Chapter IX: Part 9

"For the rest, you must know that in every world Nature has imprinted in the birds the secret desire to fly here, and it may be that this emotion of our will is the reason for our growing wings, as pregnant women produce upon their children the shape of things they have desired; or rather, like those who, passionately desiring to swim, have been seen while they were asleep to plunge in the current of streams and to cross, with more skill than an experienced swimmer, perils which they would not even have dared to look upon when awake; or like that son of King Crœsus who, by a vehement desire to speak to save his father, suddenly learned a language; or briefly like that ancient, pursued by his enemy and surprised without arms, who felt the horns of a bull growing on his forehead through the desire inspired in him by a fury similar to that of this animal.

"When birds reach the Sun they rejoin the republic of their race. I see that you are impatient to learn who I am. Among you I am called the phœnix; in each world there is only one at a time which lives there during the space of a hundred years; for at the end of a century, when upon some mountain of Arabia it has brought forth a large egg in the midst of the embers of its pyre, whose composition it has culled from the boughs of aloes, from cinnamon and incense, it takes wing and directs its flight toward the Sun, as a country to which its heart has long aspired. Before this it has made every effort to accomplish this voyage, but the weight of its egg, whose shell is so thick it needs a century to hatch, always delayed the attempt.

"I am sure it will be difficult for you to understand this miraculous production, and therefore I will explain it to you. The phœnix is a hermaphrodite but, among hermaphrodites there is still another very extraordinary phœnix, for...."[62]

[Footnote 62: There has perhaps been a censor at work here.]

He remained a half-quarter of an hour without speaking and then added:

"I see that you suspect what I have just told you is false; but if I do not speak the truth may I never reach your globe without an eagle swooping down upon me."

For some time it still remained hovering in the sky and then flew away. The surprise caused me by its recital gave me the curiosity to follow it; and since it cleft the air of the heavens with a flight which was not rapid I accompanied it easily enough with my eyes and gait.

At the end of about fifty leagues I reached a land so filled with birds that their numbers almost equalled those of the leaves protecting them. I was still more surprised that these birds, instead of taking fright at meeting me flew all about me; one sang in my ear, another spread out its tail on my head, and at last, after my attention had been occupied a long time by their little gambols I suddenly felt my arms held down by more than a million of all kinds, weighing so heavily that I could not move them.

They held me in this way until four large eagles arrived, two of which grasped me by the legs in their claws, the two others by the arms, and carried me high up.

Among the crowd I noticed a magpie flying hither and thither, backwards and forwards with great alacrity. I heard it tell me to make no resistance, because its companions were already debating about plucking out my eyes. This warning prevented any resistance I might have made, and so the eagles carried me more than a thousand leagues thence to a large wood, which (according to what I was told by my magpie), was the town where their king lived.

The first thing they did was to imprison me in the hollow trunk of a large oak, while a number of the strongest birds perched on the branches, where they carried out the functions of a company of soldiers under arms. At the end of about twenty-four hours others came on guard to relieve them. While I was awaiting with a good deal of melancholy the manner in which it would please Fortune to dispose of my disasters, my charitable magpie informed me of what was happening. Among other things I remember it warned me that the bird-populace had strongly protested against keeping me so long before eating me, and they had pointed out that I was growing so thin there would be nothing on me but the bones to gnaw. The rumour very nearly caused a rebellion. My magpie had ventured to point out that it was a barbarous proceeding to put to death without trial an animal which to some extent approached their reasoning; they were ready to tear it to pieces, alleging that it would be very ridiculous to think that a completely naked animal, whom Nature herself had taken no care to furnish at its birth with the things necessary to preserve it, should be capable of reason like themselves.

"It might be different", they added, "if he were an animal approaching a little nearer to our shape, but he is the most dissimilar and the most horrible, a bald beast, a plucked bird, a chimera built up of all kinds of natures, terrifying to everyone: Man, I say, so foolish and so vain that he convinces himself we were only created for him; Man who with his marvellously clear-sighted soul cannot distinguish sugar from arsenic and who will swallow the hemlock his wonderful judgment causes him to take for parsley; Man who maintains that we only reason by means of the senses and who has the weakest, slowest and falsest senses of any creature; Man whom Nature made like a monster, in order to create all things, but in whom she inspired the ambition of commanding all animals and exterminating them."

This is what the wisest said; as to the rabble, they exclaimed that it was horrible to believe a beast whose face was not made like theirs could possess reason.[63]

[Footnote 63: "The Abbé de Saint-Yves supposed that a man who was not born in France possessed no common sense." Voltaire, _L'Ingénu_.]

