Chapter IV: Part 4

This conversation did not prevent us from continuing our journey, that is, my carrier went on all fours underneath me and I rode astride. I will not particularise any further the adventures which delayed us until we arrived at last at the King's residence. I was taken straight to the Palace. The Nobles received me with much more moderate surprise than the people had done when we passed through the streets, but their conclusion was the same, to wit, that I was without doubt the female of the Queen's little animal. My guide interpreted it thus, but he himself did not understand the enigma and did not know what the Queen's little animal was. We were soon enlightened on this point, for the King some time after commanded him to be brought thither. About half an hour afterwards a little man about my own size, walking on two legs, came in, accompanied by a troupe of monkeys wearing ruffs and Spanish slops. As soon as he saw me he accosted me with a "Criado de vouestra merced"; and I replied to his courtesy in similar terms.[45] Alas! they had no sooner seen us speak to each other than they all believed their prejudice had been truth, and this meeting produced no other result, for the opinion of the spectator most favourable to us was that our conversation was merely that we were grunting with joy at being coupled, and that a natural instinct made us hum. The little man told me he was an European, a native of old Castile, that by means of birds he had conveyed himself to the world of the Moon wherein we now were, that he fell into the Queen's hands and she had taken him for a monkey, because it happens they dress their monkeys in Spanish clothes, and that when she found him dressed in this manner on his arrival, she had not doubted he belonged to the species.

[Footnote 45: This Spaniard is introduced by Cyrano because in Godwin's _Man in the Moon_, of which a French translation appeared in March 1648, one Gonzales reaches the Moon in a car drawn by gansas. See Appendix I.]

"We must suppose", I replied, "that after having tried all other kinds of clothes, they found none more ridiculous, and so they dressed them in this fashion, since they only keep these animals to amuse themselves."

"You do not understand", he said, "the dignity of our nation, since the universe only produced men for the purpose of giving us slaves, and for us Nature can only engender subjects of mirth."[46]

[Footnote 46: Meaning, I suppose, that everything which is not Spanish is ridiculous.]

He then besought me to tell him how I had dared to rise to the Moon in the machine of which I had spoken to him. I replied that this was because he had taken away the birds on which I had intended to go. He smiled at this jest and about a quarter of an hour afterwards the King commanded his monkey-keeper to take us away, with strict orders to make the Spaniard and me lie together to multiply our species in his kingdom. The Prince's command was carried out in every point and I was very glad of it because of the pleasure I took in having some one to converse with during the solitude of my brutification. One day my male (they took me for the female) told me that the real reason that had obliged him to wander all over the earth and finally to abandon it for the Moon, was that he could not find a single country where even the imagination was free.

"Observe", said he, "unless you wear a square cap, a chaperon or a cassock, whatever excellent things you may say, if they are against the principles of these diplomaed doctors, you are an idiot, a madman or an atheist. In my own country they tried to put me into the Inquisition because I maintained to the very beard of these pig-headed pedants that there is a void in Nature and that I knew no matter in the world heavier than another."

I asked him with what probabilities he supported an opinion so little received, and he replied: "To understand that, you must suppose there is only one element; for although we see water, earth, air and fire separate, we never find them so perfectly pure but that they are mingled with each other. When, for example, you look at fire, it is not fire, it is nothing but air greatly expanded; air is only very extended water, and water is only melted earth; while the earth itself is nothing but very contracted water. Thus, by examining matter seriously you will find it is but one substance, which like an excellent actor plays many parts in many kinds of dresses here below. Otherwise we should have to admit as many elements as there are sorts of bodies. And if you ask me why fire burns and water cools, seeing that they are the same matter, I reply that this matter acts by sympathy according to the disposition it is in at the time it acts. Fire, which is nothing but earth still more expanded than it is when it makes air, tries to change all it meets with into itself by sympathy. Thus, the heat of coal, which is the most subtle fire and the most fit to penetrate a body, glides between the pores of our mass, at first makes us expand, because it is a new matter filling us and making us give off sweat; this sweat, expanded by the fire, changes into vapour and becomes air; this air, still further melted by the heat of the antiperistasis or of the globes that are neighbours to it, is called fire, and the earth, abandoned by the cold and by the damp which bind together all our parts, falls down as earth. On the other hand, water, although it only differs from the matter of fire in that it is more closely packed, does not burn us, because as it is contracted it sympathetically requires the bodies it meets to contract; so the cold we feel is nothing but the effect of our flesh, which retires upon itself through the neighbourhood of earth or water compelling it to resemble them. Hence dropsical patients, filled with water, change into water all the food they take; and similarly those who are bilious change into bile all the blood formed by their liver. But if you suppose that there is only one element it is very certain that all bodies, each according to its quality, incline equally to the centre of the earth.

