Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

"Seigneur", said I, addressing myself to the king, "if I did not fear to importune your majesty I should ask you why among so many metamorphoses the nightingale alone has kept its being?"

The little prince listened to me with a benevolence which showed his natural kindness; and, understanding my curiosity, he replied:

"The nightingale has not changed its form like us, because it could not. It is a real bird and is no more than it appears to be. But let us walk towards the opaque regions and on the way I will relate to you who I am, together with the story of the nightingale."

I had scarcely showed the satisfaction I received from his offer, when he bounded lightly on to one of my shoulders. He raised himself on his little toes to bring his mouth level with my ear; and sometimes hanging by my hair and sometimes sliding down it, he said:

"By my faith, you must excuse a person who is already out of breath. I have crowded lungs in a little body and my voice is consequently so weak that I am forced to strain to make myself heard. I hope the nightingale will speak for himself. Let him sing if he wishes, and we shall at least have the pleasure of hearing his story in music."

I replied that I was not yet sufficiently practised in the language of birds; that, indeed, a certain philosopher whom I had met on my way to the Sun had given me some general principles to understand that of the beasts, but that they were not enough to understand all words in general, nor enough for me to be moved by all the delicate points which would be met with in an adventure such as this must be.

"Well", said he, "since you will have it so, your ears shall be deprived not only of the nightingale's beautiful songs, but of almost all its adventure, whereof I can only tell you that part which has come to my knowledge; however, you must be content with this fragment, because, even if I knew it all, the brevity of our journey to its country, whither I am about to conduct you, would not permit me to take my story further."

Having spoken thus, he jumped from my shoulder to the ground. He then gave his hand to his little subjects and began to dance with them in a kind of movement which I cannot describe, because nothing like it has ever been seen. But hearken, nations of the Earth, to that which I do not compel you to believe, because it passed for a miracle in a world where your miracles are only natural effects! As soon as these little men began to dance I seemed to feel their motion in myself and my motion in them. I could not look upon this dance without being distinctly moved from where I was, as if a whirlwind agitated all the parts of my body with the same dance and the particular movement of each one; and I felt the same joy expanding upon my face which a similar movement had spread upon theirs. As the dance drew closer, the dancers became confused with a much more rapid and more imperceptible motion; it seemed that the object of the ballet was to represent an enormous giant; for as they drew nearer each other and redoubled the swiftness of their movement they became so closely mingled that I perceived nothing but a great, open and almost transparent colossus; and yet my eyes perceived them interlinked with each other. At this moment I began to be unable to distinguish any more the diversity of the movements of each, on account of their extreme rapidity and also because this rapidity shrank as it approached the centre, and thus each vortex at last occupied so little space that it escaped my sight. Yet I think these parts drew still closer together; for this once unwieldy human mass gradually reduced itself until it formed a young man of moderate height, all of whose limbs were proportioned with a symmetry to which perfection at its strongest idea could never have flown. He was beautiful beyond everything to which all painters have raised their fantasy; but what I thought very marvellous was that the connection of all the parts which completed this perfect microcosm took place within the twinkling of an eye. The most agile of our little dancers leaped up with a flourish to the height and into the position needed to form a head; others hotter and not so loose formed the heart; and others much heavier only supplied the bones, the flesh and the plumpness.

When this large, beautiful young man was entirely finished, although his rapid construction had scarcely allowed me any time to notice an interval in its progress, I saw the king of the whole people enter by the mouth, yet it seemed to me he was attracted into this body by the breathing of the body itself. All this mass of little men had not yet given any sign of life; but as soon as it had swallowed its little king, it felt itself one. He remained some time looking at me and then, as if he were grown familiar by looking, he approached me, caressed me, and giving me his hand said:

"And now without damaging the delicacy of my lungs I can converse with you about the things which you long to know; but it is reasonable to reveal to you first of all the hidden secrets of our origin. Learn then that we are animals inhabiting the luminous regions of the Sun; the most general and the most useful of our occupations is to travel through the vast countries of this great world. We note carefully the habits of the nations, the peculiarity of climates and the nature of all things that can merit our attention, from which we build up an exact science of what exists. You must know that my vassals travelled under my guidance and, in order to have leisure to observe things more curiously, we did not keep the conformation particular to our body (which your senses could not perceive), whose subtlety would have caused us to move too quickly; but we made ourselves into birds. All my subjects became eagles by my command; and for fear they should grow weary I transformed myself into a nightingale to soothe their fatigue by the charms of music. I followed the rapid flight of my people without flying, for I was perched on the head of one of my vassals. We were following our road when a nightingale, dwelling in a province of the opaque country, through which we were then travelling, astonished to see me in the power of an eagle (it could only take us for what it saw us to be), began to commiserate my misfortune. I caused my followers to halt and we descended on the tops of some trees where sighed this charitable bird. I took so much pleasure in the sweetness of its mournful songs that I would not undeceive it, in order that I might enjoy them longer and more at my ease. On the spur of the moment I invented a story, in which I related to it imaginary misfortunes which had caused me to fall into the hands of the eagle; I mixed with it such surprising adventures, wherein the passions were so skilfully aroused and the music so well suited to the words, that the nightingale was beside itself.