Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

[79] Descartes died 1650, which dates this part of The Sun.

[80] This idea is a favourite with Cyrano. It is, of course, a commonplace now.

[81] This is rather in the spirit of Mlle de Scudéry's Carte de Tendre, but Clélie was not published until 1654.

[82] We never get this dream.

[83] "Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired...." Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

[84] This episode allows Cyrano to jest a little at some of the absurd sexual ideas of More and Campanella.

[85] This is especially aimed at Sir Thomas More: "For a sad and an honest matrone sheweth the woman, be she mayde or widdowe, naked to the wower. And lykewise a sage and discreet man exhibyteth the wower naked to the woman". The Seconde Booke of Utopia.

[86] "Nel tempo innanzi é ad alcuno lecito il coito con le donne sterile et pregne...." (Campanella, Città del Sole.)

[87] Cyrano coined this verb, "to pulley".

[88] In spite of M. Lachèvre, I cannot help thinking that Cyrano is making fun of the précieux style in all this.