"But you may ask why gold, iron, metals, earth and wood fall more rapidly to the centre than a sponge, if not because the last is filled with air which tends naturally upwards! That is not the reason at all and I reply to you in this way: Although a stone falls with more rapidity than a feather, both have the same inclination to fall; but, if the earth were pierced right through, a cannon-ball would fall more rapidly to the centre than a bladder filled with air. The reason for this is that this mass of metal is a great deal of earth squeezed into a small space and that this air is a very little earth expanded into a great deal of space; for all the particles of matter which reside in this iron, interlocked as they are with each other, increase their strength by union, because by being compact they form many fighting against few, since a portion of air equal in size to the bullet is not equal to it in quantity; and so, yielding under the burden of those more numerous than itself and as impatient, it allows itself to be broken through in order to give them free way.

"Not to prove this with a string of reasons: tell me truly how are we wounded by a pike, a sword or a dagger if it is not that steel is a matter whose particles are nearer together and more pressed against each other than those of our flesh, whose pores and whose softness show that it contains a very little matter spread through a wide space, and that the iron point which pierces us is an almost innumerable quantity of matter directed against a very little flesh, and so forces it to yield to the stronger party, just as a compact squadron pierces a whole line of battle which is widely extended? Why is a red-hot steel ingot hotter than a burning block of wood, if it is not because the ingot contains more fire in less space attached to all the particles of the piece of metal than there is in a log, which is very spongy and consequently contains a great deal of void; and, since void is simply the absence of Being, it cannot be susceptible to the form of fire? But, you will object, to me: 'You suppose a void as if you had proved it, and that is the very matter we are disputing!' Well! I will prove it to you, and although this difficulty is the sister of the Gordian knot, my arms are strong enough to be its Alexander.

"Let the stupid vulgar who only think they are men because a Doctor has told them so, answer me, I beg them. Admit there is only one matter, as I think I have proved: how does it happen that it expands and contracts according to its desire? How does it happen that a piece of earth by continually condensing becomes a pebble? Have the particles of this pebble entered into each other, in such a manner that where one grain of sand was placed, there, in the very same point, lodges another grain of sand? No, that cannot be, even according to their own principles, since bodies do not penetrate each other; but this matter must have drawn closer together and, if you will, have grown smaller by filling up the void space of its habitation.

"To say that it is incomprehensible for there to be nothing in the world and that we should be partly composed of nothing--eh! why not? Is not the whole world enveloped in nothing? Since you admit this point, confess that it is as easy for the world to have nothing inside it as nothing outside.

"I see very well that you are about to ask me why water, restrained by frost in a vase, bursts it, if not to prevent there being a void? But I reply that this only happens because the air above, which tends to the centre just as much as earth and water, meeting with a vacant lodging on the high-road to this country, goes to take up its abode there; if it finds the pores of this vessel, that is to say the roads which lead to this void room, too narrow, too long and too tortuous, by breaking the vase it satisfies its impatience to arrive more speedily at the resting-place.

"But, without wasting my time in answering all their objections, I dare to say that if there were no void there would be no movement, or we must admit the penetration of bodies; for it would be too ridiculous to believe that when a fly agitates a portion of air with its wing this portion drives another before it, this other portion drives another, and that thus the movement of a flea's little toe makes a bump beyond the world. When they are at their wits' end they take refuge in rarefaction; but, in good faith, when a body rarefies how can one particle of the mass draw away from another particle without leaving a void between them? Would it not have been necessary that these two bodies, which have just separated, should have been at the same time in the same place where this third was, and so that all three should have penetrated each other? I am quite prepared for you to ask me why we draw up water against its inclination through a tube, a syringe or a pump; but I reply that the water is compelled and that it does not turn from its road because of its fear of a void but because it is joined with the air by an imperceptible link and so is lifted up when we lift the air which holds it.

"This is not a thorny matter to understand for those who know the perfect circle and delicate chain of the Elements; for if you consider attentively the mud made by the marriage of earth and water you will find that it is neither earth nor water but that it is the medium of the contract of these two enemies; in the same way water and air reciprocally send out a mist which leans to the humours of both to procure their peace, and air reconciles itself with fire by a mediating exhalation which unites them."

I think he would have gone on talking but they brought us our food, and since we were hungry I shut my ears and he his mouth to open our stomachs.

