by
Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac. La terre me fut importune Le pris mon essort vers les Cieux. l’y vis le soleil, et la lune. Et maintenant J’y vois les Dieux

(“All weary with the earth too soon,
I took my flight into the skies,
Beholding there the sun and moon
Where now the Gods confront my eyes.”)

From a 17th Century Engraving of the original portrait
by Zacharie Heince.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Savinien Hercule de Cyrano Bergerac, swashbuckler, hero, poet, and philosopher, came of an old and noble family, richer in titles than in estates. His grandfather still kept most of the titles, and was called Savinien de Cyrano Mauvières Bergerac Saint-Laurent. He was secretary to the King in 1571, and held other important offices. Since there was no absolute right of primo-geniture in those matters, the names, as well as what was left of the properties they had represented, were distributed among his descendants. Our hero seems to have received a fair share of the titles; but of the property, nothing.

He was the fifth among seven children, and was born on the 6th of March, 1619; not in 1620, as has been usually stated. He was born, moreover, at Paris, not in Gascony; we must, alas, admit that he was not a Gascon. He ought to have been one, he certainly deserved to be one. But Fortune, who seems to have taken pleasure in always making him just miss his destiny, began by doing him this first and greatest wrong of not letting him be born a Gascon. The family was not even of distant Gascon origin, but was Périgourdin; Bergerac itself is a small town near Périgueux. Cyrano, however, did his best to repair this as well as the other wrongs of Destiny; he acquired the Gascon accent, and often made himself pass for a Gascon.

The fortune of his early education made him fall into the hands of a country curate, who was an insufferable pedant (the species seems to have been common at that time), and who had no real scholarship (the two things are by no means contradictory). Cyrano dubbed his master an “Aristotelic Ass,” and wrote to his father that he preferred Paris.

This period of exile had one very important result, however: the formation of his first and most lasting friendship, that with Lebret, who shared in the instruction of the country curate, but with a more docile acceptance of his teachings. Here again Fortune seems to have played tricks with Cyrano, in giving him by accident for lifelong friend one who just missed being what a real friend should be; who was true and loyal, but who was always seeking to reform Cyrano or to push him forward in the world; who admired him, who loved him, but who was of such opposite nature that he understood him not at all.

Back at Paris, Cyrano was sent to the Collège de Beauvais afterward Racine’s college where he completed the course, under the principalship of another pedant named Grangier, who was a little more scholarly, but no less ridiculous than the first, and who figures in the leading rôle of Cyrano’s comedy Le Pédant joué. He lived the Paris student’s life, burning honest tradesmen’s signs and “doing other crazy things,” as his contemporary Tallemant des Réaux tells us. On leaving college he started upon a downward track, according to Lebret; “on which,” says the same good Lebret, “I dare to boast that I stopped him … by compelling him to enter the company of the Guards with me.” It may be doubted whether a temporary suspension of the paternal allowance had nothing to do with the matter; and whether, after all, Cyrano felt so much repugnance to entering this company of the Guards.

For this company was the famous regiment of the “garde-nobles,” commanded by Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, a “triple Gascon” and a “triple brave.” And his men were hardly a step behind him, all of them nobles that was an essential condition of entrance and almost all of them Gascons. Cyrano, at first in the position rather of the Christian than of the Cyrano of M. Rostand’s play, by his gallantry and wit compelled them to accept him, and even won among these “braves” the title of “démon de la bravoure.” Unable to be the most Gascon of the Gascons, he made it up by being more Gascon than the Gascons.

Among his exploits the most famous is that of the fight with the hundred ruffians; for this appears to be not a dramatic creation or a legend, but history. One of his poet-friends, Linière (the name is sometimes spelt Lignière) a writer of epigram and contributor to the “Recueils” or “Keep-sakes” of the epoch, had wounded the susceptibilities of a certain “grand seigneur,” who planned to avenge himself by the same method which another noble lord, in the eighteenth century, actually used against Voltaire. He posted his hundred men at the Porte de Nesle, to waylay Linière. Linière, hearing of it, came to take refuge with Cyrano for the night. But Cyrano would not receive him. “No, you shall sleep at home,” said he. “Here, take this lantern” (this is M. Brun’s version), “walk behind me and hold the light, and I’ll make bed-quilts of them for you!” And the next morning there were found scattered about the Porte de Nesle two dead men, seven wounded, and many hats, sticks, and pikes.

