainchant book covered him up to his nails, and his face was hidden by a card on which the In Principio had been written. The first words the ghost uttered: “Satanus Diabolas!” he cried out in terror, “I beseech you by the great living God…” At these words he hesitated; but always repeating the great living God, and seeking with a frightened face his shepherd to tell him the rest, when he saw that, wherever he looked, his shepherd did not appear, such a frightful trembling seized him. , that by clicking so much, half of his teeth fell out, and two thirds of the scale under which he was lying, separated into papillotes. However, he turned towards me, and with a look neither gentle nor harsh, where I saw his mind wavering to resolve which would be more apt to be irritated or to soften: “Well,” he said, “Satanus Diabolas, by the sangué!” I beg you, in the name of God, and of Monsieur Saint Jean, to let me do this; because if you swarm neither foot nor paw, the devil take away I will gut you. »

I pulled my horse's bridle against him; but the bursts of laughter that suffocated me took all my strength away. Add to this that around fifty villagers came out from behind a hedge, walking on their knees, and shouting themselves singing Kyrie eleison. When they were close enough, four of the strongest, after having dipped their hands in a font which the servant of the presbytery held specifically, took me by the collar. I had barely stopped when I saw Messire Jean appear, who devoutly took off his stole with which he tied me; and then a crowd of women and children, who despite all my resistance sewed me into a large tablecloth; Besides,

I was so twisted that only my head could be seen. In this crew, they took me to Toulouse as if they had taken me to the monument. Sometimes one exclaimed that otherwise there would have been famine, because when they met me, I was certainly going to cast lots on the wheat; and then I heard another who complained that the claveau had only started in his sheepfold one Sunday, that after vespers I had knocked him on the shoulder. But what, despite all my disasters, tickled me with some emotion to laugh, was the cry full of fear of a young peasant woman after her fiancé, otherwise the ghost, who had taken my horse (for you will know that the boor had straddled himself on top of it, and already as if he were hot on his heels): “You wretch,” his lover yelped, “are you then one-eyed? Don't you see that the magician's horse is blacker than coal, and that it is the devil himself who takes you to the Sabbath? » Our pit, in terror, fell over the rump; thus my horse had the key to the fields.

They consulted whether they would seize the mule, and deliberately yes; but having unstitched the package, and at the first volume that they opened having encountered the Physics of M. Descartes, when they saw all the circles by which this philosopher distinguished the movement of each planet, all with one voice shouted that These were the rings I traced to call Beelzebub. The one who held it let it fall in apprehension, and unfortunately as it fell it opened into a page where the virtues of the magnet are explained; I say unfortunately, because in the place I am talking about there is a figure of this metallic stone, where the small bodies which break free from its mass to hang on the iron are represented as arms.

Barely one of these marauds saw him, that I heard him shout that this was the toad that had been found in the trough of his cousin Fiacre's stable, when his horses died. At this word, those who had seemed the most excited, sheathed their hands in their bosoms, or covered themselves with their pockets. Messire Jean, for his part, shouted loudly that we should not touch anything, that all these books were frank grimoires, and the mule was a Satan. The mob, thus frightened, let the mule go in peace. However, I saw Mathurine, the priest's servant, who was chasing him towards the presbytery stable for fear that he would go into the cemetery to pollute the grass of the deceased. At this word, those who had seemed the most excited, sheathed their hands in their bosoms, or covered themselves with their pockets. Messire Jean, for his part, shouted loudly that we should not touch anything, that all these books were frank grimoires, and the mule was a Satan. The mob, thus frightened, let the mule go in peace. However, I saw Mathurine, the priest's servant, who was chasing him towards the presbytery stable for fear that he would go into the cemetery to pollute the grass of the deceased. At this word, those who had seemed the most excited, sheathed their hands in their bosoms, or covered themselves with their pockets. Messire Jean, for his part, shouted loudly that we should not touch anything, that all these books were frank grimoires, and the mule was a Satan. The mob, thus frightened, let the mule go in peace.

However, I saw Mathurine, the priest's servant, who was chasing him towards the presbytery stable for fear that he would go into the cemetery to pollute the grass of the deceased. let the mule go in peace. However, I saw Mathurine, the priest's servant, who was chasing him towards the presbytery stable for fear that he would go into the cemetery to pollute the grass of the deceased. let the mule go in peace. However, I saw Mathurine, the priest's servant, who was chasing him towards the presbytery stable for fear that he would go into the cemetery to pollute the grass of the deceased.

It was well past seven o'clock in the evening when we arrived at a village, where to refresh myself they dragged me to the jail; for the reader would not believe me if I said that I was buried in a hole, and yet it is so true that with a pirouette I visited its entire extent. Finally, there is no one who, seeing me in this place, would not have taken me for a candle lit under a suction cup. First my jailer rushed me into this cave: “If you give me,” I said to him, “this stone garment for a coat, it is too large; but if it is for a tomb, it is too narrow. Here we can only count the days by nights; of the five senses I only have the use of two, smell and touch: one, to make me smell the stench of my prison; the other, to make it palpable to me. In truth, I confess to you, I believe I would be damned if I did not know that no innocent people enter hell. »

At this innocent remark, my jailer burst out laughing:

“And by my faith,” he said, “are you then one of our people?” Because I have never kept any but these under my key. » After other compliments of this nature, the man took the trouble to search me, I don't know for what purpose; but by the diligence he employed, I conjecture that it was for my good. His research remained useless, because during the battle of Diabolas, I had slipped my gold into my breeches; when, after a very exact anatomy, he found his hands as empty as before, I almost died of fear, just as he thought he would die of pain.

“Ho! virtueblue! he exclaimed, foaming at the mouth, “I saw clearly at first that he was a sorcerer! he is a beggar like the devil. Go, go, he continued, my comrade, think about your conscience early. » He had barely finished these words when I heard the chime of a bunch of keys, where he was choosing the one for my dungeon. His back was turned; This is why, for fear that he might take revenge for the misfortune of his visit, I dexterously drew three pistoles from their seal, and I said to him

“Monsieur le concierge, here is a pistole; I beg you to bring me a piece, I haven't eaten since eleven o'clock. » He received it very graciously, and protested to me that my disaster affected him. When I knew his softened heart:

“Here’s another one,” I continued, “to recognize the trouble that I am ashamed to give you. »

He opened his ear, his heart and his hand; and I added, he counting three, instead of two, that by this third I begged him to place one of his boys with me to keep me company, because the unfortunate must fear solitude.

Delighted with my prodigality, he promised me everything, kissed my knees, declaimed against justice, told me that he saw clearly that I had enemies, but that I would come to my honor, if I had good luck, and that he would undertake, before it was three days, to have my cuffs cleared. I thanked him very seriously for his courtesy, and after a thousand hugs which he thought would strangle me, this dear friend locked and relocked the door.

I remained all alone, and very melancholy, with my body rounded on a bale of powdered straw: she was not, however, so small that more than fifty rats did not still crush her. The vault, the walls and the floor were composed of six tombstones, so that having death above, below, and around me, I could not doubt my burial. The cold slime of the limas, and the sticky venom of the toads ran down my face; the lice had their teeth longer than their body. I saw myself working in stone, which did me no less harm for being external; finally I think that to be Job, all I needed was a wife and a broken pot.

There, however, I overcame all the harshness of two very difficult hours, when the sound of a large set of keys, combined with that of the bolts on my door, awakened me from the attention I was paying to my pain. Following the din, I saw, in the light of a lamp, a powerful rustic. He unloaded a terrine between my legs: “Hey! there, he said, do not grieve; here's some cabbage soup, that when it would be...

Yes, it's the mistress's own soup; and if by my faith, as the other says, we have not removed a drop of fat. » Saying this he dipped his five fingers to the bottom, to invite me to do the same. I worked after the original, for fear of discouraging it; and he with a look of jubilation: “Morgienne,” he cried, “you are a good brother! They say that wherever you have envious people, Jerniguay are traitors, yes, Testiguay are traitors: hey! let them come there to see! Oh! well, well, so much so, always the one who dances. » This naivety made my throat swell two or three times to laugh about it. Yet I was so happy to stop myself from doing so. I saw that fortune seemed to offer me in this scoundrel an opportunity for my freedom; this is why it was very important to me to cherish his good graces; because to escape by other means, the architect who built my prison, having made several entrances, had not remembered to make an exit. All these considerations were the cause that to sound him out, I spoke to him thus: “You are poor, my great friend, is it not true? -Alas! sir, replied the boor, when you arrive from the soothsayer, you would not have hit the target any better. - Here then, I continued, take this gun. »

I found his hand so trembling, when I put it in, that he could hardly close it.

This beginning seemed to me to be a bad omen; However, I soon recognized by the fervor of his thanks that he had only trembled with joy; this was the cause that I continued: “But if you were a man who wanted to participate in the fulfillment of a vow that I made, twenty pistoles (besides the salvation of your soul) would be yours as your hat; for you will know that not a good quarter of an hour ago, or a moment before your arrival, that an angel appeared to me and promised to make known the justice of my cause, provided that I Go tomorrow to have a mass said at Notre-Dame of this village at the high altar. I wanted to apologize for being confined too tightly; but he answered me that a man would come sent from the jailer to keep me company, to whom I would only have to order from him to take me to the church, and take me back to prison; that I recommended to him secrecy, and to obey without reply, on pain of dying within a year; and if he doubted my word, I would tell him that he is a fellow member of the Scapular. " Now the reader will know that previously I had glimpsed through the slit of his shirt a scapular which suggested to me the whole fabric of this apparition: "And yes, said he, my good lord, I will do what the angel commanded us. But it must therefore be at nine o'clock, because our master will then be in Toulouse at the agreement of his son with the daughter of the master of high works. Lady, listen, the executioner has a name as good as a ciron. It is said that she will have from her father in marriage, as many crowns as are necessary for a king's ransom. Finally she is beautiful and rich; but these pieces are careful not to happen to a poor boy.

Alas! my good sir, you must know..." I did not fail to interrupt him at this point; because I sensed by this beginning of digression, a long sequence of cock and donkey. Now after we had fully digested our plot, the rustic took leave of me. as many crowns as are necessary for a king's ransom. Finally she is beautiful and rich; but these pieces are careful not to happen to a poor boy. Alas! my good sir, you must know..." I did not fail to interrupt him at this point; because I sensed by this beginning of digression, a long sequence of cock and donkey. Now after we had fully digested our plot, the rustic took leave of me. as many crowns as are necessary for a king's ransom. Finally she is beautiful and rich; but these pieces are careful not to happen to a poor boy. Alas! my good sir, you must know..." I did not fail to interrupt him at this point; because I sensed by this beginning of digression, a long sequence of cock and donkey. Now after we had fully digested our plot, the rustic took leave of me.