I remember that when we were philosophizing on another occasion, for neither of us liked to converse of frivolous or low things, he said: "I am sorry to see a wit like yours infected with vulgar errors; you must know, in spite of the pedantry of Aristotle which rings to-day through all the class-rooms of your France, that all is in all; that is to say that in water, for example, there is fire, in fire there is water, in air there is earth, and in earth there is air. Although this opinion would make the _Scolares_ open their eyes as wide as salt-cellars, it is easier to prove it than to get it accepted.

"First of all I ask them whether water does not engender fish. When they deny it I shall order them to dig a ditch and to fill it with syrup of water-jug which, if they like, they may pass through a sieve to escape the objections of the blind and if after some time they find no fish in it I will drink all the water they have put there; but if, as I do not doubt, they do find fish there, it is a certain proof that it contains salt and fire; consequently it is not a very difficult enterprise to find water in fire. Let them select a fire the most detached from matter, like comets, there is always a quantity of water in it; for if the unctuous humour which engenders them, reduced to sulphur by the heat of the antiperistasis which lights them, did not find an obstacle to its violence in the damp cold which tempers and combats it, it would be consumed in a flash. They will not deny that there is now air in the earth, or else they have never heard of the dreadful shakings which agitate the mountains of Sicily; moreover, we see that the earth is porous down even to the grains of sand which compose it. However, nobody has yet said that these hollows are filled with void; it will therefore not be thought objectionable to say that they contain air. It remains for me to prove that there is earth in the air; but I scarcely deign to take the trouble, since you may convince yourself of it as often as you see falling upon your heads those legions of motes, so numerous that they stifle arithmetic.

"But let us pass from simple to composite bodies. They will supply me with many more frequent subjects to prove that all things are in all things; not that they change into each other as your Peripatetics twitter, for I will maintain to their beards that first principles mingle, separate and mingle once more; so that what has once been created water by the wise Creator of the World will be so always; and I do not advance any maxim that I do not prove, as they do.

"Take, I beseech you, a log or some other combustible matter and set fire to it. When it is burnt up they will say that what was wood has become fire. But I maintain the contrary, and say that there is no more fire now when it is in flames than before a taper had been put to it; but the fire which was hidden in the log, prevented by cold and damp from expanding and acting, was supported by the foreign light, rallied its forces against the moisture which stifled it and took possession of the field occupied by its enemy. Thus it triumphs over its gaoler and shows itself without impediment. Do you not see how the water retreats by the two ends of the log, still hot and smoking from the fight? The upper flame you see is the most subtle fire and the freest from matter and therefore the most ready to return home; however, it unites in a pyramid up to a certain height in order to break through the thick dampness of the air resisting it. But as it mounts and frees itself little by little from the violent company of its enemies, it roves freely because it meets nothing hostile to its passage, and this negligence is often the cause of a second prison, for the fire, travelling separately, will lose itself sometimes in a cloud and if it meets there with a sufficiently large number of other fires to make head against the vapour they join together, they rumble, they thunder, they lighten and the death of innocent creatures is often the effect of the excited anger of dead things. If the fire is embarrassed by the importunate crudities of the middle region and is not strong enough to defend itself against them, it yields itself to the discretion of the cloud which, being constrained by its weight to fall back upon the earth, takes its prisoner with it and so this unhappy fire, enclosed in a drop of water, may perhaps find itself at the foot of an oak, whose animal fire will invite the poor wanderer to lodge with it. And thus it returns to the same state it left a few days before.

"But let us look at the fate of the other elements which compose this log. The air retreats to its quarters still confused with the vapour because the angry fire sharply drove them out pell-mell. There it is tossed by the winds like a bladder, gives breath to animals, fills the void made by nature and perhaps will be enveloped in a drop of dew, sucked in and digested by the thirsty leaves of the very tree to which our fire has retired. The water, which the flame had driven from its throne and the heat had raised to the cradle of the meteors, will fall back as rain upon our oak as likely as upon another. And the Earth, made ashes, cured of its sterility by the nourishing warmth of a dung-hill upon which it has been cast or by the vegetable salt of neighbouring plants or by the fertile water of rivers, perhaps will also find itself beside this same oak, the natural heat of whose germ will draw it up and make it a particle of the whole oak.

"In this manner all these four elements return to the same state they had left some days earlier; and in the same way a man has in him everything necessary to make up a tree, and there is in a tree everything necessary to make up a man. Finally, in this way all things are met with in all things, but we lack a Prometheus to draw from the bosom of Nature and make sensible to us that which I wish to call 'primary matter'."