"What!" they murmured to each other; "he has neither beak, claws nor feathers, and yet his soul is spiritual? Gods! What impertinence!"

The pity felt for me by the most generous did not prevent my being subjected to a criminal prosecution. They drew up all the documents on the bark of a cypress tree, and then, after some days, I was carried before the Tribunal of the Birds. The solicitors, counsel and judges at the sitting were magpies, jays and starlings. Only those who understood my language had been chosen.

Instead of interrogating me in the dock they set me astride a stump of rotten wood; then the president of the bench, after clapping his beak twice or thrice and ruffling up his feathers majestically, asked me whence I was, of what nation and of what species? My charitable magpie had given me certain instructions beforehand, which were very useful to me, one of which was to be careful not to admit I was a man. I replied that I came from the little world called the Earth, whereof the phœnix and several others I saw in the assembly might have spoken to them, that the climate in which I was born was situated in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere in that end of Europe called France. As touching my species, I was not a man as they supposed but a monkey; certain men had taken me from my cradle when I was very young and fed me; their evil education had thus rendered my skin delicate; they had caused me to forget my natural tongue and had instructed me in theirs; to please these ferocious animals I had accustomed myself to walk only upon two feet; in fine, since it is easier to fall than to rise in the scale of animals, the opinions, the habits and the food of these dirty beasts had acquired so much power over me that even my parents, who are monkeys of honour, would hardly recognize me now. I added in support of what I said that I was ready to be searched by experts and if they should decide I was a man I submitted myself to be obliterated as a monster.[64]

[Footnote 64: This would be "savage satire" in Swift; in Cyrano it is merely "madness".]

"Gentlemen", cried a swallow in the assembly as soon as I had ceased speaking, "I hold him convicted. You have not forgotten he said the country in which he was born was France; but you know that monkeys do not breed in France; after that, judge if he is what he boasts to be."

I replied to my accuser that I had been taken from the bosom of my parents and transported to France when I was so young that I had a perfect right to call that my native country to which my earliest memories were attached. Although this reason was specious, it was insufficient. But the greater part of them, charmed to hear that I was not a man, were very glad to believe it; for those who had never seen one could not but persuade themselves that a man was something much more horrible than I appeared to be, while the most sensible of them added that a man was something so abominable it was useful to believe he was only an imaginary being.[65]

[Footnote 65: Even the Yahoos beat this only in nastiness, not in scorn.]

The whole assembly clapped their wings with joy and I was immediately handed over to the Syndics for examination, with orders to produce me next day and to make a report to the committee at the opening of the Chambers. They took charge of me then and carried me off to a retired wood. While they kept me there they did nothing but gesticulate about me with a hundred different kinds of somersaults and walk about in processions with nutshells on their heads. Sometimes they clapped their feet together, sometimes they dug little ditches and filled them up again; and all this time I was surprised not to see anyone else.

The day and the night were passed in these trifles until the prescribed hour arrived next day; I was carried back at once to appear before my judges and, when the Syndics were bidden to speak the truth, they replied that upon their consciences they felt themselves bound to inform the court I was assuredly not a monkey as I boasted.

"For", they said, "we leaped, walked, pirouetted and invented a hundred tricks in his presence, whereby we meant to urge him to do the same, according to the habit of monkeys. Now, even when brought up by men, a monkey is always a monkey, and if he had been one we maintain it would not have been in his power to forbear imitating our monkey-tricks. That is our report, gentlemen."

The judges drew together to hear each other's opinion; but it was noticed that the sky was cloudy and seemed charged with rain; and this made them postpone the sitting. I imagined that this had happened on account of the appearance of bad weather, when the solicitor-general came to tell me by order of the court that I should not receive sentence that day; that they never end a criminal prosecution when the sky is not clear, because they fear lest the bad temperature of the air might influence the good constitution of the judges' minds; lest that ill humour which comes over birds during rain should be discharged upon the case; or lest the court should visit its depression upon the prisoner. And so my sentence was put off until finer weather. I was taken back to prison and I remember that my charitable magpie did not abandon me on the way; it flew continually beside me and I think it would not have left me if its companions had not approached us.

At last I arrived at my prison, where during my captivity I had nothing to eat but the "king's bread"[66]; by this they meant fifty worms and as many cheese-worms,[67] which they brought me to eat every seven hours.

[Footnote 66: "Pain du Roy", _i.e._ prisoner's rations.]

[Footnote 67: "Guillots"; I went to five dictionaries, before finding this (dubious) meaning.]

I thought I should be brought up again the next day and everyone thought so too; but after five or six days one of my guards told me the whole of the time had been taken up by the plea of a community of goldfinches, who demanded justice against one of their companions. I asked my guard of what crime this wretch was accused.