The next day he did not fail to come and dig me up at the promised time. I left my clothes in the prison, and I equipped myself with rags, because in order not to be recognized, we had agreed this the day before. As soon as we were in the air, I didn't forget to count out his twenty pistoles. He looked at them hard, and even with big eyes. “They are of gold and weight,” I told him, upon my word. Hey ! sir, he replied, that's not what I'm thinking of, but I'm thinking that Grand Macé's house is for sale, with its enclosure and its vineyard. I'll have it for two hundred francs; it takes eight days to build the market, and I would like to ask you, my good sir, if it were your pleasure, to ensure that until the great Macé keeps your pistoles well counted in his chest, they do not become oak leaves. »

The naivety of this rascal made me laugh. However, we continued walking towards the church, where we arrived. Some time later high mass began there; but as soon as I saw my guard rising from his rank to go to the offering, I paced the nave with three jumps, and in as many others I quickly got lost in a side street. Of all the various thoughts which agitated me at that moment, the one which I followed was to reach Toulouse, from which this town was only half a league distant, with the intention of taking the post office there. I arrived at the suburbs quite early; but I remained so ashamed to see everyone looking at me that I lost my composure. The cause of their astonishment was my crew,

In the end, considering that such universal attention threatened me with a dangerous consequence, I overcame my shame. As soon as I saw someone looking at me, I held out my hand. I even conjured the charity of those who did not look at me. But admire how often by wanting to accompany with too much circumspection the designs in which Fortune wants to have somewhere, we ruin them by irritating this proud woman! I make this reflection about my adventure; because having noticed a man dressed as a mediocre bourgeois, whose back was turned towards me: “Sir,” I said to him, pulling him by his coat, “if compassion can touch…” I had not started the word who was to follow, that this man turned his head. O gods! what became of him? But, oh gods! what became of me? This man was my jailer. We both stood aghast with admiration to see ourselves where we saw ourselves. I was all in his eyes; he used all my sight. Finally the common interest, although very different, pulled us both out of the ecstasy in which we were immersed. “Ha! miserable as I am, cried the jailer, must I be caught? » This double-meaning word immediately inspired me with the stratagem that you are about to hear. " Hey ! A helping hand, gentlemen, a helping hand to justice! I screamed as loud as I could yelp. This thief stole the jewels of the Countess des Mousseaux; I've been looking for it for a year.

Gentlemen, I continued excitedly, a hundred pistoles for whoever stops him! » Finally the common interest, although very different, pulled us both out of the ecstasy in which we were immersed. “Ha! miserable as I am, cried the jailer, must I be caught? » This double-meaning word immediately inspired me with the stratagem that you are about to hear. " Hey ! A helping hand, gentlemen, a helping hand to justice! I screamed as loud as I could yelp. This thief stole the jewels of the Countess des Mousseaux; I've been looking for it for a year. Gentlemen, I continued excitedly, a hundred pistoles for whoever stops him! » Finally the common interest, although very different, pulled us both out of the ecstasy in which we were immersed. “Ha! miserable as I am, cried the jailer, must I be caught? » This double-meaning word immediately inspired me with the stratagem that you are about to hear. " Hey ! A helping hand, gentlemen, a helping hand to justice! I screamed as loud as I could yelp. This thief stole the jewels of the Countess des Mousseaux; I've been looking for it for a year. Gentlemen, I continued excitedly, a hundred pistoles for whoever stops him! » " Hey ! A helping hand, gentlemen, a helping hand to justice! I screamed as loud as I could yelp.

This thief stole the jewels of the Countess des Mousseaux; I've been looking for it for a year. Gentlemen, I continued excitedly, a hundred pistoles for whoever stops him! » " Hey ! A helping hand, gentlemen, a helping hand to justice! I screamed as loud as I could yelp. This thief stole the jewels of the Countess des Mousseaux; I've been looking for it for a year. Gentlemen, I continued excitedly, a hundred pistoles for whoever stops him! »

I had barely said these words when a peat of rabble fell on the poor astonished man. The astonishment into which my extraordinary impudence had thrown him, combined with the imagination he had, that without having like a glorious body penetrated without fraction the walls of my dungeon, I could not have escaped, the transit so much, that he was beside himself for a long time. In the end, however, he recognized himself, and the first words he used to undeceive the common people were that they should be careful not to misunderstand him, that he was a very honorable man. undoubtedly he was going to discover the whole mystery; but a dozen greengrocers, lackeys and chair-carriers, eager to serve me for my money, shut his mouth with their fists; and especially as they imagined that their reward would be measured by the outrages with which they insulted the weakness of this poor deceived, everyone ran to touch it with their foot or their hand. “See the man of honor!” this scum muttered. However, he couldn't help but say, as soon as he recognized the gentleman, that he was caught! » The good part of the comedy is that my jailer being in his festive clothes, he was ashamed to admit himself to be the executioner's churchwarden, and even feared that he would be beaten even more when he discovered himself. as soon as he recognized the gentleman, he was caught!

» The good part of the comedy is that my jailer, being in his festive clothes, he was ashamed to admit himself to be the executioner's churchwarden, and even feared that he would be beaten even more when he discovered himself. as soon as he recognized the gentleman, he was caught! » The good part of the comedy is that my jailer being in his festive clothes, he was ashamed to admit himself to be the executioner's churchwarden, and even feared that he would be beaten even more when he discovered himself.

I, for my part, took off during the hottest part of the fight. I left my salvation to my legs: they soon freed me. But to my misfortune, the view that everyone began to cast upon me again threw me back into my first alarms. If the spectacle of a hundred rags, which danced around me like the sound of little beggars, excited a bayeur to look at me, I feared that he would read on my forehead that I was an escaped prisoner. If a passer-by took his hand out from under my coat, I imagined a sergeant stretching out his arm to stop me. If I noticed another one, pacing the pavement without meeting my eyes, I convinced myself that he was pretending not to have seen me, in order to grab me from behind. If I saw a merchant entering his shop, I would say: “He’s going to take down his halberd!” » If I encountered a district more crowded with people than usual: “So many people, I thought, have not assembled there without purpose! » If another was empty: “They are here ready to lie in wait for me. » An embarrassment stood in the way of my escape: “They barricaded the streets to surround me! » Finally my fear suborning my reason, each man seemed to me an archer; every word, _stop_, and every noise, the unbearable croaking of the bolts of my past prison. » An embarrassment stood in the way of my escape: “They barricaded the streets to surround me! » Finally my fear suborning my reason, each man seemed to me an archer; every word, _stop_, and every noise, the unbearable croaking of the bolts of my past prison. » An embarrassment stood in the way of my escape: “They barricaded the streets to surround me! » Finally my fear suborning my reason, each man seemed to me an archer; every word, _stop_, and every noise, the unbearable croaking of the bolts of my past prison.

Thus overcome by this panicked terror, I resolved to beg again, in order to cross the rest of the town without suspicion to the post office; but for fear of being recognized by my voice, I added to the exercise of begging the skill of counterfeiting the mute. So I advance towards those I see looking at me; I point a finger under the chin, then above the mouth, and I open it, yawning, with an inarticulate cry, to make it clear through my grimace that a poor mute is asking for alms. Sometimes out of charity they gave me a shoulder pad; sometimes I felt myself stuffing a scrap into my fist; and sometimes I heard women murmuring that I could well have been martyred for the faith in Turkey in this way.

This stratagem, however, could not yet tire the obstinacy of my destiny, nor win over its bad nature. But what other invention could I resort to? Because to cross a large city like Toulouse, where my print had made me known even to herring fishers, motley with rags as gruff as those of a harlequin, was it not likely that I would be observed and recognized immediately, and that the counter-charm to this danger was the character of the beggar, whose role is played in all sorts of guises? And then when this ruse had not been planned, with all the circumspections that should accompany it, I think that among so many disastrous circumstances, it was having the very strong judgment not to become insane.

So I was moving forward, when suddenly I felt obliged to turn back; for my venerable jailer, and a few dozen archers of his acquaintance, who had rescued him from the hands of the rabble, having gathered together, and patrolling the whole city to find me, unfortunately met on my path. First they saw me with their lynx eyes, flying with all their strength, and me flying with all mine, was the same thing. I was so lightly pursued that sometimes my freedom felt on my neck the breath of the tyrants who wanted to oppress it; but it seemed as if the air they pushed as they ran behind me pushed me in front of them. Finally Heaven or fear gave me four or five streets in advance. It was then that my hunters lost the wind and their tracks; me the sight and the hullabaloo of this importunate venery.

Certainly anyone who has not gone through similar agonies, I say in the original, can hardly measure the joy with which I shuddered when I saw myself escaped.

However, because my salvation demanded everything from me, I resolved to be very stingy with the time they took to reach me. I smeared my face, rubbed my hair with dust, stripped off my doublet, pulled down my breeches, threw my hat into a window; then having spread my handkerchief on the pavement, and placing four small stones at the corners, like those sick with contagion, I lay down opposite, my stomach against the ground, and in a pitiful voice began to moan very languorously. . Barely was I there, that I heard the cries of this hoarse populace long before the sound of their feet; but I still had enough judgment to keep myself in the same posture, in the hope of not being known, and I was not deceived; because they all took me for a plague victim, they passed by very quickly, covering their noses, and most of them threw a double on my handkerchief.

The storm thus dissipated, I enter under an alley, I put on my clothes again, and again abandon myself to Fortune; but I had run so much that she got tired of following me. It must be believed thus: because by dint of crossing squares and crossroads, of threading and cutting streets, this glorious goddess not being accustomed to walking so quickly, the better to steal my way, let me fall blindly to the hands of the archers who were pursuing me. When they met me, they roared with such furious jeers that I was left deaf. They thought they did not have enough arms to stop me, they used their teeth, and were not yet sure of holding me; one dragged me by the hair, another by the collar, while the less passionate searched me.

As these charitable doctors were busy curing the dropsy in my purse, a great noise arose, the whole place resounded with these words: Kill! kill! and at the same time I saw swords shining. These gentlemen who were dragging me shouted that it was the provost marshal's archers who wanted to steal this capture from them. “But be careful,” they said to me, pulling me harder than usual, “from falling into their hands, because you would be condemned in twenty-four hours, and the king would not save you. » In the end, however, themselves frightened by the squabble that was beginning to affect them, they abandoned me so universally that I remained all alone in the middle of the street, while the attackers butchered everything they encountered.

I leave you to think if I fled, I who also had to fear both of them leaving. In a short time I moved away from the fight; but as I was already asking for directions to the post office, a torrent of people who were fleeing the melee poured into my street. Unable to resist the crowd, I followed it; and getting angry at running for so long, I finally reached a small, very dark door, where I threw myself pell-mell with other fugitives. We rushed it over ourselves, then, when everyone had caught their breath: "Comrades," said one of the troop, "if you believe me, let's pass the two wickets, and hold on tight in the courtyard. » These terrible words struck my ears with such surprising pain that I thought I would fall dead on the square. Alas! immediately, but too late, I realized that instead of running away into an asylum as I thought, I had come to throw myself into prison, as it is impossible to escape the vigilance of one's star. I looked at this man more attentively, and recognized him as one of the archers who had chased after me for so long. Cold sweat rose to my forehead, and I turned pale, ready to faint. Those who saw me so weak, moved with compassion, asked for water; everyone approached to help me, and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. I had come to throw myself into prison, so impossible is it to escape the vigilance of one's star. I looked at this man more attentively, and recognized him as one of the archers who had chased after me for so long. Cold sweat rose to my forehead, and I turned pale, ready to faint. Those who saw me so weak, moved with compassion, asked for water; everyone approached to help me, and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. I had come to throw myself into prison, so impossible is it to escape the vigilance of one's star. I looked at this man more attentively, and recognized him as one of the archers who had chased after me for so long. Cold sweat rose to my forehead, and I turned pale, ready to faint. Those who saw me so weak, moved with compassion, asked for water; everyone approached to help me, and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. and I recognized him as one of the archers who had chased me for so long. Cold sweat rose to my forehead, and I turned pale, ready to faint. Those who saw me so weak, moved with compassion, asked for water; everyone approached to help me, and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. and I recognized him as one of the archers who had chased me for so long. Cold sweat rose to my forehead, and I turned pale, ready to faint. Those who saw me so weak, moved with compassion, asked for water; everyone approached to help me, and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail. and unfortunately this accursed archer was very hasty; he had not cast his eyes on me when he immediately recognized me. He made a sign to his companions, and at the same time I was greeted with: _I am taking you prisoner by the king_. I didn't have to go far to put me in jail.

