[1] The Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24.
[2] Cf. the play of Cyrano de Bergerac, act III., scene xi.: "Or else, mechanic as well as artificer, I could have fashioned a giant grasshopper, with steel joints, which, impelled by successive explosions of saltpetre, would have hopped with me to the azure meadows where graze the starry flocks."
[3] Cf., in the play, the fifth of Cyrano's means for scaling the sky: "Since Phoebe, the moon-goddess, when she is at wane, is greedy, O beeves! of your marrow,... with that marrow have besmeared myself!"
[4] The translator has apparently misread biaisais where the French editions have baissais: i.e., I was descending toward the moon.
[CHAPTER V.]
Of his Arrival there, and of the Beauty of that Country in which he fell.
In fine, after I had been a very long while in falling, as I judged, for the violence of my Precipitation hindered me from observing it more exactly: The last thing I can remember is, that I found my self under a Tree, entangled with three or four pretty large Branches which I had broken off by my fall; and my face besmeared with an Apple, that had dashed against it.