Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

Into that society of revellers, unscrupulous, heedless, coarse, irreligious, but brave, witty, chivalrous, talented and merry, came a young man of eighteen, the owner of a curious nose "shaped like a parrot's beak", talented, witty and brave himself, already a brilliant swordsman, scatter-brained, vain with all the vanity of young men in Latin countries, eager for knowledge but filled with hatred for the theology and pedantry of his early masters. Imagine the London of James the First's reign so vividly and delightfully sketched in The Fortunes of Nigel, adding to it that freedom of speech, morals and speculation which Scott largely left out; transfer it to the turbulent Paris of 1637 and throw into that milieu not a sober Scotch laird, but a hot-headed young Frenchman. Is it not almost hypocritical to expect that he would do anything different from what he apparently did do: Drink, gamble, blaspheme, whore, talk atheism, play mad pranks and slit men's throats in duels?

From this wild cabaret life Cyrano was rescued by Le Bret just about the time when Abel de Cyrano threatened seriously to cut off supplies. At nineteen Cyrano entered the company of guards commanded by the "triple Gascon", M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux.

Cyrano de Bergerac was a good soldier, but that does not mean he was free from the ordinary vices of soldiers. If the "dangerous incline" from which Le Bret rescued his friend was gambling, he chose a curious remedy; for gambling is inevitably one means of dispelling the crushing ennui of military life. Another, almost universal, military amusement is drinking; one would not expect to find teetotallers among the Gascon guard. It seems probable that the "dangerous incline" was atheism or a serious love affair; for the military life is dulling to the affections and fatal to thought. Certainly, the mess and guard-room of M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux's company would not greatly differ from a noisy cabaret. One hardly sees what moral advantages were gained by the change, except that military discipline and comradeship probably steadied Cyrano if they failed to correct the extravagance of his character and behaviour. Casteljaloux's company consisted almost entirely of Gascons, and this fact has helped to propagate the myth of Cyrano's noble birth; and doubtless he assumed the Gascon-sounding name of de Bergerac to increase the illusion. But he must have possessed some other merit than that of an assumed name to enable him to enter the guards; this was of course his swordsmanship.

Duelling in France in the first half of the 17th century was more than a fashionable mania, it was a real danger to the state. The fashion was at its height in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII. During eight years of the former reign no less than two thousand gentlemen lost their lives in duels. Even the great Cardinal Richelieu only succeeded in diminishing, not in crushing the habit. The duelling in Rostand's Cyrano is the most accurate part of the play; indeed it would be difficult to exaggerate the fantastic nature of these duels. Men fought for the merest trifles; not so much for honour as for the love of fighting, of prestige and notoriety. Successful duelling was then a sure means to those commonly desired ends. The thirst for "monomachy" was so ardent that the seconds were not content to regulate the combat but must needs take part in it; so that a girl's ribbon might be the pretext for six men to pull out their rapiers in mortal combat, with the result perhaps of several wounds and more than one death. Cyrano de Bergerac was a brilliant swordsman, a talent which gave him a position comparable to that of an aeroplane "ace" during the European war. The stories told of his duelling sound fabulous and are probably exaggerated, but certainly have a foundation in fact. Le Bret tells us:

"Duels, which at that time seemed the unique and most rapid means of becoming known, in a few days rendered him so famous that the Gascons, who composed nearly the whole company, considered him the demon of courage and credited him with as many duels as he had been with them days."

The most remarkable thing about these duels, and a point very much in Cyrano's favour, was that he fought over a hundred as second to other men and not on his own account. He was no Bobadil. Brun tries to argue that Cyrano must have fought on his own account, but even M. Lachèvre, who is hostile to Cyrano, denies it. Moreover, we have Cyrano's own declaration: "I have been everybody's second."

Casteljaloux's company was ordered for active service in 1639. The company was besieged in Mouzon by the Croats of the Imperial Army. Cyrano has described part of the siege in the twenty-fourth of his Lettres Diverses. The garrison was short of provisions and during one of the numerous sorties Cyrano was shot through the body. He had not recovered when the garrison was relieved by Chatillon on the twenty-first of June 1639. Next year Cyrano was again on active service. He was wounded a second time by a sword-thrust in the throat at the siege of Arras, sometime before the ninth of August 1640. He had served this campaign in Conti's gendarmes.

Two severe wounds in fourteen months are "cooling cards" even to a pseudo-Gascon. Cyrano determined to retire from the service.

"The hardships he suffered during these two sieges," says Le Bret, "the inconveniences resulting from two severe wounds, the frequent duels forced upon him by his reputation for courage and skill, which compelled him to act as second more than one hundred times (for he never had a quarrel on his own account), the small hope he had of preferment, from the lack of a patron, to whom his free genius was incapable of submitting, and finally his great love of learning, caused him to renounce the occupation of war which demands everything of a man and makes him as much an enemy of literature as literature makes him a lover of peace."

Cyrano, then, returned to his studies. Hitherto he had been unfortunate in his instructors, but he now made the acquaintance of several scholars and men of letters who had a strong influence on him, whose ideas he adopted and copied in his works. The celebrated Gassendi, who revived the philosophy of Epicurus and opposed both the Aristotelians and Descartes, came to Paris and lectured to a small number of selected students. Niceron makes the unlikely assertion that Cyrano forced his way into this learned society at the sword's point. It is certain that Cyrano sat at Gassendi's feet and picked up from his lectures those fragments of Epicurean physics he afterwards scattered through his works. There most probably he met Molière, Rohault, Bernier, Chapelle and the younger La Mothe Le Vayer. Cyrano was therefore a member of a distinguished literary group which contained one eminent philosopher and a dramatist of supreme genius.