"Of the most enormous crime", replied the guard, "by which a bird can be blackened. He is accused.... Can you believe it? He is accused.... But, good Gods! When I only think of it, the feathers stand up on my head. He is accused of not having merited a friend for the last six years; so they have condemned him to be a king, and king of a people of another species. If his subjects had been of his kind, he might have dipped into their pleasures, at least with his eyes and his desire; but since the pleasures of one species have no relation at all to the pleasures of another species, he will undergo all the fatigues and will drink all the bitterness of royalty, without being able to taste any of its compensations. He was sent off this morning surrounded by a number of doctors, who have to watch that he does not poison himself on the journey."

Although my guard was naturally a great talker, he dared not converse with me alone any longer for fear he should be suspected of a compact with me.

At the end of about a week I was again brought before my judges. I was placed upon the fork of a small leafless tree. The learned birds, solicitors, counsel and judges, were perched in rows according to their rank on the summit of a large cedar. The others, who were only present at the assembly from curiosity, were placed pell-mell so that all the seats were filled, that is to say, so that the cedar branches were covered with birds' feet.

The magpie, who, as I had noticed, had always been filled with compassion for me, came and perched on my tree, where it feigned to amuse itself by pecking the moss.

"It is impossible for you to know", it said, "how much your misfortune moves me; for although I am not ignorant that a man among living beings is a pest of which every civilized state ought to purge itself, yet when I remember I was brought up by them from the cradle, that I learned their language so perfectly I almost forgot my own, and that I ate such excellent soft cheeses from their hands, I cannot think of it without water coming into my eyes and mouth; I feel for you a tenderness which prevents me from inclining towards the juster party."

It had finished speaking when we were interrupted by the arrival of an eagle, which came and perched on the boughs of a tree near mine. I should have risen to get on my knees before it, thinking it was the king, if my magpie had not kept me in my former position with its foot.

"Do you suppose", it said, "that this large eagle is our sovereign? That is a supposition of men who, because they allow themselves to be commanded by the largest, strongest and most cruel of their companions, and judge all things from themselves, foolishly imagine that the eagle must command us. But our policy is very different. We choose only the weakest, the gentlest and the most peaceful for our kings; moreover, we change them every six months and we choose them weak so that the humblest individual they have wronged may be avenged upon them. We choose them gentle so that they may neither hate nor be hated by anybody. And we desire them to be of a peaceful temper in order to avoid war, the channel of all injustices.

"Every week a parliament is held, where anyone may complain of him. If there are only three birds dissatisfied with his government he is dethroned and they proceed to a new election. During the day the parliament is held, our king is placed on the top of a tall yew on the edge of a pond, with his feet and wings bound. All the birds one after another pass in front of him, and if any one of them knows he deserves the last punishment, it may cast him into the water; but it must at once justify itself for what it has done, otherwise it is condemned to a sad death."

I could not forbear interrupting him to ask what he meant by a sad death; and this is what he replied:

"When a bird is judged culpable of a crime so enormous that death is too small an expiation, they try to choose a death which contains the pain of several; and they proceed as follows: those among us whose voices are the most melancholy and the most funereal are attached to the guilty person, who is carried to a sad cypress. There these sad musicians gather around him and fill his soul through his ears with such lugubrious and tragical songs that the bitterness of his grief disorders the economy of his organs and so presses upon his heart that he pines visibly and dies suffocated with sadness. However, such a spectacle never happens; for since our kings are very gentle they never provide anyone with the opportunity of desiring to risk so cruel a death for the sake of vengeance. The reigning monarch at present is a dove, whose temper is so peaceful that the other day when two sparrows had to be reconciled there was all the difficulty in the world to make him understand what enmity is."

My magpie could not continue so lengthy a discourse without being noticed by several of those present; and since it was already suspected of some understanding with me, the chiefs of the assembly sent an eagle of the guard to arrest him. King Dove arrived at this moment; everyone was silent and the first thing which broke this silence was the plea of the chief censor of the birds against the magpie. The King, fully informed of the scandal it had caused, asked its name and how it knew me.