I remained in the morgue until the evening, when each turnkey one after the other, by an exact dissection of the parts of my face, came to draw my painting on the canvas of his memory.

At the stroke of seven o'clock, the sound of a bunch of keys gave the signal for retreat. I was asked if I wanted to be taken to a pistole's room; I responded with a bow of my head; “Money then!” » replied this guide. I knew well that I was in a place where I would have to swallow many more; This is why I begged him, in case his courtesy could not bring himself to give me credit until the next day, that he tell the jailer on my behalf to give me back the change that had been taken from me. “Ho! by my faith, replied this rascal, our master has a good heart, he gives nothing back. So is it just for your beautiful nose?... Hey! Come on, let's go to the black dungeons. »

Finishing these words, he showed me the way with a big blow of his bunch of keys, the weight of which made me tumble and grill from the top to the bottom of a dark rise, to the foot of a door which stopped me ; still I would not have recognized that it was one, without the brilliance of the shock with which I encountered it, because I no longer had my eyes: they had remained at the top of the staircase under the figure of a candle held eighty steps above me by my executioner driver.

Finally this tiger man, _pian piano_ descended, untangled thirty large locks, unhooked as many bars, and with the wicket only ajar, with a jerk of his knees he engulfed me into this pit of which I did not have time to notice all the details. horror, so quickly did he withdraw the door after him. I remained knee-deep in mud. If I thought I'd reach the edge, I'd sink to the waist. The terrible clucking of the toads wading in the mud made me wish I were deaf; I felt lizards crawling up my thighs; snakes twist my neck; and I caught a glimpse of one in the dark light of her sparkling pupils, who from her mouth, black with venom, darted a three-pointed tongue, whose sudden agitation seemed like lightning, into which her gaze set fire. To express the rest, I cannot: it surpasses all belief; and then I don't dare try to remember it, so much do I fear that the certainty I think I have of having broken through my prison is a dream from which I will wake up. The hand had marked ten o'clock on the dial of the great tower, before anyone had knocked at my tomb. But, about that time, as the pain of bitter sadness was already beginning to squeeze my heart, and to disrupt this just harmony which makes up life, I heard a voice which warned me to seize the pole which was being introduced me. After having groped in the air long enough to find it in the darkness, I came across a piece of it, I took it with great emotion, and my jailer, pulling the other towards him, fished me out in the middle of this swamp. I suspected that my affairs had taken a different turn, because he gave me profound civilities, only spoke to me with his head bare, and told me that five or six people of status were waiting in the courtyard to see me. It is not up to this wild beast,

After this admirable courtesy: “At least,” he said to me, “my good lord, you will remember the trouble and the care that fat Nicolas took towards you. Pardi listen, even if it had been for the king! This is not to blame you, da. » Outraged at the brazen's effrontery, I signaled to him that I would remember it. By a thousand terrible detours, I finally arrived at the light, and then in the courtyard, where as soon as I had entered, two men seized me, whom at first I could not recognize, because they had thrown themselves on me at the same time, and both held me with their faces pressed against mine. I went a long time without guessing them; but the excitement of their friendship taking a little respite, I recognized my dear Colignac, and the brave marquis. Colignac had his arm in a sling,

“Alas! he said, we would never have suspected such a disaster, without your runner and the mule who arrived this night at the gates of my castle: their chest, their girths, their crupper, everything was broken, and this made us foreshadow something of your misfortune. We immediately mounted our horses, and had not traveled two or three leagues towards Colignac, before the whole country, moved by this accident, detailed the circumstances to us. Galloping at the same time we reached the town where you were in prison; but having learned of your escape, on the rumor that you had turned towards Toulouse, with what we had of our people, we came there at full speed. The first one we asked about you told us that you had been taken back. At the same time we pushed our horses towards this prison; but other people assured us that you had fainted at the hands of sergeants. And as we continued on our way, some townspeople were telling each other that you had become invisible. Finally, by dint of talking, we learned that after having taken you, lost you, and recaptured I don't know how many times, you were being taken to the prison of the Big Tower. We cut off your archers, and with a happiness more apparent than real, we met them in the lead, attacked, fought and put to flight; but we were unable to learn from the very wounded whom we took, what had become of you, until this morning when someone came to us to say that you had blindly come to save yourself in prison. Colignac is injured in several places, but very lightly. Besides, we have just ordered that you be lodged in the most beautiful room here. As you love the great outdoors, we have furnished a small apartment for you alone at the top of the Big Tower, whose terrace will serve as your balcony; your eyes at least will be free, despite the body that binds them.

“Ha! my dear Dyrcona, cried the count then speaking, we were very unfortunate not to take you when we left Colignac! My heart, through a blind sadness of which I did not know the cause, predicted something terrible for me. But it doesn’t matter; I have friends, you are innocent, and in any case I know very well how gloriously one dies. Only one thing disappoints me. The rascal on whom I wanted to try the first blows of my revenge (you can understand that I am talking about my priest) is no longer in a position to feel it: this wretch has given up the ghost.

Here is the detail of his death. He was running with his servant to chase your runner into his stable, when this horse, with a fidelity by which perhaps the secret lights of his instinct were redoubled, all fiery, began to kick, but with so much fury and success, that in three kicks, against which the head of this buffalo failed, he made his profit go away. You probably don't understand the causes of this madman's hatred, but I want you to discover them. Know then, to take the matter from the highest, that this holy man, Norman by nation and quibbler by his profession, who served an abandoned chapel, depending on the money of the pilgrims, set his sights on the cure of Colignac, and that despite all my efforts to keep the owner in his rights, the funny guy won over his judges so well that in the end, despite us, he was our pastor.

“After a year he also pleaded with me that he wanted me to pay tithes. In vain was it represented to him that, from time immemorial, my land was free, he did not stop bringing his suit which he lost; but in the proceedings, it gave rise to so many incidents, that by dint of swarming, more than twenty other lawsuits have sprouted from this one which will remain in the hook, thanks to the horse whose foot found itself harder than the Mr. Jean's brain. This is all I can conjecture about our pastor's vertigo. But admire with what forethought he directed his rage!

I have just been assured that, having put in his mind the unfortunate plan of your prison, he had secretly exchanged the cure of Colignac for another cure in his country, where he expected to withdraw as soon as you were taken . His servant even said that, seeing your horse near his stable, he heard him whisper that it was enough to take him to a place where no one would reach him. »

Following this speech, Colignac warned me to be wary of offers and visits that might perhaps be paid to me by a very powerful person whom he named; that it was through his credit that Messire Jean had won the suit for the vest, and that this person of quality had requested the matter for him in payment for the services that this good priest, when he was cuister, had rendered to the college to his son. “Now,” continued Colignac, “as it is very difficult to plead without bitterness and without there remaining in the soul a character of enmity which no longer fades, even though we have been repatriated, he has always since sought secretly the opportunities to cross me. But it doesn't matter; I have more relatives than him in the dress, and have many friends, or at the very worst we will be able to interpose royal authority. »

After Colignac had said this, they both tried to console me; but it was by the testimonies of such tender pain that mine was increased.

In the meantime, my jailer came to tell us that the room was ready. “Let’s go see her,” replied Cussan. He walked, and we followed him. I found it very fitted. “I lack nothing,” I told them, “except books. » Colignac promised to send me the next day all those whose list I gave him. When we had carefully considered and recognized by the height of my tower, by the tank-bottom ditches which surrounded it, and by all the arrangements of my apartment, that saving me was an enterprise beyond human power, my friends , looking at each other, and then looking at me, began to cry; but as if suddenly our pain had softened the anger of Heaven, a sudden joy took possession of my soul, joy attracted hope and hope of secret lights, by which my reason found itself so dazzled, that with an outburst against my will which seemed ridiculous to me: “Come on! I said to them, go and wait for me at Colignac, I will be there in three days, and send me all the mathematical instruments with which I usually work. Moreover, you will find in a large box many crystals cut in various ways; don't forget them, however I will sooner specify in a memorandum the things I need. » and send me all the mathematical instruments with which I usually work. Moreover, you will find in a large box many crystals cut in various ways; don't forget them, however I will sooner specify in a memorandum the things I need. » and send me all the mathematical instruments with which I usually work. Moreover, you will find in a large box many crystals cut in various ways; don't forget them, however I will sooner specify in a memorandum the things I need. »

They took care of the note that I gave them, without being able to understand my intention. After which I dismissed them.

Since their departure I only ruminated on the execution of the things that I had premeditated, and I was still ruminating on it the next day, when they brought me everything that I had marked in the catalog. A valet from Colignac told me that no one had seen his master since the previous day, and that no one knew what had become of him. This accident did not disturb me at all, because it immediately occurred to me that it would be possible to go to court to request my release.

This is why, without being surprised, I put my hand to work. For eight days I carpentered, I planed, I glued, finally I built the machine that I am going to describe to you.

It was a large, very light box which closed very tight; it was six feet high or about, and three feet wide in a square. This box had a hole at the bottom; and over the vault which was also there, I placed a crystal vessel with the same holes, made like a globe, but very ample, the neck of which ended precisely, and was embedded in the opening that I had made in the capital .

The vase was constructed on purpose at several angles, and in the shape of an icosahedron, so that each facet being convex and concave, my ball produced the effect of a fiery mirror.

The jailer, nor his clerks, never came up to my room unless they found me engaged in this work; but they were not surprised, because of all the mechanical niceties that they saw in my room, of which I claimed to be the inventor. There was, among other things, a wind clock, an artificial eye with which we see the night, a sphere where the stars follow their movement in the sky. All this convinced them that the machine where I worked was a similar curiosity; and then the money with which Colignac greased their hands, made them walk smoothly with many difficult steps. Now it was nine o'clock in the morning, my jailer had come down, and the sky was darkened, when I exhibited this machine at the top of my tower, that is to say in the most open place on my terrace.

All this arranged in this way, I shut myself up inside, and I remained there for nearly an hour, waiting for what it would please Fortune to order of me.

When the sun cleared of clouds began to illuminate my machine, this transparent icosahedron which received through its facets the treasures of the sun, spread the light through the jar into my cell; and as this splendor weakened because of the rays which could not reach back to me without breaking many times, this vigor of temperate clarity converted my shrine into a little sky of purple enamelled with gold.

I admired with ecstasy the beauty of such a mixed color, and suddenly I feel my insides moved in the same way that someone being carried away by a pulley would feel them tremble.

I was going to open my window to find out the cause of this emotion; but as I put out my hand, I saw through the hole in the floor of my box, my tower already very low below me, and my little castle in the air, pushing my feet up against it, made me see in a Toulouse was sinking into the earth. This prodigy astonished me, not because of such a sudden development, but because of this terrible enthusiasm of human reason for the success of a design which had even frightened me when imagining it. The rest did not surprise me, because I had clearly foreseen that the vacuum which would arise in the icosahedron because of the united rays of the sun through the concave glasses, would attract to fill it a furious abundance of air, from which my box would be removed , and that as I ascend, the horrible wind which would rush through the hole could only rise to the roof, unless, by penetrating this machine with fury, it would only push it upwards. Although my design was directed with great caution, one circumstance nevertheless deceived me, for not having hoped enough for the virtue of my mirrors. I had placed around my box a small sail that was easy to circumvent, with a string of which I held the end, which passed through the jar of the vase; because I had imagined that when I was in the air, I could catch as much wind as I needed to get to Colignac; but in the blink of an eye the sun, which beat directly and obliquely on the fiery mirrors of the icosahedron, swung me so high that I lost sight of Toulouse. This made me abandon my string,

I remember that in less than an hour I found myself above the average region. I soon noticed it, because I saw hail and rain lower than me. People will perhaps ask me where this wind came from, without which my box could not rise to a level of the sky free of meteors. But as long as people listen to me, I will satisfy this objection. I told you that the sun which beat vigorously on my concave mirrors, uniting the rays in the middle of the vase, expelled with its ardor through the pipe from above the air with which it was full, and that thus the vase remaining empty, nature which abhors him made him breathe in other air through the low opening to fill himself: if he lost a lot of it, he resorted to as many; and in this way we should not be surprised that in a region above the average where the winds are, I continued to rise, because the ether became wind, by the furious speed with which it rushed to prevent the vacuum, and therefore had to constantly push my machine.