These are approximately the things with which we passed the time, and truly this little Spaniard had a pretty wit. Our conversation took place only at night, because from six o'clock in the morning until the evening, the crowds of people who came to look at us in our lodging prevented it. Some threw stones at us, some nuts, some grass; there was no talk but of the King's beasts. They fed us every day at regular hours and the King and Queen themselves often were pleased to touch my belly to find out if I were not pregnant, for they burned with an extraordinary desire to have a race of these little animals. I do not know whether I was more attentive to their grimaces and intonations than my male, but I learned to understand their language and to use it a little. Immediately the news ran through the whole kingdom that there had been found two wild men, smaller than others because of the poor nourishment solitude had furnished us with, who from some defect in their fathers' seed possessed fore-legs too weak to walk upon.

This belief would have taken root by circulating had not the priests of the country opposed it, saying this was a horrible impiety to believe that not only beasts but monsters were of their species.

"It is far more likely", proceeded the least impassioned, "that our domestic animals should share the privilege of humanity and consequently of immortality, since they are born in our land, than a monstrous beast which says it was born somewhere in the Moon. Then consider the difference to be noted between us and them: we walk on four feet because God did not wish to confide so precious a thing to a position less firm, He feared some accident might happen to man; that is why He Himself took the trouble to set man upon four columns, so that he should not fall, but disdaining to interfere in the construction of these two beasts He abandoned them to the caprice of Nature, who, not considering the loss of so slight a thing, set them upon two feet only.

"The very birds", they said, "were not so badly treated as these, for at least they have received feathers to make up for the weakness of their feet and to cast themselves into the air when we turn them out of our houses; but by taking two feet from these monsters Nature has put them in the position of being unable to escape our justice.

"Moreover, observe how their heads are turned up towards Heaven! They are placed in this position through the scarcity of all things which God has imposed upon them, for this posture of supplication shows that they seek Heaven to complain to Him who created them and to ask His permission to make shift with our scraps. But we have our heads turned downwards to contemplate the good things whereof we are lords and as having nothing in Heaven for our happy condition to envy."

Every day in my lodging I heard the priests make up these or similar tales. At length they so directed the people's conscience in the matter that it was decreed I should at best be held for nothing more than a plucked parrot; and they confirmed those already persuaded by the fact that I had only two feet like a bird. I was put in a cage by a special order of the upper council.

There the Queen's falconer came every day to whistle to me as we do with starlings. I was happy in that my cage did not lack food; and from the follies with which the spectators deafened my ears I learned to speak like them.

When I understood the idiom sufficiently to express the greater part of my conceptions I showed them how I could talk. Already in gatherings people were speaking of nothing but the prettiness of my jests; and the esteem for my wit grew to such a point that the Clergy were forced to publish a decree forbidding any one to believe that I possessed reason, with a very strict command to all persons of whatever rank and condition they might be to believe that any intellectual thing I did was only through instinct.

However, the definition of what I was divided the Town into two factions; the party which took sides in my favour increased every day. At length in spite of the anathema and the excommunication of the Prophets who tried in this way to terrify the people, my supporters demanded an assembly of the Estates of the realm to resolve this religious hitch. It was a long time before they could agree on the choice of judges, but the arbitrators pacified animosity by making the judges consist of an equal number from each party.

They carried me openly to the court of justice, where I was severely treated by the examiners. Among other things they asked me my philosophy. In all good faith I showed them what I had formerly been taught by my Master, but they had no difficulty in refuting me with numerous reasons, which were in truth very convincing. When I found myself wholly refuted, so that I could not reply, as a last refuge I alleged the Principles of Aristotle, which were no more useful to me than his Sophisms, for they showed me their falsity in a few words.

"Aristotle", said they, "fitted principles to his philosophy instead of fitting his philosophy to principles. And at least he ought to have proved these principles to be more reasonable than those of other sects, which he could not do. For this reason the good man must not complain if we agree to differ from him."

At last when they saw that I kept bawling this and nothing else, save that they were not more learned than Aristotle, and that I had been forbidden to argue with those who denied his Principles, they concluded with one accord that I was not a man but perhaps some sort of ostrich, seeing I carried my head upright like that bird; and so the falconer was ordered to take me back to the cage. I passed my time amusingly enough, for my possessing correctly their language was a cause that the whole Court diverted itself by making me chatter. Among others the Queen's ladies-in-waiting always thrust some scraps of food into my basket, and the prettiest of them all conceived a certain friendship for me. Once when we were alone I discovered to her the mysteries of our religion and I discoursed principally of our bells and our relics; she was so transported with joy that she vowed with tears in her eyes that if ever I were able to fly back to our world she would gladly follow me.

