Chapter III: Part 3

"Except for the attribute of God", he replied, "what you say is true; this Earth is the Moon which you see from your Globe and the place where you walk is Paradise, but it is the Earthly Paradise into which only six people have ever entered: Adam, Eve, Enoch, Myself who am old Elijah, Saint John the Evangelist and you. You know very well how the two first were banished hence but you do not know how they came to your World. Know then that when they had both tasted the forbidden apple, Adam, fearful lest God should be further irritated by his presence and increase his punishment, considered the Moon, your Earth, as the sole refuge wherein he could shelter from the vengeance of his Creator. Well, at that time man's imagination was so strong, being not yet corrupted by debaucheries, by coarse foods or by the weakening of diseases, that when he was excited by a violent desire to reach this refuge his whole body became lightened through the fire of this enthusiasm and he was uplifted just as certain philosophers, whose imagination has been greatly moved by something, have been carried into the air by transports which you call ecstatic. Eve who was weaker and not so hot, because of the infirmity of her sex, doubtless would not have possessed an imagination able to conquer by the mere strength of its will the weight of matter, but since she had been but a little time made out of her husband's body the sympathy which still bound this portion to the original whole carried her after him as he went up, just as amber is followed by a straw, as the loadstone turns to the north from whence it has been torn. And Adam attracted this part of himself as the sea attracts the rivers which are made out of her. When they reached your Earth they took up their abode between Mesopotamia and Arabia; the Hebrews knew him by the name of Adam and the idolaters by the name of Prometheus, feigned by their poets to have stolen fire from Heaven, because the progeny he begot were endowed with a soul as perfect as that which God had filled him with; thus the first man left this world deserted to inhabit yours, but the All-Wise willed that so happy a dwelling-place should not remain uninhabited and a few centuries later he granted Enoch permission to leave the company of mankind, whose innocence had become corrupted. This holy personage considered that no retreat was secure against the ambition of his relatives (who were already cutting each other's throats for the possession of your world) except that happy land whereof Adam, his grandfather, had formerly talked so much. Yet how was he to get there? Jacob's Ladder was not yet invented! The grace of the Most High supplied the deficiency by causing Enoch to observe that the fire from Heaven descended upon the sacrifices of the just and of those who were acceptable before the face of the Lord, according to the word of His mouth: 'The savour of the just man's sacrifices has reached me.' One day when this divine flame was fiercely consuming a victim which he offered to the Eternal, he filled two large vessels with the vapour it gave off, sealed them hermetically and attached them under his arm-pits. The smoke immediately had a tendency to rise straight up to God and, not being able to penetrate the metal save by a miracle, bore the vessels upwards and in the same way carried with them this holy man.[33] When he reached the Moon and looked upon this fair garden an almost supernatural out-pouring of joy showed him that it was the Earthly Paradise wherein his grandfather had formerly dwelt. He promptly loosened the vessels which he had bound like wings on to his shoulders and did so with so much good fortune that he was scarce four toises in the air above the Moon when he took leave of his bladders. However he was sufficiently high up to have been sadly hurt had not the wind borne up the ample skirts of his robe.[34] The ardour of the fire of charity sustained him also. As to the vessels they continued to rise until God set them in the Heavens and they are what you to-day call the Balance, showing us every day that they are still full of the odours of a just man's sacrifice by the favourable influences they exert on the horoscope of Louis the Just, who had the Balance as his ascendant.

[Footnote 33: Juppont considers this a premonition of the balloon.]

[Footnote 34: A parachute. (Juppont).]