I was hardly starved, except when I crossed this middle region; because truly the coldness of the climate made me see it from afar; I say from afar, because a bottle of gasoline that I always carried, of which I swallowed a few sips, prevented him from approaching.

During the rest of my journey, I felt no harm from it; on the contrary, the more I advanced towards this fiery world, the more robust I found myself. I felt my face a little warm, and more cheerful than usual; my hands seemed colored with a pleasant vermilion, and I do not know what joy flowed among my blood which made me be beyond myself.

I remember that reflecting on this adventure, I once reasoned thus: "Hunger undoubtedly cannot reach me, because this pain being only an instinct of nature, with which it obliges the animals to repair through nourishes what is lost of their substance, today that it feels that the sun by its pure, continual, and close irradiation, makes me repair more radical heat, than I lose, it no longer gives me this desire which would be useless to me. » I objected to these reasons, however, that since the temperament which makes life, consisted not only of natural heat, but of radical humidity, where this fire must be attached like the flame to the oil of a lamp, the rays only from this vital fire could not make the soul, unless you encounter some creamy material which will fix them. But I immediately overcame this difficulty, after having taken note that in our bodies radical humidity and natural heat are nothing but the same thing; for what we call humid, whether in animals or in the sun, this great soul of the world, is only a flux of more continuous sparks, because of their mobility; and what we call heat is a mist of atoms of fire which appear less loose, because of their interruption.

But if humidity and radical heat were two distinct things, it is clear that humidity would not be necessary to live so close to the sun; because since this humidity only serves in the living to stop the heat which would be exhaled too quickly,

Another thing may cause astonishment, namely why the approaches of this fiery globe did not consume me, since I had almost reached the full activity of its sphere; but here is the reason. It is not, strictly speaking, the fire itself which burns, but a matter larger than the fire pushes here and there by the impulses of its mobile nature; and this bluette powder that I call fire, by itself moving, derives all its action from the roundness of these atoms, because they tickle, heat, or burn, depending on the shape of the bodies that they carry with them. Thus straw does not throw out such an ardent flame as wood; wood burns with less violence than iron; and this proceeds from the fact that the fire of iron, wood and straw, although in itself the same fire, However, it acts differently depending on the diversity of the bodies it moves. This is why in straw, fire, this quasi-spiritual dust, being only hampered by a soft body, it is less corrosive; in wood, whose substance is more compact, it enters harder; and in iron; whose mass is almost completely solid, and linked with angular parts, it penetrates and consumes what is thrown into it in the blink of an eye.

All these observations being so familiar, it will not be surprising that I approached the sun without being burned, since what burns is not the fire, but the way in which it is attached; and that the fire of the sun cannot be mixed with any matter. Do we not even experience that the joy which is a fire, because it only stirs an airy blood whose very loose particles slide gently against the membranes of our flesh, tickles and gives birth to some blindness voluptuousness? And that this pleasure, or to better say this first progress of pain, does not go so far as to threaten the animal with death, but to the point of making it feel that envy causes a movement in our minds that we call joy. ? It's not just fever, although it has quite contrary accidents, is not a fire as well as joy, but it is a fire enveloped in a body, whose grains are horned, such as hearth bile, or melancholy, which comes to dart its hooked points wherever its nature mobile walks it, pierces, cuts, flays, and produces by this violent agitation what is called feverish heat. But this chain of proofs is very useless; the most vulgar experiences are enough to convince the shocked. I have no time to waste, you have to think about me. I am following the example of Phaeton, in the middle of a career from which I cannot turn back, and in which if I take a false step, all of nature together is not capable of helping me. such as heart bile, or melancholy, which comes to dart its hooked points wherever its mobile nature walks it, pierces, cuts, flays, and produces by this violent agitation what is called fever heat. But this chain of proofs is very useless; the most vulgar experiences are enough to convince the shocked. I have no time to waste, you have to think about me. I am following the example of Phaeton, in the middle of a career from which I cannot turn back, and in which if I take a false step, all of nature together is not capable of helping me. such as heart bile, or melancholy, which comes to dart its hooked points wherever its mobile nature walks it, pierces, cuts, flays, and produces by this violent agitation what is called fever heat. But this chain of proofs is very useless; the most vulgar experiences are enough to convince the shocked. I have no time to waste, you have to think about me. I am following the example of Phaeton, in the middle of a career from which I cannot turn back, and in which if I take a false step, all of nature together is not capable of helping me. But this chain of proofs is very useless; the most vulgar experiences are enough to convince the shocked. I have no time to waste, you have to think about me. I am following the example of Phaeton, in the middle of a career from which I cannot turn back, and in which if I take a false step, all of nature together is not capable of helping me. But this chain of proofs is very useless; the most vulgar experiences are enough to convince the shocked. I have no time to waste, you have to think about me. I am following the example of Phaeton, in the middle of a career from which I cannot turn back, and in which if I take a false step, all of nature together is not capable of helping me.

I knew very distinctly, as I had previously suspected when going up to the moon, that in fact it is the earth which turns from east to west around the sun, and not the sun around it; because I saw from France, the foot of the boot of Italy, then the Mediterranean Sea, then Greece, then the Bosphorus, the Euxine, Persia, the Indies, China, and finally Japan, pass successively opposite the hole in my dressing room; and a few hours after my elevation, the entire South Sea having turned, left the continent of America in its place.

I clearly distinguished all these revolutions, and I even remember that a long time later I saw Europe again once again on the stage, but I could no longer notice the States separately, because of my exaltation which became too high. I left on my way, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, several lands like ours, where as soon as I reached the spheres of their activity, I felt myself weakening. However, the rapid vigor of my growth surpassed that of these attractions.

I passed alongside the moon which at the time was between the sun and the earth, and I left Venus on my right hand. But regarding this star, old astronomy has preached so much that the planets are stars which revolve around the earth, that modern astronomy would not dare to doubt it. And I noticed, however, that during all the time that Venus appeared on this side of the sun, around which it revolves, I always saw it in a crescent shape; but completing her turn, I observed that as she passed behind, her horns grew closer together, and her black belly became redder. Now this vicissitude of light and darkness obviously shows that the planets are like the moon and the earth, globes without light, which are only capable of reflecting that which they take.

In fact, as I continued to climb, I made the same observation of Mercury again. I further noticed that all these worlds still have other small worlds moving around them. Dreaming since about the causes of the construction of this great universe,

I imagined that in the unraveling of chaos, after God had created matter, similar bodies were joined by this unknown principle of love, with which we experience that all thing seeks its equal. Particles formed in a certain way came together and this made air. Others to whom the figure made possible a circular movement, composed by linking themselves the globes which we call stars, which not only because of this inclination to pirouette on their poles, to which their figure requires them, must have been gather in a circle, as we see them, but must have even evaporated from the mass, and progressing in their flight with a similar pace, to turn the lesser orbs which met in the sphere of their activity. This is why Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were forced to pirouette and roll all together around the sun. It is not that we cannot imagine that in the past all these other globes were not suns, since there still remains on the earth, despite its present extinction, enough heat to make the moon revolve around it by the circular movement of the bodies which lose their mass, and that Jupiter has enough left to rotate four of them. But these suns throughout time, have caused such a considerable loss of light and fire through the continual emission of the small bodies which provide ardor and clarity, that they have remained a cold, dark, and almost powerless waste. We even discover that these spots which are in the sun, which the ancients had not noticed, are growing day by day. Now what do we know if it is not a crust which forms on its surface, its mass which disappears as the light escapes from it; and if it will not become, when all these mobile bodies have abandoned it, an opaque globe like the earth? which the ancients had not noticed, are growing day by day. Now what do we know if it is not a crust which forms on its surface, its mass which disappears as the light escapes from it; and if it will not become, when all these mobile bodies have abandoned it, an opaque globe like the earth? which the ancients had not noticed, are growing day by day. Now what do we know if it is not a crust which forms on its surface, its mass which disappears as the light escapes from it; and if it will not become, when all these mobile bodies have abandoned it, an opaque globe like the earth?

There are very distant centuries, beyond which there appears no vestige of the human race. Perhaps before the earth was a sun populated by animals proportioned to the climate which had produced them; and perhaps these animals were the demons of whom antiquity tells so many examples. Why no? Is it not possible that these animals, since the extinction of the earth, have still lived there for some time, and that the alteration of their globe had not yet destroyed the entire race? In fact their life lasted until that of Augustus, according to the testimony of Plutarch. It even seems that the prophetic and sacred testament of our first patriarchs wanted to lead us to this truth by the hand; for we read there before that it is spoken of man, the revolt of the angels. Is not this sequence of times that Scripture observes half-proof that the angels inhabited the earth before us?

And that these proud people who had inhabited our world, when it was the sun, disdaining perhaps, since it was extinguished, to continue their abode there, and knowing that God had placed his throne in the sun, dared undertake to occupy it?

But God, who wanted to punish their audacity, even drove them from the earth, and created man, less perfect, but consequently less superb, to occupy their empty places. to continue their residence there, and knowing that God had placed his throne in the sun, dared to undertake to occupy it? But God, who wanted to punish their audacity, even drove them from the earth, and created man, less perfect, but consequently less superb, to occupy their empty places. to continue their residence there, and knowing that God had placed his throne in the sun, dared to undertake to occupy it? But God, who wanted to punish their audacity, even drove them from the earth, and created man, less perfect, but consequently less superb, to occupy their empty places.

Approximately after four months of travel, at least as much as one can calculate, when there is no night coming to distinguish the day, I approached one of those small lands which flutter around the sun that mathematicians call macules, where because of the interposed clouds, my mirrors no longer gathered so much heat, and the air consequently no longer pushed my cabin with so much vigor, what remained of the wind was only capable of sustaining my fall, and descended to the tip of a very high mountain where I descended gently.

---------------------

I was beginning to fall asleep, when I saw in the air a marvelous bird hovering over my head; it was sustained by a movement so light and so imperceptible that I doubted several times whether it was not still a small universe balanced by its own center. However, he descended little by little, and finally arrived so close to me that my relieved eyes were filled with his image. Its tail appeared green, its stomach of enamelled azure, its wings crimson, and its purple head made a crown of gold shine as it moved, the rays of which burst from its eyes.

He flew for a long time in the clouds, and I was so glued to everything he became, that my soul having completely withdrawn and as if shortened to the sole operation of seeing, it almost did not reach until that of hearing, to make me understand that the bird was speaking while singing.

Thus little by little disbanded from my ecstasy, I distinctly noticed the syllables, the words and the speech that he articulated.

Here then, as best as I remember, the terms with which he arranged the fabric of his song:

“You are stranger, the bird whistled very pleasantly, and were born into a world from which I came. Now this secret propensity which we are moved for our compatriots, is the instinct which pushes me to want you to know about my life.

“I see your mind straining to understand how it is possible for me to explain myself to you in a sustained speech, seeing that even though the birds counterfeit your words, they do not understand it; but also when you counterfeit the bark of a dog or the song of a nightingale, you also do not understand what the dog or the nightingale meant. So draw the conclusion that neither birds nor men are therefore less reasonable.