According to Lebret’s account, the battle took place in broad daylight, and had several witnesses. For the rest, his story coincides with that above. And all versions agree in saying that M. de Cuigy and M. de Brissailles both men of the time fairly well known: one the son of an Advocate of the Parliament of Paris, the other Mestre de Camp of the Prince de Conti’s regiment bore witness to the facts; and that the story became generally known, and was never denied. Perhaps it will not be well to guarantee the exactness of the number one hundred; but the story must be for the most part true.

Another exploit, less magnificent, but perhaps as characteristic of the wild temper of Cyrano, is his battle with Fagotin. A mountebank named Brioché had a theatre of marionnettes, near the Pont-Neuf, and used an ape called Fagotin, fantastically dressed, to attract spectators. Some enemy of Cyrano, perhaps Dassoucy, one day persuaded Brioché to dress his ape up in imitation of Cyrano, with long sword and nose as long. Cyrano, arriving and seeing this parody of himself exalted on a platform, unsheathes in blind rage, drives the crowd of lackeys and loafers right and left with the flat of his sword, and impales the poor ape who was holding out his sword in a posture of self-defence. According to the contemporary pamphlet, partly in prose and partly in verse, which was made upon this marvellous adventure, Brioché brought suit for damages against Bergerac. But even in these ridiculous circumstances Cyrano managed to get the laughers on his side; and claiming that in the country of art there was no such thing as gold and silver, and that he had a right to pay in the money of the country, he promised to eternize the dead ape in Apollinic verse; and so was acquitted.

The story of Montfleury, the fat actor whom Cyrano detested, is hardly less fantastic; and in connection with it we have the witness of Cyrano’s own letter “Against Montfleury the Fat, bad Actor and bad Author,” the tenth of the Satiric Letters. According to all the books of theatrical anecdotes, Cyrano one evening ordered him off the stage, and forbade him to reappear for a month; and when two days later he did reappear, Cyrano once more drove him in disgrace to the wings. The audience protesting, Cyrano challenged them each and all to meet him in duel, and carried his point. Whether he offered to take down their names in order or not, does not appear.

In the meantime, more serious work turned up. The regiment of the cadets was sent against the Germans, entered Mouzon, was besieged there. In a sortie, Cyrano was seriously wounded, a musket-ball passing through his body. Hardly recovered from his wound, he rejoined the army at the siege of Arras, in 1640; unfortunately for the story, he was probably no longer with the cadets there, but in the regiment of the Prince de Conti. Again he was wounded, this time even more seriously, with a sword-cut in the throat. And compelled to abandon the military career, he returned to Paris and took up his studies and his writing.

For he had always been a student and a poet. It is probable that the Pédant joué was in part composed during his college days. Lebret pictures him to us as studying between two duels, and working at an Elegy in all the noise of the regimental barracks, “as undistractedly as if he had been in a quiet study.” He now joined a group of independents in thought and life, naturalists in ethics and empiricists in philosophy, and forced his way into a private class of the philosopher Gassendi, where he had for fellow-students Hesnaut, Chapelle, Bernier, and almost certainly a young Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who was very soon to take the name of Molière, found the “Illustre Théâtre,” and after its failure start on a fifteen years’ tour of the provinces.