"Sire", it replied in astonishment, "I am called Margot; there are many birds of quality here who will answer for me. One day in the world of the Earth of which I am a native I learned from Coughing-Chirper there (who, hearing me calling in my cage, came to visit me at the window where I was hung) that my father was Short-Tail and my mother Crack-Nuts. I should not have known it but for him; for I had been taken from beneath my parent's wing when I was in the cradle, very young. Some time after my mother died of grief and my father, now too old to beget other children and in despair at finding himself without an heir, went off to the Jays' war, where he was killed by a beak-wound in the brain. Those who seized me were certain savage animals called swine-herds, who took me to a castle to sell, and there I saw this man whom you are now prosecuting. I do not know if he conceived good-will for me, but he took the trouble to order the servants to cut up food for me. Sometimes he had the kindness to bring me the food himself. If in the winter I was perishing with cold he carried me near the fire and lined my cage or bade the gardener warm me inside his shirt. The servants dared not tease me in his presence and I remember one day he saved me from the cat that had me in its claws, to which I had been exposed by my lady's little lackey. But it will not be inopportune to acquaint you with the cause of that barbarity. To please Verdelet (that was the little lackey's name) I was repeating one day the foolish things he had taught me. It unfortunately happened, although I always repeated my quirks in the same order, that just as he came in to deliver a false message I said: 'Silence, whoreson, you have lied.' The accused man here, knowing the rogue's lying disposition, imagined that I might have spoken prophetically and sent to the place to inquire if Verdelet had been there. Verdelet was convicted of deceit, Verdelet was whipped, and to avenge himself Verdelet would have had me eaten by the cat had it not been for this man."

The King, bowing his head, showed that he was pleased with the pity it had had for my misfortunes, but yet forbade it to speak to me again in secret. He then asked counsel if he were ready with his plea, who made a sign with his foot that he was about to speak; and here are the points upon which he insisted against me.

PLEADING MADE IN THE PARLIAMENT OF BIRDS, THE CHAMBERS ASSEMBLED,
AGAINST AN ANIMAL ACCUSED OF BEING A MAN.

GENTLEMEN,

The complainant against this criminal is Guillemette the Plump,
a partridge by birth, newly arrived from the world of the Earth
with its throat still open from a lead bullet shot at it by men,
a suitor against the human race, and, consequently, against an
animal whom I claim to be a member of that great body. It would
not be difficult for us to prevent the violence he might do by
killing him. However, since the safety or the loss of every living
thing concerns the republic of the living, it seems to me we should
deserve to be born men, that is to say degraded from the reason
and the immortality we possess above them, if we resembled them
in any of their injustices. Let us then examine, gentlemen, the
difficulties of this case with all the keenness of which our divine
minds are capable.

The main point of the case consists in discovering whether this
animal is a man; and then, if we declare he is, whether he deserves
death on that account.

For my part, I make no difficulty in declaring he is: first, from
a feeling of horror which we all felt ourselves seized with at his
sight without being able to declare the reasons; secondly, because
he laughs like a madman; thirdly, because he weeps like a fool;
fourthly, because he blows his nose like a vagabond; fifthly,
because he is plucked of feathers like one that is mangy; sixthly,
because he carries his tail in front; seventhly, because he has
always a quantity of little square stones in his mouth and has not
the wit to spit them out or to swallow them; and eighthly, and
lastly, because every morning he lifts up his eyes, his nose and
his large beak, sticks together his open hands with their flat
parts together pointing to the sky and makes of them one attachment
as if he were tired of having two free ones, breaks his legs in
the middle so that he falls on his shanks, and then hums magic
words, after which I have noticed his broken legs join up and he
rises as gay as he was before. You know, gentlemen, that of all
animals man alone has a soul sufficiently black to give himself up
to magic and, consequently, he must be a man. We must now examine
whether he deserves death for being a man.

I think, gentlemen, that it has never been doubted that all
creatures were produced by our common Mother to live together
sociably. Then if I prove that man seems only to have been born
to disturb this, shall I not prove that by going contrary to the
end for which he was created he deserves that Nature should repent
of her work? The first and fundamental law for the maintenance of
a republic is equality; but man could not endure this eternally;
he rushes upon us to devour us, he convinces himself that we were
only made for his use. As an argument of his pretended superiority
he cites the barbarity with which he massacres us and the little
resistance he finds in overcoming our weakness, and yet he will not
admit as his masters the eagles, condors, and griffins, by whom
the strongest of them are overcome. But why should this size and
position of limbs mark a diversity of species, since even among
them dwarfs and giants are found?