One day I woke up early with a start and saw her tapping against the bars of my cage. "I have good news for you!" said she, "yesterday the council declared for war against the great King [Image]; and I hope, with the bustle of preparation and the departure of our Monarch and his subjects, to find an opportunity to set you free."

"War!" I interrupted immediately, "do the Princes of this world quarrel among themselves like those of ours? Tell me, I beseech you, how they fight."

"The Umpires elected by the consent of both parties", she replied, "fix the time allowed for arming, the time of marching, the number of combatants, the day and place of the battle; all with such impartiality that neither army has a single man more than the other. On each side the maimed soldiers are enrolled in one company and on the day of battle the Generals are careful to send them against the maimed soldiers on the other side. The giants are opposed by the colossi, the fencers by the nimble, the valiant by the courageous, the weak by the feeble, the unhealthy by the sick, the robust by the strong; and if someone should strike any but his prescribed enemy he is found guilty of cowardice unless he can clear himself by showing it was a mistake. After the battle they count the wounded, the dead and the prisoners, for none is ever seen to run away. If the losses are equal on each side they draw lots as to who shall be proclaimed the victor. But although a King may have defeated his enemy in open war he has achieved little; there are other less numerous armies of men of wit and learning, upon whose disputes depends wholly the real triumph or servitude of States. A man of learning is opposed to another, men of wit and judgment are set against their like; and the triumph gained by a State in this way is considered equal to three victories of brute force. When a nation is proclaimed victorious, they break up the assembly and the conquering people chooses for its King either their own or that of their enemies."

I could not forbear laughing at this scrupulous manner of making war and as an example of a far stronger policy I alleged the customs of our Europe, where the Monarch takes care to omit no opportunity of conquest; and she answered me in this way:

"Tell me", said she, "do your Princes justify their arms by anything save the right of force?"

"Yes indeed", replied I, "with the justice of their cause."

"Why then", she continued, "do not they choose arbitrators above suspicion to reconcile them? And if there is as much right on the one side as on the other let them stay as they were or let them play a hundred up at piquet for the Town or Province about which they are disputing. And yet, while they are the cause that more than four millions of better men than themselves get broken heads, they are in their cabinets joking over the circumstances of the massacre of these poor boobies. But I am wrong to blame the courage of your brave subjects; they do well to die for their country; 'tis an affair of importance, a matter of being the vassal of a King who wears a ruff or of a King who wears falling bands."

"But", I replied, "why all these circumstances in your manner of fighting? Is it not enough for armies to be equal in numbers?"

"Your judgment is all astray", she replied. "On your faith now, do you think that if you overcome your enemy in the field face to face, that you have beaten him in fair warfare if you wear mail and he does not? If he has only a dagger and you a rapier? Finally, if he is one-armed and you have both your arms? Yet with all the equality you recommend so much to your gladiators, they never fight on equal terms; one will be tall, another short; one skilful, the other will never have handled a sword; one will be strong, the other weak. And even if these proportions are equalised, if they are equally tall, equally nimble and equally strong, they will still not be on an equal footing, for one of the two will perhaps be more courageous than the other. And because a brutal fellow will not consider the peril, will be bilious and will have more blood, will have a heart more set with the qualities which make for courage (as if this were not an arm his enemy does not possess, just like a sword!), he will rush violently upon his adversary, terrify him and deprive of life a poor man who saw the danger, whose vital heat was stifled in phlegm and whose heart is too large to collect the spirits necessary to get rid of that ice we call poltroonery. So you praise a man for having killed his enemy when he had him at an advantage, and by praising his boldness you praise him for a sin against Nature, since boldness tends to its own destruction.[47]

[Footnote 47: This from so renowned a duellist and so brave a soldier is worth noting.]

"You must know that a few years ago a Remonstrance was sent up to the council of war, demanding a more circumspect and more conscientious regulation of combats. The philosopher who sent up the notice spoke in these words:

"'You imagine, gentlemen, that you have equalised two combatants when you have chosen them both hardy, both tall, both active, both courageous, but this still is not enough; the conqueror must win by skill, by force or by chance. If it were by skill, he has doubtless struck his adversary in a place he has not expected, or more quickly than seemed likely; or, feigning to attack him on one side, he paid him home on the other. This is finesse, deceiving, betraying. And such finesse, such deceit, such treason should not contribute to the fair fame of a true gentleman. If he has triumphed by force, will you consider his enemy beaten because he has been overwhelmed? No, doubtless; any more than you would say that a man had lost the victory if he should be overwhelmed by the fall of a mountain, since it was not in his power to gain it. Moreover he has not been overcome, because at that moment he was not disposed to be able to resist the violence of his adversary. And if he has beaten his enemy by chance, you should crown Fortune, not him, for he has contributed nothing; and the loser is no more to be blamed than a dice-player who sees eighteen thrown when he has cast seventeen.'"