“However, just as among the rest of you, there have been some so enlightened that they have heard and spoken our language, like Apollonius of Thyane, Anaximander, and several whose names I will not tell you, because they have never come to your attention; likewise among us there are those who hear and speak yours. Some, in truth, only know that of a nation. But just as there are birds that say nothing, some that chirp, others that speak, there are even more perfect ones that know how to use all kinds of idioms; As for me, I have the honor of being one of this small number.

“Besides, you will know that in whatever world it may be, nature has imprinted on birds a secret desire to fly here, and perhaps this emotion of our will is what has made us grow wings, like fat women produce on their children the appearance of the things they have desired; or rather like those who are passionate about knowing how to swim, have been seen while asleep plunging into the current of rivers, and crossing, with more skill than an experienced swimmer, hazards that, being awake, they would not have even dared to look at; or like this son of King Croesus, to whom a vehement desire to speak to guarantee his father, suddenly taught a language; or in short like this elder who, pressed by his enemy and surprised without weapons, felt bull's horns growing on his forehead,

“When the birds have arrived at the sun, they will join the republic of their species. I can see that you are sad to learn who I am. It's me who among you we call phoenix. In each world there is only one at a time, who lives there for the space of a hundred years; for at the end of a century, when on some mountain of Arabia he unloaded a large egg in the middle of the coals of his pyre, from which he sorted the material from branches of aloe, cinnamon and incense, he takes flight, and raises his flight to the sun, like the homeland to which his heart has long yearned. He has previously made all his efforts for this journey; but the weight of its egg, whose shells are so thick that it takes a century to incubate, always delayed the enterprise.

“I suspect that you will have difficulty in conceiving of this miraculous production; that’s why I want to explain it to you. The phoenix is ​​hermaphrodite; but among the hermaphrodites, it is yet another quite extraordinary phoenix, because..."

He remained half a quarter of an hour without speaking, and then he added: "I can see clearly that you suspect that what I am telling you is false. just learned; but if I am not telling the truth, I never want to approach your globe without an eagle swooping down on me. »

It remained for some time swinging in the sky, and then it flew away.
The admiration he had caused me by his story gave me the curiosity to follow him; and because he split the wave of the heavens with an unhurried surge,

About fifty leagues later, I found myself in a country so full of birds that their number almost equaled that of the leaves which covered them. What surprised me more was that these birds, instead of being frightened to meet me, fluttered around me; one whistled in my ears, the other cartwheeled over my head; in short, after their little frolics had occupied my attention for a very long time, suddenly I felt my arms loaded with more than a million of all kinds of species, which weighed on them so heavily that I could not move them.

They kept me in this state until I saw four large eagles arrive, some of which, grabbing me by the legs with their claws, the other two by the arms, lifted me up high.

I noticed among the crowd a magpie, which now here, now there, flew and flew again with great eagerness, and I heard that it shouted to me not to defend myself, because its companions were already taking advice to let me put out your eyes.

This warning prevented any resistance I could have made; so that these eagles carried me more than a thousand leagues away into a large wood, which was, according to my magpie, the city where their king made his residence.

The first thing they did was to throw me into prison in the hollow trunk of a great oak, and many of the strongest perched themselves on the branches, where they exercised the functions of a company of soldiers under arms.

Approximately after twenty-four hours, others came on guard who relieved them. While I awaited with great melancholy what Fortune would please to ordain from my disasters, my charitable magpie informed me of everything that was happening.

Among other things, I remember that she warned me that the rabble of birds had cried out loudly because I had been kept for so long without devouring me; that they had shown that I would lose so much weight that they would only find bones on me to gnaw on.

The rumor thought to heat up into sedition, because my magpie having emancipated itself from representing that it was a barbaric procedure, to thus put to death without knowledge of the cause, an animal which in some way approached their reasoning, they thought to put in pieces, alleging that it would be very ridiculous to believe that a completely naked animal, which nature itself in bringing to light had not bothered to provide the things necessary to preserve it, was like them capable of reason: "Again , they added, if it was an animal which came a little closer to our face, but precisely the most dissimilar, and the most frightful; finally a bald beast, a plucked bird, a chimera amassed of all kinds of natures, and which frightens everyone: man, I say, so stupid and so vain, let him convince himself that we were made only for him; the man who, with his clairvoyant soul, cannot distinguish sugar from arsenic, and who will swallow hemlock that his good judgment would have made him take for parsley; the man who maintains that we only reason through the relationship of the senses, and who nevertheless has the weakest, latest and most false senses of all creatures; finally the man whom nature, to make everything, created like the monsters, but in whom she nevertheless infused the ambition to command all animals and to exterminate them.

» and who will swallow hemlock that his good judgment would have made him mistake for parsley; the man who maintains that we only reason through the relationship of the senses, and who nevertheless has the weakest, latest and most false senses of all creatures; finally the man whom nature, to make everything, created like the monsters, but in whom she nevertheless infused the ambition to command all animals and to exterminate them. » and who will swallow hemlock that his good judgment would have made him mistake for parsley; the man who maintains that we only reason through the relationship of the senses, and who nevertheless has the weakest, latest and most false senses of all creatures; finally the man whom nature, to make everything, created like the monsters, but in whom she nevertheless infused the ambition to command all animals and to exterminate them. »

This is what the wisest people said: for the commune, they cried out that it was horrible, to believe that an animal which did not have a face like them, had reason. “Hey, what!” they whispered to each other, he has no beak, no feathers, no claws, and his soul would be spiritual! O gods! what impertinence! »

The compassion that the most generous people had for me did not prevent my criminal trial from being investigated: all the writings were drawn up on the bark of a cypress tree; and then after a few days I was taken to the bird court. There were only magpies, jays and starlings for lawyers, counselors and judges at the session; still only those who understood my language were chosen.

Instead of questioning me in the hot seat, I was put astride a snag of rotten wood, from where the one who presided over the audience, after snapping his beak two or three times and majestically shaking his feathers, told me asked where I was from, what nation, and what species. My charitable magpie had previously given me some instructions which were very beneficial to me, and among others that I was careful not to admit that I was a man. I therefore replied that I was from this little world called the earth, of which the phoenix and some others that I saw in the assembly could have spoken to them; that the climate in which I was born was located under the temperate zone of the Arctic Pole, in an extremity of Europe called France; and as for my kind, that I was not a man as they imagined, but an ape; that men had taken me from my cradle at a very young age, and nursed me among them; that their bad education had thus made my skin delicate; that they had made me forget my natural language, and instructed me in theirs; that to please these fierce animals, I had gotten used to walking on only two feet; and that finally, as one falls more easily than one rises in species, the opinion, the custom and the food of these filthy beasts had so much power over me, that my parents who are monkeys of honor, they themselves could recognize me. I added for my justification, that they had me visited by experts, and that in case I was found to be a man, I submitted to be destroyed like a monster.

“Gentlemen,” cried a member of the assembly as soon as I had stopped speaking, “I am convinced; you have not forgotten that he has just said that the country which saw him born was France; but you know that in France monkeys do not give birth: after that judge if he is what he boasts of being! »

I replied to my accuser that I had been taken so young from the womb of my parents, and transported to France, that I could rightly call my native country that which I remembered the furthest.

This reason, although specious, was not sufficient; but the majority, delighted to hear that I was not a man, were very happy to believe it; for those who had never seen one could not be convinced that a man was not much more horrible than I seemed to them, and the most sensible added that man was something so abominable that it was useful that We thought it was only an imaginary being.

The whole audience flapped their wings with delight, and I was immediately placed under the power of the syndics to examine myself, with the task of representing myself the next day, and of making the report at the opening of the Chambers. to the company. So they took care of it, and took me to a remote grove. There, while they held me, they only occupied themselves with gesticulating a hundred kinds of somersaults around me, making a procession of walnut shells on their heads.

Sometimes they beat their feet against each other, sometimes they dug small pits to fill them, and then I was quite surprised that I no longer saw anyone.

The day and night were spent on these trifles, until the next day when the prescribed hour having come, I was again postponed to appear before my judges, where my trustees, challenged to tell the truth, replied that for the discharge of their conscience, they felt obliged to warn the court that I was certainly not a monkey as I boasted: "For, they said, in vain did we jump, walk, pirouette and invent a hundred tricks in his presence, by which we pretended to move him to do the same, according to the custom of monkeys. Now although he had been raised among men, as the monkey is always a monkey, we maintain that it would not have been in his power to refrain from counterfeiting our antics. This, gentlemen, is our report.”

The judges then approached to come to opinions; but we noticed that the sky was clouding over and seemed heavy. This brought the assembly to its feet.

I imagined that the appearance of bad weather had invited them there, when the attorney general came to tell me, by order of the court, that I would not be judged that day; that a criminal trial was never dismissed when the sky was not serene, because they feared that the bad temperature of the air would alter something in the good constitution of the minds of the judges; that the sorrow which fills the mood of the birds during the rain, does not disgorge on the cause, or that finally the court does not take revenge for its sadness on the accused; this is why my judgment was postponed until a better time. So I was taken back to prison, and I remember that during the way my charitable magpie hardly abandoned me, she always flew by my side, and I believe that she would not have left me,
Finally, I arrived at the place of my prison, where during my captivity I was fed only on the king's bread: that was what they called fifty worms, and as many guillots as they brought me to eat from seven o'clock to seven o'clock.

I thought I would reappear the next day, and everyone thought so; but one of my guards told me after five or six days, that all that time had been spent doing justice to a community of goldfinches, who had implored it against one of their companions. I asked this guard of what crime this unfortunate man was accused of:

“The crime,” replied the guard, “the biggest crime with which a bird can be blackened. They accuse him... could you believe it? They accuse him... but, good gods! just thinking about it makes my head stand up... Finally, he is accused of not having deserved to have a friend for six years; therefore he was condemned to be king, and king of a people different from his kind.

» If his subjects had been of his nature, he could have at least dipped his eyes and desire into their voluptuousness; but as the pleasures of one species have no relation at all to the pleasures of another species, he will endure all the fatigue, and drink all the bitterness of royalty, without being able to taste any of the sweetness.

“We sent him off this morning surrounded by many doctors, to ensure that he did not get poisoned during the trip. » Although my guard was a great talker by nature, he did not dare to talk to me alone any longer, for fear of being suspected of intelligence.

About the end of the week, I was brought back before my judges again. I was nestled on the crotch of a small leafless tree. The long-robed birds, lawyers, advisors and presidents, all perched in tiers, each according to their dignity, on the chopping block of a large cedar. For the others who only attended the assembly out of curiosity, they placed themselves pell-mell as long as the seats were filled, that is to say as long as the branches of the cedar were covered with legs.

This magpie that I had always noticed was full of compassion for me, came to perch on my tree, where, pretending to enjoy itself pecking at the moss: “In truth,” she said to me, “you would not believe how much your misfortune has affected me. is sensitive, because although I am not unaware that a man among the living is a plague from which any well-policed ​​State should be purged; when I remember, however, having been raised among them from the cradle, having learned their language so perfectly that I almost forgot my own, and having eaten from their hands soft cheeses so excellent that I I couldn't think of it without water coming to my eyes and mouth, I feel tenderness for you which prevents me from leaning to the right side. »

She was finishing this, when we were interrupted by the arrival of an eagle which came and sat between the branches of a tree quite close to mine. I wanted to get up to kneel in front of him, believing that he was the king, if my paw had not contained me in my plate. “Did you think,” she said to me, “that this great eagle was our sovereign? It is an imagination of you other men, who, because you allow the greatest, the strongest and the most cruel of your companions to command, have foolishly believed, judging of all things by you, that the eagle should command us .