Moreover this empire on which they flatter themselves is an
imaginary right. On the contrary they are so inclined to servitude
that for fear of failing to serve, they sell their liberty to
each other. Thus the young are slaves of the old, the poor of the
rich, the peasants of the gentlemen, princes of monarchs, and even
monarchs of the laws they have established. But with all this the
poor serfs are so afraid of lacking masters that, as if they feared
that liberty should come to them from some unexpected quarter,
they make themselves Gods everywhere, in the water, in air, in
fire, under the earth. They would rather make them of wood than
lack them; and I even think they caress themselves with false
hopes of immortality not so much because they are terrified by
the horror of annihilation as because of the fear they have of
not being commanded after death. This is the wonderful effect of
that fantastic monarchy and natural empire of man over the animals
and ourselves; for his insolence reaches even to that point.
Nevertheless, as a consequence of this ridiculous chieftainship,
he pleasantly arrogates to himself the right of life and death
over us; he lies in ambush for us, he binds us, he throws us into
prison, he cuts our throats, he eats us; and the power to kill
those of us who remain free is made a privilege of the Nobility;
he thinks the Sun was lighted to enable him to make war upon us;
he thinks Nature allows us to make excursions through the sky
simply for him to draw favourable or unfavourable auspices from our
flight, and that when God put entrails into our bodies His only
purpose was to make a book from which man might learn the science
of future things.

Is not this pride utterly insupportable? Could one who entertained
such a conception deserve a punishment less than that of being
born a man? Yet it is not on this account that I urge you to
condemn this man; since the poor beast has not the use of reason
like ourselves, I excuse his errors in so far as they are produced
by lack of understanding; but I ask justice on account of those
which are daughters of his will. As, for example, that he kills
us without being attacked by us; that he eats us when he might
satisfy his hunger with more suitable food; and, which I consider
the most cowardly of all, that he debauches the natural disposition
of hawks, falcons and vultures, by teaching them to massacre their
kind, to feed upon their like or to deliver us into his hands.

This consideration alone is so heinous that I ask the court to
condemn him to extermination by a sad death.[68]

[Footnote 68: To the best of my knowledge this admirable indictment is Cyrano's own.]

The whole Bar shivered with horror at the idea of so great a torture; and, with the purpose of moderating it, the King made a sign to my counsel to reply. It was a starling, a great jurisconsult, who, striking his foot thrice upon the branch which supported him, spoke to the assembly as follows:

"It is true, gentlemen, that moved by pity I undertook the case of this wretched beast; but, at the moment of pleading, remorse of conscience has come to me and a kind of secret voice forbidding me to undertake so detestable an action. Thus, gentlemen, I declare to you and to the court that for the sake of my soul's salvation I will not contribute in any fashion towards the duration of such a monster as man."

The whole populace clapped their beaks as a sign of rejoicing and to congratulate the sincerity of so worthy a bird.

My magpie presented itself to plead in his place, but silence was imposed upon it because, since it had been brought up by men and was perhaps infected by their morals, there was some fear it would approach my case with a prejudiced mind; for the Court of Birds will not hear an advocate who is more interested on behalf of one client than another, unless he can show that this preference comes from the party's right.

When my judges saw that nobody came forward to defend me they stretched out their wings, shook them and flew immediately to consultation.

I learned afterwards that the greater part insisted strongly that I should be exterminated by a sad death; but yet, when they perceived the King inclined to milder measures, they revised their opinions; thus my judges moderated themselves and instead of a sad death, which they remitted, they thought meet to fit my punishment to one of my crimes. To annihilate me by a punishment which would serve to undeceive me by challenging the pretended empire of men over birds, they ordered that I should be given up to the anger of the weakest among them; which meant that they condemned me to be eaten by flies.

At that moment the assembly rose and I heard a murmur go round that the circumstances of my suffering had not been gone into in detail, because of an accident to a bird of the party, which had fallen in a swoon just as it was about to speak to the King. They thought this had happened from the horror caused it by looking too fixedly at a man; and so the order was given for me to be taken away.

Sentence was pronounced upon me; and as soon as the osprey who filled the office of clerk of the court had finished reading it to me, I perceived the sky about me black with flies, humble-bees, midges, gnats, and fleas, buzzing with impatience. I expected to be carried off by my eagles as before, but in their place I saw a great black ostrich, which set me shamefully astride its back; for with them this position is the most ignominious in which a criminal can be placed, and whatever offence a bird has committed it cannot be condemned to this.

The archers who took me to execution consisted of fifty condors and as many griffins; before and behind them flew very slowly a procession of ravens croaking something lugubriously and I thought I heard in the distance responses from screech-owls.

When we left the place where judgment had been pronounced upon me, two birds of paradise who had been ordered to be present at my death came and perched on my shoulders. Although my soul was greatly troubled by horror at the step I was about to take, I yet remember almost all the reasonings by which they tried to console me.