It was admitted that he was right, but that it was impossible in all human probability to remedy it and that it was better to yield to one small inconvenience than to give way to a thousand of greater importance.

She did not say any more on that occasion, because she was afraid to be found alone with me at so early an hour. In that country unchastity is no crime; on the contrary, except for condemned criminals any man may take any woman, and similarly a woman may cite a man before the law-courts if he has refused her. But she dared not frequent me publicly, according to her own account, because at the last sacrifice the priests had declared that the women chiefly reported I was a man to hide under this pretext the execrable desire which burned them to mingle with beasts and to commit shamelessly sins against Nature with me. For this reason I remained a long time without seeing her or any of her sex.

Somebody must have re-lighted the quarrels about the definition of what I was, for just as I was resigned to die in my cage they came for me again to examine me. I was interrogated in the presence of a number of courtiers on several points in physics, but I do not think my responses were satisfactory; since the president of the court in a manner the reverse of dogmatic gave me at length his opinions on the structure of the world. They seemed to me ingenious and I should have found his philosophy much more reasonable than ours had he not gone back to the origin of the world, which he maintained was eternal. As soon as I heard him support a fantasy so contrary to what faith teaches us, I asked him what he could reply to the authority of Moses and that this great patriarch expressly declares that God created the world in six days. Instead of answering me the ignorant fellow only laughed. I could not prevent myself from saying then that since he took this attitude I began to think their world was only a Moon.

"But", said they all, "you see here earth, forests, rivers, seas; what is all that?"

"No matter", I replied, "Aristotle asserts that it is only the Moon; and if you had asserted the contrary in the classes where I made my studies, you would have been hissed."

At this there was a great shout of laughter. No need to ask whether it were the result of their ignorance! And I was taken back to my cage. The priests were told, however, that I had dared to say the Moon whence I came was a World and theirs was only a Moon. They believed this furnished them with a sufficient pretext for having me condemned to the water (which is their method of exterminating atheists); and with this purpose they went in a body to complain to the King, who promised them justice. It was ordered that I should be interrogated once more.

For the third time I was taken out of my cage and the Great Pontiff himself spoke against me. I do not remember his speech, because I was too frightened to receive the expressions of the voice without disorder and also because in declaiming he made use of an instrument whose noise deafened me; it was a trumpet which he had chosen on purpose so that the violence of its martial tone should heat up their minds for my death and by this emotion prevent reason from performing its office; as in our own armies, where the clamour of trumpets and drums prevents the soldier from reflecting on the importance of his life.

When he had spoken, I got up to defend my cause, but I was freed from this trouble by the occurrence you are about to hear. As I opened my mouth, a man who had forced his way with great difficulty through the crowd fell at the King's feet and for a long time lay on his back. This action did not surprise me; I had long known that they assumed this posture when they desired to discourse in public. I simply pocketed my speech and here is the one we had from him:

"Just judges, hear me! You cannot condemn this Man, this Monkey or this Parrot for having said that the Moon is a World whence he came. If he is a man; even though he did not come from the Moon, every man is free and is he not free to imagine what he wishes? What! Can you force him to have no fancies but yours? You may easily compel him to say he believes the Moon is not a World, nevertheless he will not believe it; for, in order to believe something, there must be presented to his imagination certain possibilities leaning rather to the Yes than to the No of this thing. So unless you furnish him with this probability or unless it spontaneously offers itself to his mind he may say he believes it, but for all that he will not believe it.

"I have now to prove to you that he should not be condemned if you put him in the category of beasts. Admitted that he is an animal without reason--then what reason have you yourselves to accuse him for having sinned against reason? He has said that the Moon is a World. Well, brute beasts act only by Nature's instinct; therefore it is Nature says it, not he. To believe that this wise Nature who made the Moon and this World does not know herself what it is, while you, who know nothing save what you get from her, should know it more certainly, would be very ridiculous. But even if passion should make you abandon your first principles and you should suppose that Nature does not direct animals, blush at least at the uneasiness caused you by the whimsies of a beast. Truly, gentlemen, if you met a man of ripe age who devoted himself to policing an ant-hill, giving a blow to one ant who had made his companion fall, imprisoning another for stealing a grain of corn from his neighbour, prosecuting another for abandoning its eggs, would you not consider such a man senseless to attend to things too much beneath him and to desire to subject to reason animals which do not use it? Venerable Pontiffs, what should you call the interest that you take in the whimsies of this little animal? Just judges, I have spoken."