“But our policy is very different; for we only choose for our king the weakest, the most gentle, and the most peaceful; We still change it every six months, and we take it weak, so that the least person to whom it has done any harm can take revenge on it. We choose him gentle, so that he does not hate or make himself hated by anyone, and we want him to be in a peaceful mood, to avoid war, the channel of all injustice.

“Every week he holds the States, where everyone is allowed to complain about him. If there are only three birds dissatisfied with his government, he is dispossessed of it, and a new election is held.

“During the day that the States last, our king climbed to the top of a large yew tree on the edge of a pond, his feet and wings bound. All the birds one after the other pass in front of him; and if any of them knows him guilty of the last torture, he can throw him into the water. But he must immediately justify the reason he had for it, otherwise he is condemned to a sad death. "
I couldn't help but interrupt her to ask her what she meant by the word sad and this is what she replied:

"When the crime of a guilty person is judged so enormous, that death is too little to atone for it, we try to choose one which contains the pain of many, and we proceed in this way:

“Those of us who have the most melancholy and funereal voices are delegated to the culprit who is carried on a fatal cypress. There these sad musicians gather around him, and fill his soul through his ear with songs so lugubrious and so tragic, that the bitterness of his grief disorganizing the economy of his organs and pressing on his heart, he is consumed visibly, and dies of suffocation of sadness.

“However, such a spectacle rarely happens; because as our kings are very gentle, they never force anyone to risk such a cruel death in order to take revenge.

“He who reigns now is a dove whose mood is so peaceful that the other day two sparrows had to be granted, it was with all the difficulty in the world to make him understand what enmity was. »

My magpie could not continue such a long speech without some of those present taking notice; and because she was already suspected of some intelligence, the principals of the assembly had her hand put on the collar by an eagle of the guard who seized her person. The dove king arrived in the meantime; everyone was silent, and the first thing that broke the silence was the complaint that the great censor of birds raised against the magpie. The king, fully informed of the scandal of which she was the cause, asked her her name, and how she knew me. “Sire,” she replied, very surprised, “my name is Margot; there are many quality birds here who will answer for me. One day I learned about the land where I came from, through Guillery the Cold One, who, having heard me scream in a cage, came to visit me at the window where I was hanging, that my father was Short-tail, and my mother a Nutcracker. I wouldn't have known it without him; for I had been taken from under the wing of my parents in the cradle, very young. My mother some time later died of displeasure, and my father, now beyond the age to have other children, in despair at seeing himself without heirs, went to the jay wars, where he was killed suddenly. beak in the brain. Those who delighted me were certain wild animals called swineherders, who took me to sell to a castle, where I saw this man whom you are now putting on trial. I don't know if he conceived any good will for me, but he took the trouble to warn the servants to chop food for me. He was sometimes kind enough to prepare it for me himself. If in winter I was sluggish, he would carry me to the fire, caulk my cage or order the gardener to warm me in his shirt.

The servants did not dare to annoy me in his presence, and I remember that one day he saved me from the mouth of the cat which held me in its claws, where my lady's little lackey had exposed me. But it will not be amiss to inform you of the cause of this barbarity. To please Verdelet (that's the name of the little lackey) I repeated one day the nonsense he had taught me. Now it happened, unfortunately, although I always recited my jokes in succession, that I happened to say in his order precisely as he entered to deliver a false message: “Shut up, son of a whore, you lied! » This accused man here, who knowing the natural liar of the scoundrel, imagined that I could well have spoken by prophecy, and sent to the scene to inquire if Verdelet had been there: Verdelet was convicted of deceit, Verdelet was whipped , and Verdelet, to take revenge, would have made me eat the cat, without him. » The king, with a bow of his head, testified that he was pleased with the pity she had felt for my disaster; However, he forbade him to speak to me in secret any more. Then he asked my side's lawyer if his plea was ready. He gestured with his paw that he was going to speak, and these seem to me to be the same points on which he insisted against me: and sent to the scene to inquire if Verdelet had been there: Verdelet was convicted of deceit, Verdelet was whipped, and Verdelet to take revenge would have made me eat the cat, without him.

» The king, with a bow of his head, testified that he was pleased with the pity she had felt for my disaster; However, he forbade him to speak to me in secret any more. Then he asked my side's lawyer if his plea was ready. He gestured with his paw that he was going to speak, and these seem to me to be the same points on which he insisted against me: and sent to the scene to inquire if Verdelet had been there: Verdelet was convicted of deceit, Verdelet was whipped, and Verdelet to take revenge would have made me eat the cat, without him. » The king, with a bow of his head, testified that he was pleased with the pity she had felt for my disaster; However, he forbade him to speak to me in secret any more. Then he asked my side's lawyer if his plea was ready. He gestured with his paw that he was going to speak, and these seem to me to be the same points on which he insisted against me: testified that he was pleased with the pity she had felt for my disaster;

However, he forbade him to speak to me in secret any more. Then he asked my side's lawyer if his plea was ready. He gestured with his paw that he was going to speak, and these seem to me to be the same points on which he insisted against me: testified that he was pleased with the pity she had felt for my disaster; However, he forbade him to speak to me in secret any more. Then he asked my side's lawyer if his plea was ready. He gestured with his paw that he was going to speak, and these seem to me to be the same points on which he insisted against me:

Plea made in the Parliament of Birds, the Assembled Chambers, against an animal accused of being man.

“Gentlemen, the part of this criminal is Guillemette la Fleshy, a partridge of her extraction, newly arrived from the world of the earth, her throat still open from a lead bullet that men shot at her, plaintiff against gender human, and therefore against an animal that I claim to be a member of this great body. It would not be difficult for us to prevent by his death the violence he can commit; However, as the salvation or loss of everything that lives matters to the Republic of the living, it seems to me that we deserve to be born men, that is to say degraded from the reason and immortality that we have over them, if we had resembled them in any of their injustices.

“Let us therefore examine, gentlemen, the difficulties of this trial with all the restraint of which our divine minds are capable.

“The crux of the matter consists in knowing whether this animal is a man; and then in case we prove that he is, if for that he deserves death.

“For my part, I have no difficulty that it is not, firstly, by a feeling of horror by which we all felt seized at the sight of it without being able to say the cause; secondly, in that he laughs like a madman, thirdly, in that he cries like a fool; fourthly, in that he blows his nose like a naughty man; fifthly, in that he is feathered like a mangy man; sixth, in that he carries his tail in front; seventhly, in that he always has a quantity of small square stones in his mouth which he does not mind spitting out or swallowing; eighthly, and for conclusion, in that every morning he raises his eyes, his nose and his broad beak upwards, sticks his open hands with their tips to the sky flat against flat, and makes only one attached, as if he were bored of having two free ones; breaks his legs in half, so that he falls on his legs; then with magic words which he hums, I took care that his broken legs were reattached, and that he got up afterwards as cheerful as before. Now you know, gentlemen, that of all animals there is only man whose soul is black enough to devote himself to magic, and consequently he is a man. We must now examine whether, to be a man, he deserves death. that of all animals there is only man whose soul is black enough to devote himself to magic, and consequently he is a man. We must now examine whether, to be a man, he deserves death. that of all animals there is only man whose soul is black enough to devote himself to magic, and consequently he is a man. We must now examine whether, to be a man, he deserves death.

“I think, gentlemen, that there has never been any doubt that all creatures are produced by our common mother, to live in society. Now, if I prove that man seems to have been born only to break it, will I not prove that going against the end of his creation, he deserves that nature repents of its work?

“The first and most fundamental law for the maintenance of a republic is equality; but man cannot endure it forever: he rushes at us to eat us; he makes himself believe that we were only made for him; he takes, as an argument for his alleged superiority, the barbarity with which he massacres us, and the little resistance he finds in forcing our weakness, and however does not want to admit to his masters, the eagles, the condors, and the griffins, by which the most robust of them are overcome.

“But why should this size and arrangement of limbs mark diversity of species, since among them there are dwarves and giants?

“It is still an imaginary right that this empire of which they flatter themselves; on the contrary, they are so inclined to servitude that, for fear of failing to serve, they sell their freedom to each other. This is how the young are slaves to the old, the poor to the rich, the peasants to the gentlemen, the princes to the monarchs, and the monarchs themselves to the laws they have established. But with all this these poor serfs are so afraid of lacking masters, that as if they feared that freedom would come to them from some unexpected place, they forge gods everywhere, in the water, in the air, in fire, under the earth; they would rather make them of wood than have any, and I even believe that they are tickled by the false hopes of immortality, less by the horror with which non-being frightens them, than by the fear they have of not having someone to command them after death. This is the beautiful effect of this fantastic monarchy and this so natural empire of man over animals and over ourselves, because his insolence has been so far.

“However, as a result of this ridiculous principality, he very nicely attributes to himself the right of life and death; he sets up ambushes for us, he chains us, he throws us into prison, he slaughters us, he eats us, and, of the power to kill those who remained free, he makes a price on the nobility. He thinks that the sun was lit to enlighten him to make war on us; that nature allowed us to extend our walks in the sky only so that from our flight it could draw unfortunate or favorable auspices and when God put entrails in our body, that he only intended to make a great book where man could learn the science of future things.

“Well, isn’t that quite unbearable pride? Could the one who conceived him deserve a lesser punishment than being born a man? However, this is not what I urge you to condemn this one on. The poor creature not having the use of reason like us, I excuse his errors as for those produced by his lack of understanding; but for those who are only daughters of the will, I ask justice: for example, that he kills us, without being attacked by us; from what he eats us, being able to satisfy his hunger with more suitable food, and what I consider much more cowardly, from what he debauches the good nature of some of our people, like lanners, hawks and vultures, to teach them how to massacre their own, how to go after their fellow human beings,

“This consideration alone is so pressing, that I ask the court that he be exterminated from a sad death. »

The whole bar shudders with the horror of such great torture; This is why, in order to have reason to moderate it, the king made a sign to my lawyer to respond.
It was a starling, a great jurisconsult, who after having struck his paw three times against the branch which supported him, spoke thus to the assembly:

“It is true, gentlemen, that moved with pity, I took up the cause for this unfortunate beast; but on the point of pleading it, a remorse of conscience came to me, and like a secret voice, which forbade me from carrying out such a detestable action. So, gentlemen, I declare to you, and to the whole court, that for the salvation of my soul, I do not want to contribute in any way to the longevity of a monster such as man. »

The whole crowd clicked their beaks as a sign of rejoicing, and to congratulate the sincerity of such a fine bird.

My magpie presented himself to plead in his place; but she was required to remain silent, because having been nurtured among men, and perhaps infected with their morality, it was to be feared that she would bring a prejudiced mind to my cause; because the court of birds does not allow the lawyer, who is more interested in one client than the other, to be heard, unless he can justify that this inclination proceeds from the good rights of the party.

When my judges saw that no one appeared to defend me, they spread their wings which they shook, and immediately flew to opinions.

The greater part, as I have since learned, strongly insisted that I should be exterminated from a sad death; but, however, when it was seen that the king inclined towards gentleness, everyone returned to their opinion. Thus my judges moderated themselves, and instead of the sad death which they pardoned me, they found it appropriate to make someone of my crimes sympathize with my punishment, and to annihilate me with a torture which would serve to undeceive me, in defying this supposed empire of man over birds, that I was abandoned to the anger of the weakest among them; this means that they condemned me to be eaten by flies.