"Death", said they, with their beaks in my ear, "is certainly not a great evil, because our good mother Nature subjects all her children to it; and it cannot be an affair of great consequence, because it happens at any moment and from so small a cause; for if life were so excellent it would not be in our power to withhold it from offspring; or if death brought with it consequences so important as you persuade yourself, it would not be in our power to give it: on the contrary, there is every probability that since every animal begins in play, it ends similarly. I speak to you in this way because, since your soul is not immortal like ours, you may well suppose when you die that everything dies with you. Do not be troubled then at undergoing what some of your companions will undergo later. Their condition is more deplorable than yours; for if death is an evil, it is only an evil to those who are condemned to die; compared with you, who have only an hour between here and there, they will be fifty or sixty years a-dying. Then, you know, he who is not yet born is not unhappy. Well, you are about to resemble him who is not yet born; a twinkling of an eye after life, you will be what you were a twinkling of an eye before; and immediately after that twinkling of an eye you will be dead as long as he who died a thousand centuries ago. But in any case, granted that life is a good, the same chance which in the infinity of time made you what you are may some day cause you to exist again. May not that matter, which by constant mixing finally reached that number, that disposition and that order necessary to the construction of your being, once more by remixing reach the state required to cause you to feel again? Yes, but, you will say, I do not remember to have existed. Why! my dear brother, what do you care so long as you are conscious of existing? And then may it not be that to console you for the loss of your life you will imagine the same reasons which I now put before you?

"These are considerations sufficiently strong to oblige you to drink this bitter cup with patience; but I have others still more urgent, which doubtless will bring you to desire it. My dear brother, you must convince yourself that, since you and other brutes are material, and since death instead of annihilating matter simply alters its economy you must, I say, believe with certainty that when you cease to be what you were you will begin to be something else. Suppose you become a clod of earth or a stone, well, you will be something less wicked than man. But I have a secret to discover to you, which I should not like any of your companions to hear from my mouth; and that is, when you are eaten, as you will be, by our little birds, you will pass into their substance: yes, you will have the honour of contributing (even though blindly) to the intellectual operations of flies, and though you do not reason yourself, you will at least share in the glory of making them reason."

At about this point of their exhortation we reached the place fixed upon for my execution.

There were four trees very close to each other and about the same distance apart, on each of which at the same height was perched a large heron. I was taken down from the black ostrich and a number of cormorants carried me to the place where the four herons were waiting for me. These birds, firmly seated each on its tree opposite each other, wound their prodigiously long necks about my legs and arms as though they were ropes, and bound me so tightly that although each of my limbs was only tied by the neck of one bird I had not the power to move it at all.

They were to remain a long time in this position; for I heard orders given to the cormorants who had lifted me to catch fish for the herons and to slide their food into their beaks. They were still waiting for the flies, because they cleft the air with a flight less rapid than ours; nevertheless we were never out of hearing of them. The first thing they undertook was to apportion my body, and this arrangement was made so cunningly that they assigned my eyes to the bees, so that I should have them stung out as they ate them; my ears to the humble-bees, so that I should have them deafened and devoured at the same time; and my shoulders to the fleas, in order that I should have them pierced by itching bites; and so on for the rest. Scarcely had I heard these orders arranged, when suddenly I saw the insects approaching. It seemed as if all the atoms of which the air is composed had been changed into flies; for only two or three weak rays of light reached me, and these appeared to slip through to get at me, so closely were these battalions drawn up and so near my flesh were they.

But just as each one of them was choosing the place it desired to bite me, I saw them suddenly retreat; and among the confusion of a vast number of shouts, which re-echoed to the clouds, I several times made out the words: _Pardon, pardon, pardon_.

Two turtle-doves then came up to me. At their arrival all the dismal apparatus of my death disappeared; I felt my herons loose the circles of the long necks which bound me; and my body, stretched out like a Saint Andrew's cross, slipped from the top of the four trees to the foot of their roots. I expected from this fall to be shattered on the ground against a rock; but at the height of my terror I was very surprised to find myself seated on a white ostrich, which set off at a gallop as soon as it felt me on its back.

I was taken by a road different from that by which I had come; for I remember passing through a large wood of myrtles and another of terebinth trees leading to a huge forest of olive trees, where King Dove was awaiting me in the midst of all his court.

As soon as he saw me, he signed for me to be helped down. Immediately two eagles of the guard extended their feet and carried me to the Prince. I respectfully attempted to embrace and to kiss his Majesty's little spurs, but he evaded me.

"I ask you", said he, "whether you know this bird."

At these words they showed me a parrot, which began to strut and flap its wings, when it perceived I was looking at it.

"It seems to me", I exclaimed to the King, "that I have seen it somewhere, but I am so confused by fear and joy that I cannot yet tell precisely where it was."

