Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

I do not think he spoke any more, or else the fumes of sleep had already placed me in a state where I was incapable of hearkening to him.

I was in the midst of the wisest and best conceived dream imaginable, when my philosopher awakened me. I will relate it to you later on, when it will not interrupt the thread of my discourse, for it is very important for you to know it, so that you may understand with what liberty the mind of an inhabitant of the Sun acts, while his senses are imprisoned by sleep.[82] For my part I think that this Lake exhales an air which has the property of purifying completely the mind from the embarrassment of the senses; for nothing is presented to your thought by it which does not seem to perfect and instruct you; for which reason I have the greatest respect in the world for those philosophers called Dreamers, whom our ignorant people mock at.

I opened my eyes with a start. It seems to me I heard him say:

"Mortal, you have slept enough; rise up, if you wish to see a rarity which would never even be imagined in your world. For an hour since I left you, in order not to disturb your repose, I have been walking alongside the five streams, which flow out of the Pool of Sleep. You may imagine how attentively I have observed them all; they bear the names of the five Senses and flow very close together. Sight seems a forked tube filled with powdered diamonds and little mirrors, which steal and restore the images of everything that comes near, and in its course it circles the Kingdom of the lynxes; Hearing is similarly double, it turns in as many windings as a maze and in the most hollow concaves of its bed can be heard an echo of every noise which sounds about it; I am very much deceived if I did not see foxes cleaning their ears beside it; Smell appears like the two preceding streams divided into two little hidden channels under a single arch; from everything it meets it extracts something invisible from which it composes a thousand kinds of smell, which occupy the place of water in it; on the banks of this stream may be seen many dogs purifying their noses; Taste flows in spurts, which usually only occur three or four times a day, and even then a large coral sluice-gate must be lifted up and underneath that a number of other very small ones, which are made of ivory; its fluid resembles saliva. But as to the fifth, the stream of Touch, it is so vast and so deep that it surrounds all its sisters, even lying full length in their bed, and its thick moisture is scattered far around on lawns completely green with sensitive plants.

"Now you must know that I was admiring, frozen with admiration, the mysterious turnings of all these streams when, as I walked on, I reached the place where they flow into the three rivers. But follow me, you will understand the arrangement of all these things far better by seeing them."

So potent a promise woke me completely; I held out my arm to him and we walked by the same way he had taken along the embankment which retained the five streams, each in its channel.

At the end of about a stadium something as shining as a lake reached our eyes. The wise Campanella had no sooner perceived it than he said to me:

"At last, my son, we are approaching. I see the three rivers distinctly."

At this news I felt myself transported with such an ardour that I felt as if I had become an eagle. I flew rather than walked, and rushed all about, with so eager a curiosity, that in less than an hour my guide and I had observed all that you are about to hear.

Three large rivers water the brilliant plains of this kindling world: the first and the widest is called Memory; the second, narrower but deeper, Imagination; the third, smaller than the others, is called Judgment.