At the same time, the assembly rose, and I heard murmuring that no more attention had been paid to detailing the circumstances of my tragedy, because of the accident that happened to a bird of the troop, which had just fall into a swoon as he wanted to speak to the king. It was believed that it was caused by the horror he had of looking too fixedly at a man. This is why the order was given to take me away.

My sentence was pronounced before me, and as soon as the clerk who served as criminal clerk had finished reading it, I saw around me the sky all black with flies, bumblebees, bees, guiblets. , cousins ​​and fleas who rustled with impatience.

I was still waiting for my eagles to carry me off as usual, but I saw in their place a large black ostrich which shamefully put me astride its back (because this posture is the most ignominious among them where anyone can punish a criminal, and no bird, for whatever offense he has committed, can be condemned).

The archers who led me to the execution were about fifty condors, and as many griffins in front, and behind these flew very slowly a procession of crows which croaked some lugubrious thing, and I seemed to hear as if from further away owls who answered them.

From the place where my judgment had been rendered to me, two birds of paradise, who had been given the task of assisting me in death,

Although my soul was then very troubled because of the horror of the step I was about to take, I nevertheless remembered almost all the reasonings by which they tried to console me.

“Death,” they said to me (putting their beak in my ear), “is undoubtedly not a great evil, since nature our good mother subjects all her children to it; and it must not be a matter of great consequence, since it happens at any moment, and for so little; for if life were so excellent, it would not be in our power not to give it; or if death were to follow as a consequence of the importance that you make yourself believe, it would not be in our power to give it. There is a lot of appearance, on the contrary, since the animal begins with play, it ends in the same way. I speak to you thus, because your soul is not immortal like ours, you can well judge when you die, that everything dies with you. So do not worry about doing sooner what some of your companions will do later. Their condition is more deplorable than yours; because if death is an evil, it is only evil to those who have to die, and they will be, in price of you, who only have an hour left between here and there, fifty or sixty years in state of being able to die. And then, tell me, he who is not born is not unhappy. Now you will be like one who was not born; a wink after life, you will be what you were a wink before, and this wink past, you will be dead as long as the one who died a thousand centuries ago. who has only an hour left between here and there, fifty or sixty years old in a condition to be able to die. And then, tell me, he who is not born is not unhappy. Now you will be like one who was not born; a wink after life, you will be what you were a wink before, and this wink past, you will be dead as long as the one who died a thousand centuries ago. who has only an hour left between here and there, fifty or sixty years old in a condition to be able to die. And then, tell me, he who is not born is not unhappy. Now you will be like one who was not born; a wink after life, you will be what you were a wink before, and this wink past, you will be dead as long as the one who died a thousand centuries ago.

“But in any case, assuming that life is good, the same encounter which among the infinity of time could have made you to be, cannot some day make you be yet another blow? Matter, which by dint of mingling has finally arrived at this number, this arrangement and this order necessary for the construction of your being, can it not by remingling arrive at a disposition required to make you feel like you are still a formerly? Yes; but, will you tell me, I will not remember having been? Hey! my dear brother, what does it matter to you, as long as you feel like you are? And then can it not be that to console yourself for the loss of your life, you will imagine the same reasons that I represent to you now?

“These are considerations strong enough to force you to drink this absinthe patiently; However, I still have others that are even more pressing and which will no doubt invite you to wish for it. You must, my dear brother, persuade yourself that like you and the other brutes are material; and as death, instead of annihilating matter, it only disturbs its economy, you must, I say, believe with certainty that, ceasing to be what you were, you will begin to be something else.

So I want you to become nothing more than a clod of earth, or a stone, but you will still be something less evil than man. But I have a secret to reveal to you, which I would not want any of my companions to have heard from my mouth, and that is that being eaten, as you are going to be, by our little birds, you will pass into their substance. Yes, you will have the honor of contributing, although blindly, to the intellectual operations of our flies, and of participating in the glory, if you do not reason yourself, of at least making them reason. »
About this point in the exhortation we arrived at the place destined for my torture.

There were four trees very close to each other, and almost at the same distance, on each of which a great heron was perched at the same height. I was lowered from the black ostrich, and a number of cormorants lifted me up to where the four herons were waiting for me. These birds facing each other, each leaning firmly on its tree, with their necks of prodigious length, twisted me as if with a rope, some by the arms, others by the legs, and bound so tightly that although each of my members was only bound by the neck of one, it was not in my power to move in the slightest.

They had to remain in this posture for a long time; because I heard that these cormorants who had raised me were given the task of going fishing for the herons, and dropping food into their beaks.

We were still waiting for the flies, because they had not split the air with such a powerful flight as we did: however, we hardly remained without hearing them. For the first thing they exploited, they divided my body among themselves, and this distribution was done so maliciously that they assigned my eyes to the bees, in order to put them out by eating them; my ears, to the bumblebees, in order to stun them and decorate them all together; my shoulders, with fleas, in order to start them with a bite that itched, and so on for the rest. I had barely heard them take their orders when I immediately saw them approaching. It seemed that all the atoms of which the air is composed, had become flies; because I was hardly visited by two or three weak rays of light which seemed to escape to reach me, so close were these battalions and close to my flesh.

But as each of them was already choosing with desire the place he should bite, suddenly I saw them suddenly retreat, and among the confusion of an infinite number of bursts which resounded to the clouds, I distinguished several times this word of _Grace! grace! thanks!_

Then, two doves approached me. At their arrival, all the disastrous devices of my death dissipated; I felt my herons release the circles of these long necks which were entwining me, and my body stretched out in a saltire, roasting from the top of the four trees to the base of their roots.

I only expected my fall to crash to the ground against some rock; but at the end of my fear I was surprised to find myself sitting on a white ostrich,

They made me take a different path than the one by which I had come, because I remember that I crossed a large wood of myrtles, and another of terebinths, ending in a vast forest of olive trees where the king dove awaited me in the middle of his entire court.

As soon as he saw me he made a sign for someone to help me down. Immediately two eagles of the guard stretched out their paws to me, and carried me to their prince.

Out of respect, I wanted to kiss and kiss Her Majesty's little dewclaws, but she withdrew. “And I ask you,” she said beforehand, “if you know this bird? »

At these words, they showed me a parrot which began to wheel and beat its wings, as it noticed that I was looking at it: “And it seems to me,” I cried to the king, “that I have seen it somewhere; but fear and joy have so blurred the species for me that I cannot yet clearly mark where it was. »

The parrot at these words came to my face with its two wings, and said to me:

“What! you no longer know Caesar, your cousin's parrot, about whom you have so many times maintained that birds reason? It was I who earlier during your trial wanted, after the hearing, to declare the obligations I have to you: but the pain of seeing you in such great danger made me faint.” His speech completely cleared my vision. Having therefore recognized him, I embraced and kissed him; he kissed me and kissed me. “So,” I said to him, “is it you, my poor Caesar, to whom I opened the cage to give you back the freedom that the tyrannical custom of our world had taken away from you? »

The king interrupted our caresses, and spoke to me as follows: “Man, among us a good deed is never wasted; This is why even though, being a man, you deserve to die only because you were born, the Senate gives you life. It can well accompany with this recognition the lights with which nature illuminated your instinct, when it made you sense in us the reason that you were not capable of knowing. So go in peace, and live joyfully! »

He gave a few orders in a low voice, and my white ostrich, led by two doves, carried me away from the assembly.

After having galloped with me for about half a day, she left me near a forest, where I plunged as soon as she had left. There I began to taste the pleasure of freedom,

I think I would never have finished my walk; because the pleasant diversity of the place always made me discover something more beautiful, if my body could have resisted the work. But as I finally found myself completely softened with weariness, I let myself sink onto the grass.

Thus lying in the shade of these trees, I felt invited to sleep by the sweet freshness and silence of solitude, when an uncertain sound of confused voices that I seemed to hear fluttering around me, woke me up with a start.

The ground appeared very level, and did not bristle with any bush that could interrupt the view; that's why mine stretched out a long way between the trees of the forest. However, the whisper that came to my ear could only come from very close to me; so that having paid even more attention to it, I heard very distinctly a series of Greek words; and among many people who were talking, I discerned one who expressed himself thus:

“Mr. doctor, one of my allies, the three-headed elm, has just sent me a finch, by which he informs that he is ill with an etic fever, and a great case of moss, with which he is covered from head to toe. I beg you, through the friendship you have for me, to order him something. »

I remained for some time without hearing anything; but, after a little space, it seemed to me that they replied thus: "When the three-headed elm is not your ally, and when, instead of you who are my friend, the strangest of our kind would pray to me, my profession obliges me to help everyone. You will therefore make the three-headed elm say that to cure its illness, it needs to suck as much wet and as little dry as it can; that, for this purpose, he must lead the little nets of his roots towards the moistest place of his bed, talk only about cheerful things, and have music given to him every day by a few excellent nightingales. Afterwards, he will let you know how he found himself living under this regime; and then according to the progress of his illness, When we have prepared his moods, some stork of my friends will give him an enema from me which will completely restore his convalescence. »

These words finished, I no longer heard the slightest sound; except that a quarter of an hour later, a voice which, it seems to me, I had not yet noticed, reached my ear; and this is how she spoke: “Hey, forked, are you sleeping? » I heard another voice reply thus: “No, fresh bark; Why? - It is, continued the one who had first broken the silence, that I feel moved in the same way that we are accustomed to being, when these animals that we call men approach us; and I would like to ask you if you feel the same way. »

It was some time before the other responded, as if he wanted to apply his most secret senses to this discovery. Then he cried out, “My God!” you are right, and I swear to you that I find my organs so full of the species of a man, that I am the most deceived in the world, if there is not someone very close to here. »

Then several voices mingled, saying that they certainly smelled a man.

No matter how much I looked from all sides, I could not discover where this word could come from. Finally, after having recovered a little from the horror with which this event had dismayed me, I replied to the one whom I seemed to notice that it was she who asked if there was a man there, that there was had one: “But I beg you,” I continued immediately, “whoever you are who speaks to me, to tell me where you are?” A moment later I listened to these words:

“We are in your presence: your eyes look at us, and you do not see us! Consider the oaks where we feel that you hold your sight attached; it is we who speak to you; and if you are surprised that we speak a language used in the world you come from, know that our first fathers came from there; they lived in Epirus in the forest of Dodonne, where their natural goodness invited them to render oracles to the afflicted who consulted them. For this purpose they had learned the Greek language, the most universal that was then, in order to be heard; and because we are descended from them, from father to son, the gift of prophecy has flowed down to us. Now you will know that a great eagle to whom our fathers of Dodonne gave retirement, not being able to go hunting because of a broken hand, was feasting on the acorn that their branches provided it, when one day, bored of living in a world which suffered so much, it took its flight to the sun, and continued its journey so happily, that finally it approached the luminous globe where we are; but on her arrival, the heat of the climate made her vomit: she forcibly discharged an undigested acorn; this acorn germinated, it grew into oaks which were our ancestors.

“This is how we changed dwellings. However, even though you hear us speak a human language, this does not mean that the other trees can be explained in the same way; there is nothing but us oaks, from the forest of Dodonne, who spoke like you; because for other vegetants, this is their way of expressing themselves. Have you not paid attention to this gentle and subtle wind, which never fails to breathe at the edge of the woods? It is the breath of their speech; and this little murmur or this delicate noise with which they break the sacred silence of their solitude is truly their language. But even though the sound of the forests always seems the same, it is nevertheless so different that each species of vegetation keeps its own particular one, so that the birch does not speak like the maple, nor beech like cherry. If the stupid people of your world had heard me speak as I do, they would believe that it would be a devil locked under my skin; for far from believing that we can reason, he does not even imagine that we have a sensitive soul; although, every day, he sees that with the first blow with which the woodcutter attacks a tree, the ax enters the flesh four times further than with the second; and he must conjecture that the first blow certainly surprised him and struck him unawares, since as soon as he was warned by the pain, he collected himself, gathered his strength to fight, and was as if petrified to resist the harshness of his enemy's weapons. But my purpose is not to make the blind understand the light; a particular is the whole species to me, and the whole species is only a particular to me, when the particular is not infected with the errors of the species; This is why be attentive, because I believe I am speaking, in speaking to you, to the whole human race.