At these words the parrot came to me, embraced my face with its two wings and said:

"What! You do not recognise Cæsar, your cousin's parrot, on whose account you have so often maintained that birds reason? Just now, during your trial, it was I who tried to declare after the session what obligations I have to you, but the pain of seeing you in so great a peril made me fall into a swoon."

His speech completed the unsealing of my sight. Having recognised him I embraced and kissed him; he embraced and kissed me.

"'Tis you, then, my poor Cæsar", said I, "whose cage I opened to return you the liberty taken from you by the tyrannical custom of our world?"

The King interrupted our caresses and spoke to me to this effect:

"Man, with us a good action is never lost; for this reason, although as a man you deserve to die simply because you were born, the Senate pardons you your life. This act of recognition may well accompany that intelligence with which Nature enlightened your instinct, when she made you suspect in us that faculty of reasoning you were incapable of comprehending. Go then in peace and live happily."

He whispered some orders and my white ostrich, led by the two turtle-doves, carried me away from the assembly. After galloping me for about half a day, the ostrich left me near a forest, into which I plunged as soon as it had gone. There I began to taste the pleasure of liberty and of eating the honey which flowed down the bark of the trees. If my body could have resisted the exertion I think I should never have finished my walk, for the agreeable diversity of the place made me continually discover something more beautiful; but when at last I found myself worn out with fatigue I sank down upon the grass. Stretched out thus under the shadow of the trees I felt invited to sleep by the soft coolness and the silence of solitude, when an indistinct noise of confused voices, which I seemed to hear fluttering about me, woke me with a start.

The ground appeared very flat and did not bristle with any bush to interrupt the sight, and mine therefore ranged far afield among the forest trees; yet the murmur which reached my ear could only have come from close beside me. Listening more intently, I distinctly heard a sequence of Greek words, and among the conversation of a number of people I heard one expressing himself as follows:

"Doctor, one of my relatives, the three-headed Elm, informs me by a Finch, which he sends me, that he is sick of a hectic fever and of a moss disease, which covers him from head to foot. I beseech you, by your friendship for me, to prescribe something for him."

I remained a little time without hearing anything, but after a short space it seemed to me I heard this reply:

"Even if the three-headed Elm were not your relative, and even if this request were made me by the most outlandish of our species, instead of by you, who are my friend, my profession would nevertheless oblige me to help him. Tell the three-headed Elm that to cure his illness he must suck up as much damp and as little dry as possible; for this purpose he must send the small threads of his roots towards the wettest parts of his soil, converse only of cheerful matters, and every day listen to the music of a few excellent Nightingales. He will then let you know how he feels after this regime; and then, according to the development of his illness, when we have prepared his humours, some Stork among my friends will give him a clyster, which will set him fairly on the road to convalescence."

After these words I did not hear the least sound, but a quarter of an hour later a voice, which I think I had not before noticed, reached my ear; this is what it said:

"Are you asleep, forked tree?"

I heard another voice reply thus: "No, fresh bark, why?"

"Because", replied the voice which had first broken the silence, "I feel disturbed in the manner we are accustomed to be when those animals called Men approach us and I should like to ask if you feel the same thing."

Some time passed before the other replied, as if he were concentrating his most secret senses upon this investigation. Then he exclaimed: "By heaven! you are right, and I swear my organs are so filled with the presence of a man that I am very much deceived if there is not one very close at hand."

Several voices then exclaimed together that assuredly they perceived a man. However much I gazed about me on all sides I could not discover whence this speech came. At last, when I had a little recovered from the horror into which this event had cast me, I replied to that voice, which I thought I had noticed asking if there were a man there, that there was one.

"But I beg you", I went on immediately, "whoever you are speaking to me, to tell me where you are."

A moment after I heard these words: "We are in your presence, your eyes behold us and you do not see us! Behold the oaks upon which we feel your sight is resting, it is we who speak to you, and if you are surprised that we should speak a language used in the world whence you come, know that our first fathers were born there; they dwelt in Epirus in the forest of Dodona,[69] where their natural kindness caused them to render oracles to those who consulted them in trouble. For this purpose they learned the Greek language, at that time the most universal, in order to be understood; and because we descend from them, from father to son, the gift of prophecy has come down to us. Well, you must know that a large eagle who was sheltered by our fathers in Dodona could not go hunting because it had broken one of its hands and therefore fed upon the acorns furnished it by their branches, when, one day, tired of living in a world where it suffered, it took flight towards the Sun and continued its voyage so happily that at last it reached the luminous globe where we are now; but the heat of the climate on its arrival made it vomit; it threw up a number of undigested acorns; these acorns germinated and from them grew the oaks which were our ancestors.

[Footnote 69: The famous oracle of Zeus was here.]