Cyrano was an earnest and capable student of philosophy, and came to it with the fresh interest not only of his own personality, but of a young man of barely twenty-two; he naturally imposed himself as a sort of leader in the group of young “libertins” or free-thinkers, just as he had done among the Guards. He knew well not only Gassendi, but also Campanella, and of course Descartes, in his works at least. He even seems to have read widely among the half-philosophers, half-occultists of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, such as Cornelius Agrippa, Jerome Cardan, Abbot Tritheim, César de Nostradamus, etc. Among the ancients, his first favorites were Lucretius and Pyrrho: Pyrrho whom he especially admired, “because he was so nobly free, that no thinker of his age had been able to enslave his opinions; and so modest, that he would never give final decision on any point.” There is much of Cyrano in this phrase, both in the half-bold modesty and in the half-timid fierceness of independence. Cyrano shuddered at the thought of having even a single one of his ideas enslaved to those of another thinker. Just as he had refused the Maréchal de Gassion for patron when he was in the Guards, so he would accept no one’s magister dixit, no patron of his thought, not even the Aristotle of the Schools.

The period of his life from 1643 to 1653 is a very obscure one. Yet probably almost all of his works were composed during this time. He may have travelled; there are traditions and suggestions that he visited England, Italy, even Poland. He probably stood in danger of persecution from the Jesuits on account of his philosophical ideas, and may have suffered it, as did his contemporaries Campanella and Galileo, or, to mention a French poet only a little older than he, Théophile de Viau, who was even condemned to death for less independence than Cyrano’s; though the sentence was fortunately commuted. He probably mingled somewhat in the society of the “Précieuses” of the time as well as in that of the “libertins”; for he has left a series of “Love-Letters” which must almost exactly have suited the taste of those who prepared Discourses on the Tender Passion. He probably had many duels still, for Lebret tells us that he served a hundred times as second — the round number is to be taken as such — and any one acquainted with the epoch, or with the Three Musketeers of Dumas, knows that the seconds fought as well as the principals. Lebret adds, to be sure, that he never had a quarrel on his own account, but we may perhaps take this as a bit of the conscientious “white-washing” which Lebret could not refrain from in speaking of his friend’s reputation; for we know enough of his character even from Lebret, and of his life from other sources, to make a gentle peacefulness, so out of keeping with the epoch, somewhat doubtful; and then there was his nose.

The Nose is authentic also. It appears in all the portraits, of which there are four. And in all of these it is the same: not a little ugly nose, flat at the top and projecting at the bottom in a little long gable turned up at the end; but a large, generous, well-shaped nose, hooked rather than retroussé, and planted squarely in the symmetrical middle of the face; not ridiculous, but monumental! The anecdotes of the duels it caused are so many, that one comes in spite of oneself to believe some of them. It is said that this nose brought death upon more than ten persons; that one could not look upon it, but he must unsheathe; if one looked away, it was worse; and as for speaking of Noses, that was a subject which Cyrano reserved for himself, to do it fitting honor. Listen to his treatment of it in the Pédant joué: “This veridic nose arrives everywhere a quarter of an hour before its master. Ten shoemakers, good round fat ones too, go and sit down to work under it out of the rain.” As for defending large noses, as the index of valor, intelligence, and all high qualities, it will appear in the Voyage to the Moon that he could do it as well with his pen as with his sword.

The end of his life was difficult and sad. He was finally compelled to accept the patronage of the Duc d’Arpajon, for no man could live or even exist by literature at that period, except as literature brought patronage or pensions. The great Corneille himself, than whom no one could be more simply sturdy and high of character, wrote begging letters to the great minister who controlled the pensions of literature. Cyrano dedicated the edition of his “Miscellaneous Works” in 1654 to the Duc d’Arpajon, in an epistle which fulfils, but with dignity and independence, the laws of the genre, and accompanied it with a sonnet addressed to the Duke’s daughter, which is in the taste of the time, yet considerably better than the taste of the time. Things went well till Agrippine appeared, which had a “succès de scandale”; but its “belles impiétés,” as the happy book-seller called them, seem to have pleased the timidly orthodox Duke less. In the meantime Cyrano had received a wound from a falling beam whether by mere accident or not, will never be known; but Cyrano had many enemies, and it has generally been thought that there was purpose behind the accident. For whatever reason, the Duc d’Arpajon seems to have advised Cyrano to leave him, and Cyrano was received by Regnault des Bois-Clairs, a friend of Lebret. There he was kindly cared for and lectured on the evil of his past life by Lebret and three women of the Convent of the Daughters of the Cross: Soeur Hyacinthe, an aunt of Cyrano himself; Mère Marguerite, the superior of the convent; and the Baronne de Neuvillette, a cousin of Cyrano, who was Madeleine Robineau, and had married the Baron Christophe de Neuvillette, killed at the siege of Arras in 1640. The three women persuaded themselves that they had converted Cyrano to the true Church. This is doubtful, since he dragged himself away to the country to die, at the house of the cousin whom he speaks of at the end of the Voyage to the Moon. In any case, Mère Marguerite reclaimed his body, and he was buried in holy ground at the convent.