"Enoch nevertheless was not yet in this garden; he arrived there some time later. This was during the flood when the waters which engulfed your world rose to so prodigious a height that the Ark swam in the Heavens beside the Moon. The human beings within saw this globe through the window but the light reflected from this great opaque body was weakened because they were so near that they shared it and so each of them thought it was a part of the Earth not yet flooded. One daughter of Noah, named Achab, alone maintained tooth and nail that it was positively the Moon, perhaps because she had noticed they had approached this body as the ship rose. They pointed out to her that the sounding-line marked but fifteen fathoms of water; she only replied that the lead must have touched the back of a whale which they took for Earth and that for her part she was well assured it was the Moon in person they were about to board. In fine, since each one follows the opinion of his like, all the other women in turn grew convinced of it and in spite of the men's prohibition they launched the skiff on the water. Achab was the most daring and desired to be the first to affront the peril. She threw herself gaily into the boat and would have been followed by all those of her sex had not a wave separated her from the ship. They called to her, said she was a hundred times lunatic, vowed that through her every woman would one day be reproached for having a quarter of the Moon in her head--she did but flout them. There she was sailing outside the world. The animals followed her example, for most of the birds, impatient at the first prison that had ever restrained their liberty, flew thither if they felt their wings strong enough to risk the journey. The boldest of the quadrupeds even began to swim. More than a thousand got out before Noah's sons could shut the stables which were kept open by the crowd of animals rushing through. Most of them reached this new world. As for the skiff, it grounded upon a very pleasant hill where the courageous Achab landed. Delighted at having recognised that this Earth was indeed the Moon she was unwilling to embark again and join her brothers. She spent some time in a cave and one day as she was walking out, debating whether she were sorry or very glad to have lost the company of her relatives, she saw a man knocking down acorns. The joy of such a meeting made her fly to embrace him, and she received the like from him, for it was still longer since the old man had seen a human face. It was Enoch the Just. They lived together, begat posterity and had he not been obliged to withdraw into the woods by the original sin of his children and the pride of his wife, they would have passed the remainder of their days together with all the comfort God bestows as a blessing upon the marriage of the Just. There, every day in the wildest retreats of these terrible solitudes he offered up to God with a purified spirit his heart as a sacrifice. One day the Tree of Knowledge, which as you know is in this garden, dropped an apple in the river on whose bank it is planted and the fruit was carried out of Paradise by the waves to a place where poor Enoch was fishing to gain his scanty subsistence. This beautiful fruit was caught in his net and he ate it. Immediately he knew where the Earthly Paradise was and he came to live in it by secret means which you cannot conceive if you have not eaten, as he did, the Apple of Knowledge.

"Now I must tell you the manner in which I came here myself. You have not forgotten, I suppose, that my name is Elijah, for I told you so just now. You must know then that I was in your world and that I dwelt with Elisha, a Hebrew like myself, on the banks of the Jordan where I spent among books a life pleasant enough not to make me regret that it was continually passing away. However, as the enlightenment of my spirit increased, the knowledge of the enlightenment I did not possess increased also. Whenever our priests reminded me of Adam I could not forbear sighing at the recollection of that perfect Philosophy he had possessed. I despaired of being able to acquire it, when one day, after I had sacrificed to expiate the sins of my mortal Being, I fell asleep and the Angel of the Lord appeared to me in a dream. As soon as I awoke I failed not to labour at those things he had commanded me; I took of loadstone two square feet and cast it into a furnace, and when it was purged, precipitated and dissolved, I drew out the attractive principle, calcined the whole elixir and reduced it to the bulk of a medium-sized ball.

"Following upon these preparations I had made a very light chariot of iron and some months later, all my engines being completed, I entered my ingenious cart. Perhaps you will ask what was the use of this appliance? Know then that the Angel told me in my dream that if I desired to acquire the perfect knowledge I wished for I should rise from the world to the Moon, where I should find the Tree of Knowledge in Adam's Paradise and as soon as I had tasted its fruit my soul would perceive all the truths a created mind can perceive. For this voyage I had built my chariot. I got into it and when I was well and firmly seated in it I cast the loadstone ball high into the air. Now I had expressly made my iron machine thicker in the middle than at the ends and so it was lifted immediately in perfect equilibrium because it moved always more eagerly in that part. Thus, directly I arrived where the loadstone had drawn me I threw up the ball again in the air above me."

"But", I interrupted, "how did you throw the ball so straight above your chariot that it never went sideways?"

"I see nothing astounding in this adventure", said he, "for when the loadstone was cast into the air it attracted the iron straight to it and consequently it was impossible that I should rise sideways. I must tell you that I held the ball in my hand and continued to rise because the chariot rushed always towards the loadstone which I held above it; but the movement of the iron to join with the ball was so vigorous that it bent my body double and I dared not attempt the new experiment more than once. In truth it was a very surprising spectacle to behold, for I had polished the steel of this flying house carefully and it reflected on all sides the light of the Sun so keenly and sharply that I myself thought I was being carried away in a chariot of fire. At length after I had many times thrown the ball upwards and had flown after it, I arrived (as you did) at a place where I began to fall towards this world; and because at that moment I happened to be holding the loadstone ball tightly in my hands my chariot pressed against me to approach the body which attracted it and therefore did not leave me. All I had to fear now was breaking my neck, but to preserve myself from that I threw up the ball from time to time so that my machine, feeling itself attracted back, would rest and so break the force of my fall. Finally, when I was about two or three hundred toises above the ground I threw the ball out on either side level with the chariot, sometimes in the one direction and sometimes in the other, until my eyes discovered the Earthly Paradise. Immediately I failed not to throw my loadstone above it and, when the machine followed, I let myself fall until I saw I was about to be hurled against the ground; then I threw the ball upwards a foot only above my head and this little cast diminished altogether the speed I had acquired in falling so that my descent was no more violent than if I had jumped down my own height. I will not describe to you my amazement at the sight of the marvels which are here, because it was very similar to that which I perceive has just perturbed you.