As soon as he had finished a loud music of applause echoed through the hall; and after the opinions had been discussed for a long quarter of an hour, the King pronounced the following sentence:

"That henceforth I should be considered a man; as such set at liberty, and that the punishment of being drowned should be modified into making a 'shameful amends' (for there is no 'honourable amends' in that land), in which amends I should publicly disavow having taught that the Moon was a World, and this on account of the scandal the novelty of the opinion might have caused the souls of the weaker brethren."

When this sentence was pronounced I was taken out of the Palace. As a mark of ignominy I was dressed very magnificently; I was borne along on the seat of a superb chariot; and I was drawn by four Princes, who were attached to the pole and at every crossroads in the town I was obliged to declare as follows:

"People, I declare to you that this Moon is not a Moon, but a World; and that World is not a World but a Moon. For your priests think good that you should believe this."

After I had cried the same thing in the five principal squares of the city, I perceived my defender holding out his hand to help me to get down. I was vastly surprised to recognise him when I looked in his face, for he was my demon. We embraced each other for an hour.

"Come away home with me", said he, "for if you return to Court you will be frowned upon after a shameful amends. Moreover I must tell you that you would still be with the Monkeys, like your friend the Spaniard, if I had not published abroad the vigour and strength of your wit and secured in your favour the protection of the nobles against the prophets."

I had barely finished thanking him when we reached his lodging. Before our meal he told me of the wheels he had set in motion to force the priests to let me be heard, in spite of all the specious scruples with which they had wheedled the people's conscience. We sat before a large fire, because the weather was cold, and I think he was going on to tell me what he had done during the time I had not seen him, when they came to inform us that supper was ready.

"I have invited", he went on, "two professors from the academy of this town to eat with us this evening. I will bring them round to the subject of the philosophy taught in this world. You will also see my host's son. I have never met a young man so full of wit and he would be a second Socrates if he could regulate his knowledge and not stifle in vice the grace with which God continually visits him and cease to affect impiety out of mere ostentation. I have taken up my lodging here to find some occasion for instructing him."

He was silent as if to give me an opportunity of speaking in my turn; then he made a sign that they should divest me of the shameful ornaments with which I was still brilliant. Almost at the same time the two professors we were waiting for entered and we all four went off to the dining-room, where we found the young man he had spoken of already eating. They made him profound bows and treated him with a respect as deep as that of a slave for his lord. I asked my demon the reason of this, and he replied that it was on account of his age, because in that world the old render every deference and honour to the young. And more: the fathers obey their children, as soon as the latter have attained the age of reason in the opinion of the Senate of philosophers.

"You are surprised", he continued, "at a custom so contrary to that of your country? But there is nothing contrary to right reason in it for, tell me on your conscience, when a warm young fellow is most apt to imagine, to judge and to execute, is he not more capable of governing a family than an infirm man of sixty? The poor dullard, whose imagination is frozen by the snow of sixty winters, acts from the experience of fortunate successes, yet it was not he but his fortune which made them so, against all the rules and the whole management of human prudence.

"As to judgment he has just as little, although the common opinion of your world makes it a prerogative of old age. To remove this error, it must be known that what in an old man is called prudence is simply a panic apprehension, a mad fear of undertaking anything, which becomes an obsession. And so, my son, when he has not risked a danger by which a young man has been ruined, it was not because he foresaw the catastrophe but because he lacked fire to kindle those noble ardours which make us dare; and in that young man boldness was, as it were, a pledge of the success of his plan, because that spirit which gives promptitude and facility of execution is precisely that which urged him to undertake it.

"As to his carrying things out, I should be wronging your wit did I labour to convince it by proofs. You know that youth alone is fit for action; and if you are not fully persuaded of this, tell me, I beg you, when you respect a brave man is it not because he can avenge you upon your enemies or your oppressors? Why then should you still consider him such, except from habit, when a battalion of seventy Januaries has frozen his blood and killed with cold all the noble enthusiasms which inflame young persons in the cause of justice? When you defer to the strong man is it not in order that he may be obliged to you for a victory which you could not dispute? Why then should you submit to him, when idleness has melted his muscles, weakened his arteries, evaporated his spirits and sucked the marrow from his bones?