The Voyage to the Moon was not published till 1656, the year after Cyrano’s death. It was certainly written as early as 1650, probably in 1649. It had been circulated widely in manuscript, and possibly a few copies had been printed, before the author’s death. The Voyage to the Sun, or, to give the title more accurately, the “Comic History of the States and Empires of the Sun,’’ was probably written immediately after the Voyage to the Moon, but was not published till 1662. The History of the Spark has never been found, unless that be the subtitle of a part of the Voyage to the Sun, as seems fairly probable.

The Letters of Cyrano are, in part at least, his earliest work. They were probably scattered over a considerable period in point of composition, but most of them were published in 1654. It is to be remembered that like all the letters of that epoch which we have, they were meant to be read in company, in the salons, or sometimes (like that “Against Dassoucy”), in the taverns, corresponding to the modern cafés, where men of letters gathered. They were written not for the postman, but for the parlor; and not so much for the parlor as for the printer. But even with the artificiality of this method, and with the burlesque or précieuse expression that was obligatory in Letters at that time, there are touches of real sincerity and passion constantly breaking through.

The Pédant joué is a prose-comedy in five acts, made almost entirely on the model of the Italian “commedia dell’ arte,” a form in which Molière’s early work is written, and which was practically the only form known at the time when Cyrano wrote for the play is certainly anterior to Corneille’s Menteur. We have the almost obligatory two pairs of young lovers; the old father who is tyrannical but easily deceived in this particular case combined with the pedant-doctor type; the valet who does the deceiving, in the service of the young lovers; and the terrible captain, who takes flight at the shadow of danger. Cyrano has, however, introduced one new type a peasant with his dialect and local characteristics: a type that Molière used to great advantage later, but hardly so very much better than Cyrano uses it here; witness the fact that a number of this peasant’s phrases have become proverbs. The famous scene of “qu’allait-il faire dans cette galère” (despairingly repeated by the father who is compelled to give up his cherished money for the ransom of a son held in captivity supposedly on a Turkish galley) is exceedingly well imagined, and Molière did well to use it, sixteen years after Cyrano’s death, for the two best scenes of his Fourberies de Scapin. It is not a matter to reproach Molière with, but it is a case in which Cyrano should receive due credit.

The only serious poetical work of Cyrano is his tragedy of Agrippine, veuve de Germanicus, written at some time in the forties, played in 1653, and published in 1654. The statement, repeated categorically by Mr. Sidney Lee in his recent Life of Shakespeare, that “Cyrano de Bergerac plagiarized ‘Cymbeline,’ ‘Hamlet,’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in his ‘Agrippina,’” has not the slightest foundation. There are no resemblances, either superficial or essential, on which to base it, and it is altogether improbable that Cyrano even knew of Shakespeare’s existence. The subject of Agrippine is similar to that of Corneille’s Cinna — a conspiracy under the Roman Empire. There are no resemblances to Corneille’s work in the details of the plot, but in general spirit the play is what we call Cornelian, partly because Corneille was the only one who possessed this spirit of the epoch with sufficient creative and individual power to compel the attention of posterity. Cyrano, once more, just missed this. But his play is worthy not only to be ranked with the best dramas of any of his contemporaries except Corneille, but even to be at least compared with Corneille’s better work (except perhaps the Cid and Polyeucte). The play is not thoroughly well constructed, and so misses something of dramatic effectiveness, though by no means missing it entirely; but it is as well constructed as Corneille’s Cinna, and better than his Horace to take examples only among his greatest plays. It has no scene to compare with that of the clemency of Augustus in Cinna, no character-study so fine as that of the different sentiments of Augustus. But it approaches, though it does not quite attain, the heroics of Horace. It is full of exaggeration so is Corneille; and of an exaggeration that sometimes becomes burlesque as in Corneille; but it is an exaggeration that is high and heroic, like Corneille’s. And the high and heroic sometimes as in a line like this:

Et puis, mourir n’est rien; c’est achever de naître —

sometimes, but too rarely, drops its exaggeration to become simple as simple as real heroism, which is the simplest thing in the world.

Except real genius. Real genius is, finally, the essential thing, which Cyrano once more just missed attaining missed just by the lack of that simplicity, perhaps. But exaggeration, sometimes carried to the burlesque, is the essential trait which makes him what he is; and we cannot wish it away.

CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE.

Note on the Translation

There have been at least three translations into English of the Voyage to the Moon: that alluded to on page 1; the present translation; and one made in the eighteenth century by Samuel Derrick. The last is dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, author of “Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift,” and attributes its “call from obscurity” to “your Lordship’s mentioning it in your Life of Swift” as having served for inspiration to Gulliver’s Travels.

Samuel Derrick’s translation, however, is not so good as that of A. Lovell. The seventeenth century translation is more flowery and fanciful, and by that very fact closer to the original. For though the Voyage to the Moon is the most sober in style of Cyrano’s works, yet there are still many touches of the “high fantastical” in its manner as well as in its substance. The eighteenth century translator has toned down the style to make it more acceptable to that age of reason and regularity. It is still another case of the irony of Fate pursuing Cyrano; the regularity of seventeenth century literature in France, against whom he struggled so swashbucklerly, had completely triumphed and spread their influence over Europe; so that even in the land where liberty and individuality are native, his work had to suffer correction in all its most fanciful passages. There are constant omissions of phrases or sentences in the eighteenth century translation, and there are also numerous mistakes, as well as many points missed. The seventeenth century translation, on the other hand, is faithful throughout to its original, and accurate as well as vivid.

The translation has been compared throughout with the French of the edition of 1661, and the two or three slight corrections needed have been made in footnotes. Except for the breaking up of some very long paragraphs, and slight changes in punctuation when necessary for clearness, the text has been reprinted as exactly as possible. All changes or additions, except the correction of evident misprints, have been bracketed.

C. H. P.

The Translator to the Reader

It is now Seven and Twenty Years, since the Moon appeared first Historically on the English Horizon: And let it not seem strange, that she should have retained Light and Brightness so long here, without Renovation; when we find by Experience, that in the Heavens, she never fails once a Month to Change and shift her Splendor. For it is the Excellency of Art, to represent Nature even in her absence; and this being a Piece done to the Life, by one that had the advantage of the true Light, as well as the Skill of Drawing, in this kind, to Perfection; he left so good an Original, which was so well Copied by another Hand, that the Picture might have served for many Years more, to have given the Lovers of the Moon, a sight of their Mistress, even in the darkest Nights; and when she was retired to put on a clean Smock in Phoebus his Apartment; if they had been so curious, as to have encouraged the Exposers.

However, Reader, you have now a second View of her, and that under the same Cover with the Sun too, which is very rare; since these two were never seen before in Conjunction. Yet I would have none be afraid, that their Eyes being dazzled with the glorious Light of the Sun, they should not see her; for Fancy will supply the Weakness of the Organ, and Imagination, by the help of this Mirrour, will not fail to discover them both; though Cynthia lye hid under Apollo’s shining Mantle. And so much for the Luminaries.