"You must know, however, that the next day I came upon the Tree of Life, by whose means I prevented myself from growing old. Age very soon disappeared and the serpent went up in smoke."

At these words I said: "Venerable and holy Patriarch, I should be happy to know what you mean by this serpent which disappeared."

With a laughing face he replied thus: "I forgot, O my son, to reveal to you a secret which could not hitherto have been imparted to you. You must know then that after Eve and her husband had eaten the forbidden apple, God punished the serpent that had tempted them by confining it in man's body. Since then in punishment for the crime of the first father every human being who is born nourishes in his belly a serpent, the issue of the first one. You call this the bowels and think them necessary for the functions of life, but learn that they are nothing else than a serpent coiled upon itself in several folds. When you hear your guts rumble, it is the serpent that hisses and, according to that gluttonous nature with which he formerly incited the first man to eat too much, asks for food himself. God, to punish you, desired to make you mortal like other animals, and caused you to be possessed by this insatiable beast, to the intent that if you feed him too much you choke yourself or, if you refuse him his pittance when the starveling gnaws your stomach with his invisible teeth, then he rumbles, he rages, he pours out that venom which doctors call bile and so heats you with the poison he pours into your arteries that you are soon destroyed by it. Finally, to show you that your bowels are a serpent you have in your body, remember serpents were found in the graves of Æsculapius, Scipio, Alexander, Charles Martel and Edward of England, still feeding upon the corpses of their hosts."

"Truly", said I, interrupting him, "I have observed that since this serpent is always trying to escape from man's body his head and neck may be seen projecting from the lower part of our bellies. But God did not permit man alone to be tormented by it, he willed that it should rise up against woman to cast its venom upon her and that the swelling should last nine months after she had been bitten. And to prove to you that I speak according to the word of the Lord, He said to the serpent (to curse it) that though it might make woman fall by rising up against her, she would make it lower its head."

I would have continued these trifles but Elijah prevented me: "Remember", said he, "that this place is holy." He then remained silent some time as if to recollect the place in which he dwelt, and continued in these words: "I only taste the Fruit of Life every hundred years. The taste of its juice somewhat resembles spirits. I think it was the apple that Adam had eaten which caused our earliest forefathers to live so long, because something of its energy had flowed into their seed and was only extinguished in the waters of the flood.[35] The Tree of Knowledge is planted opposite. Its fruit is covered with a rind which produces ignorance in anyone who tastes it and preserves under the thickness of this peel the spiritual virtues of that learned food. After Adam was expelled from this blessed land God rubbed his gums with this peel, lest he should find the way back to it again. For more than fifteen years after this time he doted and forgot everything so completely that neither he nor his progeny down to Moses remembered the creation. But the remains of the power of this weighty peel were finally dissipated by the warmth and light of that great Prophet's genius. Happily I began on one of the apples which was so ripe it had shed its skin and my saliva had scarcely dampened it when universal Philosophy took me by the nose. It seemed to me that an infinite number of little eyes sank into my head and I knew at once how to converse with the Lord. Afterwards when I reflected upon this miraculous removal I felt that I could not have overcome merely through the occult virtues of a simple body the vigilance of the Seraph whom God placed on guard over this Paradise. But since it pleases Him to make use of secondary causes I thought He had inspired me with this means of entering it as He had made use of Adam's ribs to create a woman, although He could have formed her out of earth as well as the man.

[Footnote 35: Cyrano seems to have forgotten that the apple of Eden came from the Tree of Knowledge, not the Tree of Life.]

"I remained for a long time in this garden walking without a companion. But at last, as the Angel at the Gate of the place was my principal host, I felt a desire to speak to him. An hour's walking ended my journey, for at the expiration of this time I reached a country where a thousand flashes of lightning confounding themselves into one formed a blinding daylight which served but to make darkness visible.

"I had not yet recovered from this adventure when I saw a fair young man before me. 'I am', said he, 'the Archangel you are seeking and I have just read in God that He had suggested to you the means of coming here and that He desires you to await His pleasure.' He conversed with me on several subjects and among other things told me that the light at which I had seemed frightened had nothing formidable about it, that it lighted up almost every evening when he was making his rounds because, in order to avoid the artifices of sorcerers, who enter everywhere without being seen, he was forced to indulge in broad sword play with his flaming brand all round the Earthly Paradise and that this light was caused by the flashing of his steel. 'Those which you perceive from your World', he added, 'are produced by me. If you see them sometimes afar off, that is because the clouds of a distant country, being disposed to receive this impression, reflect on to you these light images of fire, just as vapour differently placed is disposed to make a rainbow. I will not tell you any more, because the Apple of Knowledge is not far from here and as soon as you have eaten of it you will be as learned as I. But above all take care of this mistake; most of the fruits which hang on that plant are covered with a rind and if you taste it you will descend beneath Man, whereas the inner part will uplift you as high as the Angels.'"