“You will therefore know, first of all, that almost all the concerts in which birds make music are composed in praise of trees; but, also, as a reward for the care they take to celebrate our beautiful actions, we take the trouble to hide their loves; for do not imagine, when you have so much difficulty discovering one of their nests, that it comes from the prudence with which they hid it. It is the tree which itself has bent its branches all around the nest to protect the family of its host from the cruelties of man. And let it not be so, consider the area of ​​those, or who were born at the destruction of the birds their fellow citizens, such as hawks, honbereaux, kites, falcons, etc.; or who only speak to quarrel, like jays and magpies; or who take pleasure in scaring us, like owls and hooting cats. You will notice that the area of ​​these is abandoned in the sight of everyone, because the tree has moved its branches away from it, in order to give it prey.

“But there is no need to particularize so many things to prove that trees exercise, whether of the body or of the soul, all your functions. Is there anyone among you who has not noticed that in spring, when the sun has delighted our bark with fertile sap, we extend our branches, and spread them laden with fruit on the bosom of the earth who we are in love with? The earth, for its part, opens up and heats with the same ardor; and as if each of our branches were a ........, she approaches it to join it; and our branches, transported with pleasure, discharge, into her lap, the seed that she burns to conceive. However, she is nine months in forming this embryo before bringing it to light; but the tree,

“Well, you men look at these things eternally, and never contemplate them; In your eyes, even more convincing ones have happened which have not only shaken the shocked. »

My attention was very focused on the speeches that this arboreal voice was telling me, and I was waiting for the rest, when suddenly it stopped in a tone similar to that of a person whose shortness of breath would prevent them from speaking. .

This voice was, I think, going to start another speech; but the sound of a great alarm which occurred prevented him from doing so. The whole forest resounded with these words: Beware of the plague! and Pass the word!

I conjured the tree which had supported me for so long, to teach me where such great disorder had come from.

“My friend,” he said to me, “we are not yet well informed in these quarters about the particularities of evil. I will only tell you in three words that this plague, with which we are threatened, is what among men we call conflagration. We can well call it that, since among us there is no such contagious disease. The remedy we are going to bring is to stiffen our breath, and to blow together towards the place where the inflammation is coming from, in order to repel this bad air. I believe that what brought us this burning fever is a fiery beast, which has been prowling around our woods for several days; because as they never go without fire and cannot do without it, this one will undoubtedly have come to give it to someone from our trees.

“We had summoned the icicle animal to come to our aid; however it has not yet arrived. But goodbye, I don't have time to talk to you, we must think about the common salvation; and you yourself take flight, otherwise you run the risk of being enveloped in our ruin. »

I followed his advice, but without hurrying much, because I knew my legs. However, I knew so little about the map of the country that after eighteen hours I found myself behind the forest from which I thought I was fleeing; and to add to my apprehension, a hundred terrible bursts of thunder shook my brain, while the disastrous and pale light of a thousand lightnings came to extinguish my eyes.

From moment to moment the blows redoubled with such fury that it seemed as if the foundations of the world were going to collapse; and despite all this the sky never seemed more serene. As I saw myself at the end of my reasons, finally the desire to know the cause of such an extraordinary event invited me to walk towards the place from which the noise seemed to spread.

I walked for about four hundred stadiums, at the end of which I saw in the middle of a very large field like two balls which, after having rustled for a long time around each other, They approached and then retreated. And I observed that, when the collision took place, it was then that we heard these loud blows; but as I walked further, I recognized that what from a distance had appeared to me to be two balls, were two animals; one of which, although round from below, formed a triangle in the middle; and his very high head, with his red hair which flowed against the hillside, was sharpened into a pyramid. His body was perforated like a sieve, and through these loose holes which served as pores,

As I walked around there, I met a very venerable old man who was watching this famous fight with as much curiosity as I was. He beckoned me to come closer: I obeyed, and we sat down next to each other.

I intended to ask him the reason which had brought him to this country, but he closed my mouth with these words: “Well, you will know, the reason which brings me to this country! » And thereupon he told me at length all the particularities of his journey. I leave you to think if I remained forbidden. However, to increase my consternation, as I already burned to ask him what demon revealed my thoughts to him: “No, no,” he cried, “it is not a demon who reveals your thoughts to me...”

This new soothsaying trick made me observe him with more attention than before, and I noticed that he counterfeited my bearing, my gestures, my appearance, located all his limbs and figured all the parts of his face on the pattern of the mine; finally my shadow in relief could not have represented me better. “I see,” he continued, “that you are at a loss to know why I am counterfeiting you, and I am willing to tell you. Know then that in order to know your interior, I arranged all the parts of my body in an order similar to yours; because being on all sides situated like you, I excite in myself by this arrangement of matter, the same thought that this same arrangement of matter produces in you.

“You will judge this effect to be possible, if, however, you have observed that Geminis who resemble each other usually have similar minds, passions, and wills; until then, two brothers met in Paris who only ever had the same illnesses and the same health; got married, without knowing each other's plans, at the same time and on the same day; reciprocally wrote letters to each other, the meaning, the words and the constitution of which were the same, and which finally composed the same kind of verses on the same subject, with the same points, the same turn and the same order. But don't you see that it was impossible that the composition of the organs of their bodies being the same in all these circumstances, they would not operate in a similar way, since two equal instruments touched equally must render equal harmony? And thus completely conforming my body to yours, and becoming, so to speak, your gemini, it is impossible for the same movement of matter not to cause the same movement of mind in both of us. »

After that he began to counterfeit me again, and continued thus: “You are now very confused about the origin of the fight between these two monsters, but I want to teach you. Know then that the trees of the forest that we have on our backs, not having been able to repel with their breath the violent efforts of the fire beast, have resorted to the animal icicle.

“I have only heard of these animals,” I told him, “from an oak tree in this region, but very hastily, because it was only thinking of protecting itself. This is why I beg you to teach me about it.

This is how he spoke to me: “We would see in this globe where we are the woods very sparse, because of the large number of fire-bearing beasts which desolate them, without the glacial animals which every day at the prayer of the forests their friends, come cure diseased trees; I say cure, because barely with their frozen mouths have they blown on the coals of this plague, they extinguish it.

“In the earth world where you are from, and where I am from, the fire beast is called salamander, and the icicle animal is known there by that of remore. Now you will know that the remores live towards the end of the pole, in the depths of the icy sea; and it is the coldness evaporated from these fish through their scales, which causes the water of the sea to freeze in these areas, although salty.

“Most of the pilots, who traveled to discover Greenland, finally experienced that in a certain season the ice which had otherwise stopped them no longer met; but even though this sea was free at the time when the winter was the harshest, they still attributed the cause to some secret heat which had melted them; but it is much more likely that the remores, which only feed on ice, had then absorbed them.

Now you must know that, a few months after they have had their fill, this frightful digestion makes their stomachs so sluggish that the very breath they exhale makes the whole sea of ​​the Pole once again. When they go out onto the earth, because they live in both elements,

“We are surprised in our world where these chilly northern winds come from which always drag the frost; but if our compatriots knew, like us, that the remores live in this climate, they would know, like us, that they come from the breath with which they try to repel the heat of the sun which approaches them.

“This stigiad water with which the great Alexander was poisoned and whose coldness petrified his entrails, was the piss of one of these animals. Finally, the remore contains so eminently all the principles of coldness, that, passing over a vessel, the vessel finds itself seized with cold so that it remains completely numb until it cannot start from its place. This is why half of those who sailed towards the north to discover the Pole did not return, because it is a miracle if the remores, whose number is so great in this sea, do not stop their ships. That's it for the frozen animals.

“But as for the fiery beasts, they live in the earth, under mountains of lit bitumen, like Etna, Vesuvius and Cape Red. These pimples that you see on his throat, which come from the inflammation of his liver, are... »

We remained after that without speaking, to pay attention to this famous duel.

The salamander attacked with great ardor; but the remore held impenetrably. Each collision they made generated a clap of thunder, as happens in the worlds around here, where the meeting of a hot cloud with a cold one excites the same noise.
From the eyes of the salamander there came out with each angry outburst that it darted against its enemy, a red light whose air seemed alight: while flying, it sweated boiling oil, and pissed strong water.

The remore, on its side, was large, heavy and square, showing a body all flaked with icicles. Her large eyes seemed like two crystal plates, the gaze of which carried such a mournful light that I felt the winter shiver on every member of my body where she attached them. If I thought of putting my hand in front, my hand took the nail; the very air around her, affected by her rigor, thickened into snow, the earth hardened under his feet; and I could count the beast's tracks by the number of frostbite that greeted me when I stepped on them.

At the beginning of the fight, the salamander, because of the vigorous restraint of its first ardor, had made the remore sweat; but in the long run this sweat having cooled, enameled the entire plain with such slippery ice that the salamander could not reach the remore without falling. The philosopher and I knew well that after falling and getting up so many times, she was tired; because these bursts of thunder, previously so frightful, which gave rise to the shock with which she struck her enemy, were now nothing more than the dull noise of those little blows which mark the end of a storm, and this dull noise, gradually dampened little by little, degenerated into a quivering sound similar to that of a hot iron immersed in cold water.

When the remore knew that the fight was drawing to a close, by the weakening of the shock from which it barely felt shaken, it stood up on a corner of its cube and let itself fall with all its weight on the stomach of the salamander, with such success, that the heart of the poor salamander, where all the rest of its ardor had been concentrated, when bursting, made such a terrible burst that I know of nothing in nature to compare it with.

Thus the beast of fire died under the lazy resistance of the animal of ice.

Some time after the remore had retired, we approached the battlefield; and the old man, having coated his hands with the earth on which she had walked as a preservative against burning, he grabbed the corpse of the salamander. “With the body of this animal,” he said to me, “I have no use for a fire in my kitchen; because as long as it hangs on the rack, it will boil and roast everything I put on the hearth. As for the eyes, I guard them carefully; if they were cleansed of the shadows of death, you would take them for two little suns. The ancients of our world knew how to implement them well; This is what they called burning lamps, and they were only attached to the pompous tombs of illustrious people.

“Our moderns encountered them while excavating some of these famous tombs, but their ignorant curiosity exhausted them, thinking of finding behind the broken membranes this fire which they saw glowing there. »

The old man was still walking, and I followed him, attentive to the wonders he told me about. Now regarding the fight, I must not forget the conversation we had regarding the ice cube animal.

“I don't believe,” he said to me, “that you have ever seen remores, because these fish hardly rise above the surface of the water; yet they hardly abandon the northern ocean. But no doubt you will have seen certain animals which in some way can be described as their species. I told you earlier that this sea, moving towards the poles, is full of remores, which throw their spawn on the mud like other fish. You will therefore know that this seed extracted from all their mass contains so eminently all the coldness, that if a ship is pushed over it, the ship contracts one or more worms which become birds, whose blood deprived of heat causes that they are classified, although they have wings, among the number of fish. Also the Sovereign Pontiff, who knows their origin, do not forbid eating it during Lent. That's what you call scoters. »

I always walked with no other intention than to follow him, but so delighted at having found a man that I did not dare take my eyes off him, so afraid was I of losing him.