Now as to the Worlds, which, with Analogy to ours below, I may call the Old and New; that of the Moon having been discovered, tho imperfectly, by others, but the Sun owing its Discovery wholly to our Author: I make no doubt, but the Ingenious Reader will find in both, so extraordinary and surprizing Rarities, as well Natural, Moral, as Civil; that if he be not as yet sufficiently disgusted with this lower World, (which I am sure some are) to think of making a Voyage thither, as our Author has done; he will at least be pleased with his Relations. Nevertheless, since this Age produces a great many bold Wits, that shoot even beyond the Moon, and cannot endure, (no more than our Author) to be stinted by Magisterial Authority, and to believe nothing but what Gray-headed Antiquity gives them leave: It’s pity some soaring Virtuoso, instead of Travelling into France, does not take a flight up to the Sun; and by new Observations supply the defects of its History; occasioned not by the Negligence of our Witty French Author, but by the accursed Plagiary of some rude Hand, that in his Sickness, rifted his Trunks, and stole his Papers, as he himself complains.

Let some venturous Undertaker auspiciously attempt it then; and if neither of the two Universities, Gresham-College, nor Greenwich-Observatory can furnish him with an Instrument of Conveyance; let him try his own Invention, or make use of our Author’s Machine: For our Loss is, indeed, so great, that one would think, none but the declared Enemy of Mankind, would have had the Malice, to purloyn and stiffle those rare Discoveries, which our Author made in the Province of the Solar Philosophers; and which undoubtedly would have gone far, as to the settleing our Sublunary Philosophy, which, as well as Religion, is lamentably rent by Sects and Whimseys; and have convinced us, perhaps, that in our present Doubts and Perplexities, a little more, or a little less of either, would better serve our Turns, and more content our Minds.

Chapter I.
Of How the Voyage Was Conceived

I Had been with some Friends at Clamard, a House near Paris, and magnificently Entertain’d there by Monsieur de Cuigy, the Lord of it; when upon our return home, about Nine of the Clock at Night, the Air serene, and the Moon in the Full, the Contemplation of that bright Luminary furnished us with such variety of Thoughts as made the way seem shorter than, indeed, it was. Our Eyes being fixed upon that stately Planet, every one spoke what he thought of it: One would needs have it be a Garret Window of Heaven; another presently affirmed, That it was the Pan whereupon Diana smoothed Apollo’s Bands; whilst another was of Opinion, That it might very well be the Sun himself, who putting his Locks up under his Cap at Night, peeped through a hole to observe what was doing in the World during his absence.

“And for my part, Gentlemen,” said I, “that I may put in for a share, and guess with the rest; not to amuse my self with those curious Notions wherewith you tickle and spur on slow-paced Time; I believe, that the Moon is a World like ours, to which this of ours serves likewise for a Moon.”

This was received with the general Laughter of the Company. “And perhaps,” said I, “(Gentlemen) just so they laugh now in the Moon, at some who maintain, That this Globe, where we are, is a World.” But I’d as good have said nothing, as have alledged to them, That a great many Learned Men had been of the same Opinion; for that only made them laugh the faster.

However, this thought, which because of its boldness suited my Humor, being confirmed by Contradiction, sunk so deep into my mind, that during the rest of the way I was big with Definitions of the Moon which I could not be delivered of: Insomuch that by striving to verifie this Comical Fancy by Reasons of appearing weight, I had almost perswaded my self already of the truth on’t; when a Miracle, Accident, Providence, Fortune, or what, perhaps, some may call Vision, others Fiction, Whimsey, or (if you will) Folly, furnished me with an occasion that engaged me into this Discourse. Being come home, I went up into my Closet, where I found a Book open upon the Table, which I had not put there. It was a piece of Cardanus ; and though I had no design to read in it, yet I fell at first sight, as by force, exactly upon a Passage of that Philosopher where he tells us, That Studying one evening by Candle-light, he perceived Two tall old Men enter in through the door that was shut, who after many questions that he put to them, made him answer, That they were Inhabitants of the Moon, and thereupon immediately disappeared.