Elijah had reached this point in the instructions the Angel had given him when a little man joined us. "This is the Enoch of whom I have spoken", whispered my guide. As he spoke, Enoch presented us with a basket filled with I know not what fruits, similar to pomegranates, which he had discovered that day in a retired grove. I put some of them in my pockets at Elijah's command, when Enoch asked who I was.

"'Tis an adventure which merits a longer conversation", answered my guide, "this evening when we go to bed he will tell us himself the miraculous details of his journey."

As he said this we reached a kind of hermitage made of palm branches ingeniously interwoven with myrtles and orange-trees. There I perceived in a little corner several heaps of a certain thread so white and so fine that it might have passed for the spirit of snow. I saw also spindles lying here and there. I asked my guide what they were used for and he replied, "To spin. When the good Enoch wishes to unbend from his meditations, sometimes he dresses the thread, and sometimes he weaves the linen which serves to make chemises for the eleven thousand virgins. You must have met sometimes in your world with something that floats through the air in the autumn about harvest-time. The peasants call it, 'Our Lady's cotton', but it is really the waste which Enoch clears off the linen as he makes it."

We went away without taking leave of Enoch, who lived in this hut, and we were obliged to depart from him so soon, because he prays every six hours, and that time had fully elapsed since his last orison.

As we went along I besought Elijah to conclude the story of the assumptions he had begun, and I told him that I thought he had broken off at the story of Saint John the Evangelist.

"Since you have not the patience", said he, "to wait until the Apple of Knowledge teaches you all these things far better than I can, I will tell you. Know then that God...."

At this word I know not how the Devil interfered, but I could not prevent myself from interrupting him waggishly:

"I remember", said I, "God was one day informed that the soul of this Evangelist was so detached that he only retained it by clenching his teeth. The Eternal Wisdom was mightily surprised at so unexpected an accident, exclaiming: 'Alas! He must not taste death. He is predestined to rise up to the Earthly Paradise in his flesh and bones. Yet the hour wherein I had foreseen he should be uplifted has almost expired! Just Heavens! What will men say of Me when they know I have been mistaken?' Thus to cover up His mistake the Eternal was constrained in His irresolution to cause him to be there without having the time to make him go there."

All the time I was speaking Elijah gazed at me with eyes that would have killed me had I been in a condition to die of anything but hunger.

"Abominable wretch!" said he, recoiling from me, "you have the impudence to banter holy things and assuredly it would not be with impunity if the All-Wise did not wish to leave you as a famous example of His pity to all nations. Hence, thou impious fellow, go from here, publish in this little world and in the other (for you are predestined to return there) the irreconcilable hatred of God to Atheists."

He had scarcely finished this imprecation when he seized hold of me and began to drag me roughly towards the gate. When we came near a large tree, whose branches were weighed almost to the ground by their burden of fruit, he said: "That is the Tree of Knowledge from which you would have drawn inconceivable enlightenment had you not been so irreligious."

He had not finished speaking when, pretending to faint with weakness, I stumbled against a branch from which I nimbly stole an apple. I had still several steps to make before I should get out of this delightful park but I was so violently attacked by hunger that I forgot I was in the hands of an angry prophet, pulled out one of the apples I had put in my pocket and thrust my teeth into it. But instead of taking one of those which Enoch had given to me, my hand fell on the apple I had picked from the Tree of Knowledge, which unfortunately I had not peeled.

I had scarcely tasted it when a thick night descended upon my soul; I did not see my apple any more nor Elijah beside me and my eyes did not recognise a single trace of the Earthly Paradise in the whole hemisphere, yet I did not cease to remember all that had happened to me there.

Afterwards, reflecting on this miracle, I supposed that the rind of this fruit did not wholly stupefy me, because my teeth went through it and felt a little of the inner juice, whose energy dispelled the malignities of the peel.

I was vastly surprised to find myself all alone in the midst of a land I did not know. I turned my eyes about me and gazed over the country, but no living thing presented itself to console me. At last I resolved to walk forward until Fortune brought me into the company of some creature or of death. She heard me favourably, for at the end of a half-quarter of an hour I met with two very large animals, one of which stayed before me while the other ran swiftly towards its den; at least I thought so, because a little time later I saw it return with more than seven or eight hundred of the same species, who surrounded me. When I could examine them near at hand I perceived that their body and face were like ours. This adventure made me remember the stories I had heard my nurse tell formerly about sirens, fauns and satyrs; from time to time they set up such furious shriekings, caused no doubt by their wonder at seeing me, that I almost thought I had become a monster.

