Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

"Since you are a philosopher", replied this woman, addressing Campanella, "I must unburden my heart here before going any further.[84]

"To tell you in a few words the matter which brings me here, you must know that I come to complain of a murder committed upon the person of my youngest child; this barbarian I am holding has killed it twice, although he was its father."

We were mightily embarrassed by this discourse and so I desired to know what she meant by a child that was killed twice.

"Know, then", replied the woman, "that in our country among other statutes of Love there is a law to regulate how often a husband shall pay his debt to his wife; therefore every evening each doctor goes through all the houses of the district and, having examined the husband and the wife, he allots them so many embraces for that night, according to their good or bad health. My husband here was allotted seven; however, piqued at some rather disdainful words I said to him as we were undressing, he did not approach me all the time we were in bed. But God, who avenges the cause of the afflicted, permitted this wretch (tickled by the thought of the kisses he had withheld from me) to waste a man in a dream. I told you that his father killed him twice, because by preventing him from existing he caused him not to exist, which was his first murder; and he caused him never to have existed, which was the second; while an ordinary murderer knows that the person he deprives of the daylight ceases to exist, but he cannot cause him not to have existed at all. Our magistrates would have made short work of him; but he cunningly excused himself by saying he would have performed his conjugal duty if he had not feared that by embracing me in the height of the anger I had put him into he would beget a frantic man.

"The senate, embarrassed by this justification, ordered us to go to the philosophers and to plead our cause before them. As soon as we received the order to go we entered a cage hung on the neck of the great bird you see there, from which we lower ourselves to the ground and hoist ourselves into the air by means of a pulley attached to it. In our province there are persons expressly employed in taming them when young and in training them for the tasks which render them useful to us. They are principally urged to yield themselves to discipline contrary to their ferocious natures, by their hunger, which is almost always unsatisfied; and so we abandon to them the bodies of all beasts which die. For the rest, when we desire to sleep (for, on account of the too continuous excesses of love which weaken us, we need repose) we send up from the country at regular intervals twenty or thirty of these birds, each attached to a cord and, as they fly up, their vast wings spread in the sky a shadow wider than the horizon."

I was very attentive to her discourse and observed in an ecstasy the enormous height of this giant bird; but as soon as Campanella had looked at it a little he exclaimed:

"Ha! Truly, it is one of those feathered monsters called condors which are seen in the island of Mandragora in our world and throughout the torrid zone; they cover an acre of ground with their wings; but since these animals become larger in proportion as the Sun, which saw their birth, is more heated, it cannot be but that they are of a fearful size in the world of the Sun.

"However", he added, turning towards the woman, "you must necessarily continue your voyage since you have to be judged by Socrates, to whom the supervision of morals has been allotted. But I beg you to tell us of what country you are, because I have only been three or four years in this world and do not yet know the map."

"We are", she replied, "from the Kingdom of Lovers; this great state is bounded on one side by the republic of Peace and on the other by that of the Just. In the country whence I come the boys at the age of sixteen enter the novitiate of Love: this is a most sumptuous palace which covers nearly a quarter of the city. As for the girls, they enter it at thirteen. There they spend a year of probation, during which the boys are only occupied in deserving the affection of the girls and the girls in making themselves worthy of the friendship of the boys. At the end of twelve months the Faculty of Medicine visits this Seminary of Lovers in a body; they examine them all one after another, down to the most secret parts of their persons, and cause them to couple before their eyes; and then in proportion as the male is found by experiment to be vigorous and suitable, he is given as his wives ten, twenty, thirty or forty girls from among those who affect him, provided the affection be reciprocal.[85] The husband, however, may only lie with two at once and he is not allowed to embrace any of them while she is pregnant. Those women who are found to be sterile are employed as menials and impotent men are made slaves and can mingle carnally with the sterile women.[86] For the rest, when a family has more children than it can feed the republic looks after them; but this is a misfortune which never happens, because as soon as a woman is delivered in the city, the treasury furnishes an annual sum for the education of the child according to its rank, and the treasurers of the state themselves carry the money to the father's house on a given day. But if you wish to know more, come into our basket, it is large enough for four. Since we are going the same road we will deceive the length of the way by talk."

Campanella was of the opinion that we should accept the offer. I, too, was very glad to avoid the fatigue; but when I came to help them weigh the anchor I was very surprised to find that instead of a large cable to hold it, it was hung on a thread of silk as fine as a hair. I asked Campanella how it could be that a heavy mass, such as this anchor was, did not break so frail a thing with its weight; and the good man replied that this cord did not break, because it had been spun equally throughout and therefore had no reason to break at one point more than at another. We crowded into the basket and then pulleyed[87] ourselves up to the bird's throat, where we seemed like a bell hung round his neck. When we found ourselves touching the pulley we fastened the cable to which our cage was hung round one of the lightest feathers of its down, which nevertheless was as thick as a thumb; and as soon as the woman had signed to the bird to start we felt ourselves cleaving the sky with violent rapidity. The condor diminished or increased its flight, rose or sank, at the will of its mistress, whose voice served it as a bridle. We had not flown two hundred leagues, when on our left hand we saw upon the ground a shadow similar to that produced underneath us by our living parasol. We asked the strange woman what she thought it was.