Cyrano in his study. — From a 17th Century Engraving

I was so surprised, not only to see a Book get thither of it self; but also because of the nicking of the Time so patly, and of the Page at which it lay upon, that I looked upon that Concatenation of Accidents as a Revelation, discovering to Mortals that the Moon is a World. “How!” said I to my self, having just now talked of a thing, can a Book, which perhaps is the only Book in the World that treats of that matter so particularly, fly down from the Shelf upon my Table; become capable of Reason, in opening so exactly at the place of so strange an adventure; force my Eyes in a manner to look upon it, and then to suggest to my fancy the Reflexions, and to my Will the Designs which I hatch.

“Without doubt,” continued I, “the Two old Men, who appeared to that famous Philosopher, are the very same who have taken down my Book and opened it at that Page, to save themselves the labour of making to me the Harangue which they made to Cardan.”

“But,” added I, “I cannot be resolved of this Doubt, unless I mount up thither.”

“And why not?” said I instantly to my self. “Prometheus heretofore went up to Heaven, and stole fire from thence. Have not I as much Boldness as he? And why should not I, then, expect as favourable a Success?”

Chapter II.
Of How the Author Set Out, and Where He First Arrived

After these sudden starts of Imagination, which may be termed, perhaps, the Ravings of a violent Feaver, I began to conceive some hopes of succeeding in so fair a Voyage: Insomuch that to take my measures aright, I shut my self up in a solitary Country-house; where having flattered my fancy with some means, proportionated to my design, at length I set out for Heaven in this manner.

I planted my self in the middle of a great many Glasses full of Dew, tied fast about me; upon which the Sun so violently darted his Rays, that the Heat, which attracted them, as it does the thickest Clouds, carried me up so high, that at length I found my self above the middle Region of the Air. But seeing that Attraction hurried me up with so much rapidity that instead of drawing near the Moon, as I intended, she seem’d to me to be more distant than at my first setting out; I broke several of my Vials, until I found my weight exceed the force of the Attraction, and that I began to descend again towards the Earth. I was not mistaken in my opinion, for some time after I fell to the ground again; and to reckon from the hour that I set out at, it must then have been about midnight. Nevertheless I found the Sun to be in the Meridian, and that it was Noon. I leave it to you to judge, in what Amazement I was; The truth is, I was so strangely surprised, that not knowing what to think of that Miracle, I had the insolence to imagine that in favour of my Boldness God had once more nailed the Sun to the Firmament, to light so generous an Enterprise. That which encreased my Astonishment was. That I knew not the Country where I was; it seemed to me, that having mounted straight up, I should have fallen down again in the same place I parted from.

However, in the Equipage I was in, I directed my course towards a kind of Cottage, where I perceived some smoke; and I was not above a Pistol-shot from it, when I saw my self environed by a great number of People, stark naked: They seemed to be exceedingly surprised at the sight of me; for I was the first, (as I think) that they had ever seen clad in Bottles. Nay, and to baffle all the Interpretations that they could put upon that Equipage, they perceived that I hardly touched the ground as I walked; for, indeed, they understood not that upon the least agitation I gave my Body the Heat of the beams of the Noon-Sun raised me up with my Dew; and that if I had had Vials enough about me, it would possibly have carried me up into the Air in their view. I had a mind to have spoken to them; but as if Fear had changed them into Birds, immediately I lost sight of them in an adjoyning Forest. However, I catched hold of one, whose Legs had, without doubt, betrayed his Heart. I asked him, but with a great deal of pain, (for I was quite choked) how far they reckoned from thence to Paris? How long Men had gone naked in France? and why they fled from me in so great Consternation? The Man I spoke to was an old tawny Fellow, who presently fell at my Feet, and with lifted-up Hands joyned behind his Head, opened his Mouth and shut his Eyes: He mumbled a long while between his Teeth, but I could not distinguish an articulate Word; so that I took his Language for the maffling noise of a Dumb-man.