One of these beast-men seized me by the neck, as wolves do when they carry off a sheep, cast me upon his back and took me to their town. I was greatly astounded when I saw that they were indeed men and yet every one I met walked on four legs. When the people saw me pass, seeing I was so small (for most of them are twelve cubits high) and that my body was supported by two feet only, they could not believe I was a man; for they hold that as Nature has given men two arms and two legs like the beasts, they ought to use them in the same way. And indeed, musing on this subject afterwards, I have thought that this position of the body was not so extravagant, for I recollected that our children walk on four feet when they are taught by Nature alone and only rise on two feet through the care of their nurses who set them in little carts and tie them with straps to prevent their falling on four feet, which is the only position wherein the shape of our body tends to repose.

At that time they said (according to the interpretation made to me afterwards) that I was certainly the female of the Queen's little animal. As this or as something else I was carried to the town hall, where I noticed from the buzz and the gestures made by the people and the magistrates that they were arguing together about what I might be. When they had talked together for a long time a certain citizen who kept rare beasts begged the aldermen to lend me to him until the Queen sent for me to live with my male. No objection was made. This mountebank took me to his home; he taught me to play the buffoon, to throw somersaults, to make grimaces and in the afternoon he took money at the door for showing me.[36]

[Footnote 36: See Appendix I. for Swift's use of this idea.]

At length Heaven, moved by my misfortunes and displeased to see the Temple of its Master profaned, willed that one day when I was tied to the end of a cord with which the mountebank made me leap to amuse the mob, one of those looking on gazed at me very attentively and at length asked me in Greek who I was. I was vastly surprised to hear him speak there as in our world. He questioned me for some time; I replied and told him afterwards in general terms what I had undertaken and the success of my voyage. He consoled me and I remember that he said: "Well, my son, you suffer the penalties of the failings of your world at last. Here, as there, exists a mob which cannot endure the thought of things to which it is not accustomed, but know that you receive a reciprocal treatment, for if someone from this earth should rise to yours and have the boldness to call himself a man, your learned men would have him smothered as a monster or as an ape possessed by a Devil." He promised me afterwards that he would inform the Court of my disaster; he added that as soon as he looked at me his heart told him I was a man, because he had formerly travelled to the world whence I came, that my country was the Moon, that I was a Gaul and that he had once lived in Greece, where he was called the Demon of Socrates and that after the death of this philosopher he had directed and instructed Epaminondas at Thebes; that afterwards he had passed over to the Romans, where Justice had attached him to the party of the younger Cato; then, that after his death he had devoted himself to Brutus; that since these great personages had left nothing behind them in the world but the phantom of their virtues, he retired with his companions sometimes to the temples, sometimes into solitude. "At last", he added, "the people of your world became so stupid and so gross that my companions and I lost all the pleasure we once had in teaching them. You must inevitably have heard us spoken of. They called us Oracles, Nymphs, Genii, Fairies, Hearth-gods, Lemures, Larvae, Lamias, Hobgoblins, Naiades, Incubi, Shades, Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms. We left your World in the reign of Augustus a little after the time when I appeared to Drusus, the son of Livia, who was waging war in Germany, and forbade him to proceed further. It is not long since I returned thence for the second time. During the last hundred years I was instructed to travel there, I wandered about in Europe and conversed with persons whom you may have known. One day I appeared to Cardan as he was reading; I instructed him in many things and in recompense he promised me that he would bear witness to posterity that I was the person from whom he obtained knowledge of the miracles he proposed to write. I saw Agrippa, Abbot Tritheim, Doctor Faust, La Brosse, César[37] and a certain group of young men, known to the uninitiate by the name of Knights of the Rosy-Cross, to whom I imparted a number of artifices and natural secrets which no doubt will have caused the people to consider them great magicians. I knew Campanella[38] also. When he was in the inquisition at Rome it was I who advised him to conform his face and body to the usual grimaces and postures of those whose inner mind he needed to know, so that he might excite in himself by a similar position the thoughts which this same situation had called up in his adversaries; because he would treat better with their soul when he knew it. At my request he began a book, which we called _De Sensu Rerum_. Similarly in France I frequented La Mothe Le Vayer and Gassendi[39]: the second is a man who has written as much philosophy as the first has lived. I know there are numbers of other men whom your age considers divine, but I found nothing in them save a vast deal of chatter and pride.

[Footnote 37: Famous sorcerers.]

[Footnote 38: See Introduction.]

[Footnote 39: See Introduction.]