"If you adore a woman, is it not because of her beauty? Why then continue your genuflections when old age has made her a phantom menacing the living with death? In fine, when you honour a witty man it is because through the liveliness of his genius he grasps a tangled affair and unravels it, because he delights the most distinguished assembly with his talk, because he digests the sciences into a single thought, and a noble soul will never form a more violent desire than to resemble him; and yet you continue to pay homage to him when his outworn organs render his head imbecile and heavy and his silence in company makes him rather like the statue of a Household God than a man capable of reason. Resolve yourself, my son, it is better that young men should be given the control of families than old men. Certainly, you would be very weak to think that Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas, Alexander and Caesar, who all died before they were forty, were persons to whom one would owe no more than ordinary courtesies, while bringing incense to a doting old fool simply because the Sun had ninety times looked upon his harvest.

"'But', you will say, 'all the laws of our world are careful to repeat this respect which we owe to the aged.' It is true. But all who introduced these laws were old men and they were afraid the young men would dispossess them of the authority they had usurped; and so, like the legislators of false religions, they made a mystery of what they could not prove.

"'Yes but,' you will say, 'this old man is my father and Heaven promises me a long life if I honour him.'

"My son, if your father commands nothing contrary to the inspirations of the Most High, I grant it. If not; tread upon the belly of the father who engendered you, stamp on the bosom of the mother who conceived you, for I see no likelihood that your supposing this cowardly respect wrenched from your weakness by vicious parents would be agreeable to Heaven will lengthen the thread of your life.

"What! That doffing your hat, which so tickles and nourishes your father's pride, will it break an abscess you have in your side, will it renew your radical moisture, will it cure a rapier wound in your stomach, will it disperse a stone in your bladder? If this is so, doctors are grievously wrong. Instead of the infernal potions with which they poison men's lives, let them prescribe for smallpox with 'three congees fasting', four 'humble thanks' after dinner and twelve 'good night, father and mother', before going to bed. You will retort that without him you would not be at all. It is true, but he himself would never have been without your grandfather, nor your grandfather without your great-grandfather, and without you your father could not have a grandson. When Nature brought him forth it was on condition that he should return that which she lent him; so when he begot you he gave you nothing, he merely paid a debt! Moreover I should very much like to know if your parents were thinking of you when they begot you? Alas, not at all! And yet you think yourself obliged to them for a present they made you without thinking!

"What, because your father was so lascivious he could not resist the charms of some baggage, because he made a bargain to satisfy his desire and you were the masonry which resulted from their puddling, you are to revere this sensual fellow as one of the seven wise men of Greece? What, because a miser purchased the rich goods of his wife by means of a child, must that child only speak to him on its knees? In this way your father acted well when he was bawdy and the other when he drove a hard bargain, for otherwise neither of you children would ever have been; but I should like to know whether he would not have pulled the trigger just the same, if he had been certain that his pistol would miss fire? Good God! What the people in your world can be made to believe.

"My son, your body alone comes from your mortal architect, your soul came from Heaven and might just as well have been sheathed in some other scabbard. Your father might have been born your son as you were born his. How do you know even that he did not prevent you from inheriting a crown? Perhaps your spirit set out from Heaven with the purpose of animating the King of the Romans in the Empress's womb; on the way it chanced to meet your embryo and to shorten the journey took up its abode there. No, no, God would not have blotted you from the sum He had made of men if your father had died as a little boy. But who knows whether you might not have been to-day the work of some valiant captain who would have shared with you his glory as well as his goods! So you are perhaps no more beholden to your father for the life he gave you than you would be to a pirate who had put you in irons because he fed you. And suppose he had begotten you a King--a present loses its merit when it is made without consulting the person who receives it. Caesar was given death; it was given likewise to Cassius; but Cassius was under an obligation to the slave from whom he obtained it, but not Caesar to his murderers because they forced him to take it. When your father embraced your mother did he consult your wishes? Did he ask you if you thought it good to see this century or to wait for another? If you were content to be the son of a fool or if you had the ambition to proceed from an honest man? Alas! in a matter which concerned you alone, you were the only person whose opinion was not consulted! Perhaps if you had then been enclosed somewhere in the womb of Nature's ideas and it had been in your power to control your birth, you might have said to Fate: 'My dear lady, take someone else's life spindle. I have been in nothingness for a very long time and I prefer to remain another hundred years without existing than to exist to-day and to repent it to-morrow.' However you had to endure it; you might whimper as you would to return to the long black house from which you had been torn, they simply pretended to think you were asking to suckle.