Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

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.