"In this way we changed our dwelling-place. But although you hear us speak a human language, it does not mean that other trees express themselves in the same way; only those oaks issued from the forest of Dodona speak as you do. As to other plants, this is how they express themselves: have you never noticed that fine gentle breeze which never fails to breathe on the outskirts of woods? That is the breath of their speech, and the little murmur or the delicate noise by which they break the silence of their solitude is actually their language. But although the sound of forests always seems the same, it is really so different that every kind of plant has its own; the birch does not speak like the maple, nor the beech like the cherry-tree. If the silly people of your world heard me as I am now speaking, they would think there was a devil imprisoned under my bark; for, far from believing that we can reason, they do not even suppose that we have a sentient soul, although every day they see that at the first blow given a tree by the wood-cutter the wedge enters four times deeper into the flesh than at the second blow; from which they ought to conjecture that the first blow assuredly surprised the tree and struck it unexpectedly, then that, immediately it was warned by the pain, it collected itself, united its forces to resist and became as it were petrified to combat the hardness of its enemy's weapon. But my intention is not to make the blind understand light; to me an individual is the whole race and the whole race is but an individual when that individual is not infected by the errors of the race; be attentive therefore, since when I speak to you I imagine I am speaking to the whole human race.

"In the first place you must know that almost all the concerts at which the birds make music are composed in praise of trees; moreover, to repay the care they take in celebrating our worthy actions, we are careful to hide their loves; for you must not imagine when you find so much difficulty in discovering one of their nests that this is the result of the prudence with which they have hidden it; it is the tree itself which folds its boughs all around the nest to protect its guest's family from the cruelties of man. To prove that this is so, observe the nests of those which are either born for the destruction of the birds, their fellow-citizens, like sparrow-hawks, hobbies, merlins, falcons, or of those which only speak to quarrel like jays and magpies, or of those which delight to terrify us, like owls and night-jars; you will notice that their nests are exposed to everybody's sight,[70] because the tree holds its branches away from them in order that they may be taken.

[Footnote 70: Nobody "observed Nature" in the 17th century, of course!]

"But it is unnecessary to mention so many details to prove that trees exercise all your functions both of the body and of the soul. Is there any one among you who has not noticed in the spring, when the Sun has delighted our bark with fertile sap, that we lengthen our boughs and spread them out, covered with fruit, on the breast of the earth whereof we are amorous? The earth, on its side, opens and is warmed with the same ardour; and as if each of our boughs were a male organ she draws near to join with them; and our boughs transported with pleasure discharge into her lap the seed with which she burns to conceive. She is nine months in forming this embryo before she brings it forth; but the tree, her husband, fearing the winter cold may harm her pregnancy, casts off his green robe to cover her, while to hide a little of his own nudity he is content with an old cloak of dead leaves.

"Well, you men eternally see these things and never perceive them; still more convincing things pass before your eyes and your stupidity is not even disturbed."

My attention was closely directed to the speech I heard from this arboreal voice and I was awaiting the remainder when it suddenly ceased speaking in a tone similar to that of a person who is prevented from speaking by short breath.

When I found it altogether obstinate in its silence I conjured it by everything I thought might move it to deign to instruct a person who had risked the perils of so great a voyage only for the purpose of learning. At the same time I heard two or three voices making the same supplication for love of me and then I distinguished one, saying to it as if it had been annoyed:

"Well, since you complain so much of your lungs, take a rest, and I will tell him the 'Story of the Lover-Trees'."

"Oh you, whoever you may be", cried I, throwing myself upon my knees, "the wisest of all the oaks of Dodona, who deign to take the trouble to instruct me, know that your lesson is not wasted upon one who is ungrateful; if ever I return to my native globe I make a vow that I will publish the marvels which you do me the honour to let me witness."

As I finished this protestation I heard the same voice continue thus: "Little man, look twelve or fifteen paces to your right hand, you will see two twin trees of moderate height intertwining their branches and their roots and trying in a thousand ways to make themselves one."

I turned my eyes towards these love-plants and I noticed that the leaves of both were lightly agitated by a half-voluntary emotion, while their rustling created a murmur so delicate that it scarcely reached the ear; and yet one would have said that by this means they were trying to question and answer each other.

When the time necessary for me to notice this double plant had passed, my good friend the oak took up the thread of his discourse thus:

"You cannot have lived so long without the famous friendship of Pylades and Orestes coming to your knowledge?

"I would describe to you all the joys of a gentle passion and I would relate to you all the miracles with which these lovers have astonished their age, did I not fear that so much light would dazzle the eyes of your reason, and therefore I will only paint these two young Suns in their eclipse.