"When I left your country for England to study the manners of its inhabitants I met a man who is the shame of his country; for certainly it is a shame to the great men of your state who recognize in him, yet fail to adore, the virtue of which he is the throne. To cut short his panegyric; he is all Wit, he is all Heart, and if by giving both these qualities (one of which formerly sufficed to mark a hero) to one person were not as good as naming Tristan L'Hermite,[40] I should not have mentioned his name, for I am sure he will not forgive me for this indiscretion. But as I do not expect ever to return to your World I desire to bear witness to this truth for my conscience's sake. Truly I must tell you that when I saw so high a virtue I feared that it was not recognized; for this reason I tried to make him accept three phials. The first was full of oil of Talc, the second of the powder of projection, and the third of potable Gold, that is to say, the vegetable salt whose eternity is promised by your chemists. But he refused them with a disdain more generous than that with which Diogenes received the compliments of Alexander who came to visit him in his tub. 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 eminent persons with whom I have conversed; all the others, at least those I knew, are so far below men that I have seen beasts who were above them.

[Footnote 40: See Introduction.]

"For the rest, I am not an inhabitant of your earth nor of this; I was born in the Sun; but because our world is sometimes overpeopled on account of the long life of its inhabitants and the fact that it is practically free from wars and diseases, our rulers from time to time send out colonies to the surrounding worlds. I was ordered to go to your Earth and declared leader of the expedition sent out with me. Since then I have come to this world for the reasons I told you; and I remain here because these men are lovers of truth; there are no pedants to be seen here, the philosophers allow themselves to be convinced by reason alone and neither the authority of a learned man nor numbers can overwhelm the opinion of a corn-thresher if the corn-thresher reason powerfully. In short the only madmen recognised in this country are the sophists and the orators."

I asked him how long they lived; he replied, "Three or four thousand years", and continued in this manner: "To render myself visible as I am now, when I feel the corpse I dwell in almost used up or when the organs do not exercise their functions perfectly, I breathe myself into a young body that has recently died.

"Although the inhabitants of the Sun are not so numerous as those of this World, nevertheless the Sun is often overcrowded, because the people are of a very hot temperament and consequently restless, ambitious and voracious.

"What I tell you ought not to seem a marvellous thing; for, although our globe is very vast and yours small, although we only die at the end of four thousand years and you after half a century, learn that, just as there are not so many pebbles as earth, nor so many insects as plants, nor so many animals as insects, nor so many men as animals; so there cannot be so many demons as men, because of the difficulties to be met with in the generation of so perfect a composition."

I asked him if they were bodies like us. He replied that, yes, they were bodies, but not like us nor like anything that we consider such, because we call vulgarly a body that which can be touched; for the rest, there was nothing in Nature that was not material,[41] and although they were material themselves, when they wished to be seen by us they were forced to take bodies such as our senses are capable of perceiving.

[Footnote 41: This shows the disciple of Lucretius.]

I assured him that many in the world thought the stories told of them were only an effect of the fancy of feeble-minded individuals, seeing that they only appeared at night. He replied that, since they were forced to build themselves hastily the bodies they had to make use of, they often had only time enough to fit them for a single sense, sometimes hearing, as the voices of Oracles; sometimes sight, as Will-o'-the-Wisps and Spectres; sometimes touch, as Incubi and Nightmares; and that this mass being only thickened air, the light destroyed it with its heat just as we see it disperse a fog by expanding it.

All these things he explained to me aroused in me the curiosity to question him about his birth and death; if in the country of the Sun the individual saw the day by the means of generation, and whether he died through the disintegration of his mind or the breaking down of his organs.

"There is too little connection", said he, "between your senses and the explanation of these mysteries. You imagine that what you cannot comprehend is spiritual or that it does not exist; the inference is false, but it is a proof that the universe contains perhaps a million things, to know which you would require a million different organs. Thus, I conceive through my senses the cause of the loadstone's turning to the north, the cause of the tides, and what an animal becomes after death; but you cannot rise to these high conceptions because there is nothing in you related to these miracles, any more than a child born blind can imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colouring of a picture, the tints of the rainbow; rather he will imagine them at one time as something palpable, then as something to eat, then as a sound, then as an odour. So if I tried to explain to you what I perceive through senses which you lack you would conceive it as something which can be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted, when it is nothing of the kind."

He was at this point of his discourse when my mountebank saw the company was growing weary of our jargon, for they could not understand it and mistook it for an inarticulate grunting. He began to pull heartily at my cord and made me gambol until the spectators had their fill of mirth and vowed I was nearly as clever as the animals in their country, and so went off to their homes.

The harshness of my master's bad treatment was softened by the visits of this obliging demon; I could not converse with those who came to see me, since they took me for an animal deeply rooted in the category of brutes; I did not know their language, they did not know mine! Judge then what relation there was between us.

You must know that two idioms are used in that country, one of which serves the nobles while the other is peculiar to the people.

The language of the nobles is simply different tones not articulated, very much like our music when no words have been added to it. Certainly it is an invention altogether useful and agreeable, for when they are tired of speaking, or when they disdain to prostitute their throats to this usage, they take a lute or some other instrument, with whose aid they communicate their thought as easily as by the voice; so that sometimes fifteen or twenty of them may be met with debating a point of theology or the difficulties of a law case in the most harmonious concert that could tickle one's ears.[42]

[Footnote 42: See Appendix I.]

The second, which is used by the people, is carried out by movements of the limbs, though perhaps not precisely as you imagine, for certain parts of the body mean a whole speech. For example, the movement of a finger, of a hand, of an ear, of a lip, of an arm, of a cheek, will make singly a discourse or a sentence; others are only used to designate words, such as a wrinkle in the forehead, different shiverings of the muscles, turnings of the hands, stampings of the foot, contortions of the arm, so that, as it is their custom to go quite naked, when they talk their limbs (which are accustomed to gesticulate their ideas) move so briskly that it does not seem a man talking but a body trembling.

The demon came to visit me almost every day and his marvellous conversation helped me to endure the miseries of captivity without repining. One morning a man whom I did not know came into my lodging, and having well stroked me for a long time, gently lifted me up under the arm-pit; then, holding me with one hand lest I should be hurt, cast me upon his back, where I found myself seated so softly and so comfortably that although I was afflicted to find myself treated like a beast I had no desire to escape. Moreover these four-footed men move with a swiftness different from ours, since the heaviest of them can catch a running deer.

I was vastly perturbed at having no news of my courteous demon and on the evening of the first day's journey, after I had reached the inn, I was walking in the courtyard waiting for supper when my carrier, whose face was young and handsome, came up to me, laughing before my nose, and cast his two forefeet around my neck. After I had gazed at him for a while he said to me in French: "What! Do you not know your friend?" I leave you to imagine what I then felt. My surprise was so great that thereafter I imagined that the whole globe of the Moon, all that happened to me there, everything that I saw there, were an enchantment. The man-beast who had served me as a steed continued to speak in these words: "You had promised that the favours I did you would never leave your memory."

I protested that I had never seen him. At last he said: "I am that demon of Socrates who entertained you during the time of your captivity. As I had promised you, I left yesterday to inform the King of your misfortune and I covered three hundred leagues in eighteen hours, for I arrived at midday to await you...."

"But", I interrupted, "how can all this be, seeing that yesterday you were extremely tall and to-day you are very short; yesterday you had a weak broken voice and to-day it is strong and clear; in short, yesterday you were a hoary old man and to-day you are a young man? What! While in my country we travel from birth to death, do the animals of this land go from death to birth; do they grow younger the older they are?"

"When I had spoken to the Prince", said he, "and had received his order to bring you to him, I felt the body I inhabited so worn out with lassitude that all its organs refused their functions. I inquired the way to the hospital, went there, and as soon as I entered the first room found a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached the body and feigning to have recognised movement in it I protested to all present that he was not dead, that his disease was not even dangerous, and without being perceived I skilfully breathed myself into him. My old body immediately fell backwards; and I rose up in this young one.[43] They exclaimed at the miracle, but without arguing with any one I went off promptly to your mountebank, where I took you up."

[Footnote 43: This idea comes from Charles Sorel's _Berger Extravagant_.]

He would have told me more but they came to fetch us for supper. My conductor led me into a magnificently furnished room but I saw nothing prepared to eat. Such a lack of meat when I was perishing of hunger forced me to ask him where the table was laid. I did not hear what he replied, for three or four young boys, the host's children, came up to me at that instant and with great civility undressed me to the shirt. This new ceremonial vastly astonished me, but I dared not ask its reason of my handsome attendants; and when my guide asked how I should like to begin I know not how I was able to reply with these two words: "A soup". Immediately I smelt the odour of the most succulent simmering that ever hit the nose of a rich sinner. I tried to get up from my place to track down with my nose the source of this agreeable vapour, but my guide prevented me: "Where are you going?" said he, "we will take a walk soon, but this is the time to eat; finish your soup and then we will have something else."

"But where the devil is the soup?" cried I in a rage. "Have you made a wager to banter me all day?"

"I thought", he replied, "that you had seen at the town whence we came either your master or someone else taking his meals; that is why I did not tell you of their methods of eating in this country. But since you are still ignorant of it, let me tell you that here they live on nothing but vapour. The art of cookery here is to enclose in large, specially moulded vessels the fumes which rise from meats and, having collected several kinds and several tastes, according to the appetite of those they entertain, they open the vessel which holds this odour and then another and then another until the company is quite satisfied. Unless you have already lived in this manner you will never believe that the nose unassisted by the teeth and throat can perform the office of the mouth in feeding a man; but I will make you see it by experience."

He had scarcely finished his promise when I smelled successively as they entered the room so many agreeable and nourishing vapours that I felt myself completely satisfied in less than a half-quarter of an hour. When we had risen he said: "This should not cause you a great deal of surprise, since you cannot have lived so long without having noticed that in your world cooks and pastry-cooks, who eat less than people of other occupations, are nevertheless fatter than they are. Whence is their fatness derived, unless it be from the smell of the food that perpetually surrounds them, penetrates their bodies and nourishes them? People in this world enjoy a more vigorous and less interrupted health, because their food causes hardly any excrements, which are the origin of almost all diseases. You were surprised perhaps when they undressed you before the meal, because the custom is never employed in your country, but here it is, and it is done in order that the animal may imbibe the vapour more easily."

"Sir", said I, "what you say appears very probable and I myself have just experienced something of it, but I must confess I cannot de-brutalise myself so promptly, and I should be very glad to have a solid morsel under my teeth."

He promised it, but only for the next day, because he said that to eat so soon after a meal would give me indigestion. We continued talking some time and then went up to our room to go to bed.

At the top of the staircase we were met by a man who gazed very attentively upon us and then conducted me to a cabinet whose floor was covered with orange flowers to the depth of three feet; and took my demon into another filled with carnations and jasmine. Seeing that I appeared amazed at this magnificence he told me this was the method of making beds in that country. At last we each lay down in our chamber and as soon as I was stretched out on my flowers I perceived by the light of thirty large glow-worms enclosed in a crystal (for they use no other candle) the three or four young boys who had undressed me at supper, one of whom began to tickle my feet, another my thighs, another my flanks, another my arms, so delicately and nicely that in less than a moment I fell asleep.

Next morning my demon entered with the sun. "I have kept my word", said he, "you shall break your fast more substantially than you supped last night." At these words I got up and he led me by the hand to a place behind the inn garden where one of the host's children awaited us with a weapon in his hand very like one of our guns. He asked my guide if I should like a dozen larks, because baboons (that is what he took me for) fed on this meat. I had scarcely answered yes, when the sportsman fired in the air and twenty or thirty well-roasted larks fell at our feet. There! thought I at once, and we have a proverb in our world about a land where the larks fall ready roasted! Doubtless someone who had come from here.

"You have but to eat", said my demon, "they are skilful enough to mix with their powder and shot a composition which kills, plucks, roasts and seasons their game."

On his recommendation I picked up and ate some of them, and truly I had never in my life tasted anything so delicious.

After breakfast we prepared to depart and with a thousand grimaces, which they use to show their politeness, the host accepted a paper from my demon. I asked him if this were a note of hand for the amount of the bill. He answered, no, he owed him nothing, and that the paper contained verses.

"Verses!" I answered, "are the tavern-keepers here so fond of rhymes?"

"'Tis the money of the country ", replied he, "and our expenses at this place came to a sixain, which I have just given him. I was not afraid of being short of money, for even though we feasted here for eight days we should not spend a sonnet, and I have four on me, with nine epigrams, two odes and an eclogue."

Ha! said I to myself, that is precisely the money which Sorel makes Hortensius use in "Francion" I remember.[44] Doubtless he stole it from here; but how the devil can he have learnt it? It must have been from his mother, for I have heard it said that she was Lunatic.

[Footnote 44: Charles Sorel's _Histoire Comique de Francion_, 1626.]

I asked my demon then if these verses served always as money, as often as they were copied out; he said they did not and continued thus: "When an author has composed some verses he carries them to the mint, where the sworn poets of the kingdom hold their sessions. There the verifying officers test the pieces and if they are judged to be of a good alloy they are estimated, not according to their weight, but according to their wit, and so no one dies of hunger except the blockheads, and men of wit live in perpetual good cheer."

I wondered in a kind of ecstasy at the judicious polity of that country and he went on in this way: "There are other people who keep inns in a very different way. When you leave them they ask of you, according to your expenses, a note of hand for the Next World; and when they have it they enter it in a tall ledger, which they call their account with God, much in this way:

_Item_: The value of so many verses delivered on such a day by such
an one which God must repay me from the first funds that come in on
presentation of this note of hand.

When they feel themselves ill and in danger of dying they have these registers torn into pieces and swallow them because they think that unless they are digested God cannot read them."