The Parliament of Birds.
The Parliament of Birds.
The Parliament of Birds.
"Gentlemen", cried a swallow in the assembly as soon as I had ceased speaking, "I hold him convicted. You have not forgotten he said the country in which he was born was France; but you know that monkeys do not breed in France; after that, judge if he is what he boasts to be."
I replied to my accuser that I had been taken from the bosom of my parents and transported to France when I was so young that I had a perfect right to call that my native country to which my earliest memories were attached. Although this reason was specious, it was insufficient. But the greater part of them, charmed to hear that I was not a man, were very glad to believe it; for those who had never seen one could not but persuade themselves that a man was something much more horrible than I appeared to be, while the most sensible of them added that a man was something so abominable it was useful to believe he was only an imaginary being.[65]
The whole assembly clapped their wings with joy and I was immediately handed over to the Syndics for examination, with orders to produce me next day and to make a report to the committee at the opening of the Chambers. They took charge of me then and carried me off to a retired wood. While they kept me there they did nothing but gesticulate about me with a hundred different kinds of somersaults and walk about in processions with nutshells on their heads. Sometimes they clapped their feet together, sometimes they dug little ditches and filled them up again; and all this time I was surprised not to see anyone else.
The day and the night were passed in these trifles until the prescribed hour arrived next day; I was carried back at once to appear before my judges and, when the Syndics were bidden to speak the truth, they replied that upon their consciences they felt themselves bound to inform the court I was assuredly not a monkey as I boasted.
"For", they said, "we leaped, walked, pirouetted and invented a hundred tricks in his presence, whereby we meant to urge him to do the same, according to the habit of monkeys. Now, even when brought up by men, a monkey is always a monkey, and if he had been one we maintain it would not have been in his power to forbear imitating our monkey-tricks. That is our report, gentlemen."
The judges drew together to hear each other's opinion; but it was noticed that the sky was cloudy and seemed charged with rain; and this made them postpone the sitting. I imagined that this had happened on account of the appearance of bad weather, when the solicitor-general came to tell me by order of the court that I should not receive sentence that day; that they never end a criminal prosecution when the sky is not clear, because they fear lest the bad temperature of the air might influence the good constitution of the judges' minds; lest that ill humour which comes over birds during rain should be discharged upon the case; or lest the court should visit its depression upon the prisoner. And so my sentence was put off until finer weather. I was taken back to prison and I remember that my charitable magpie did not abandon me on the way; it flew continually beside me and I think it would not have left me if its companions had not approached us.
At last I arrived at my prison, where during my captivity I had nothing to eat but the "king's bread"[66]; by this they meant fifty worms and as many cheese-worms,[67]which they brought me to eat every seven hours.
I thought I should be brought up again the next day and everyone thought so too; but after five or six days one of my guards told me the whole of the time had been taken up by the plea of a community of goldfinches, who demanded justice against one of their companions. I asked my guard of what crime this wretch was accused.
"Of the most enormous crime", replied the guard, "by which a bird can be blackened. He is accused.... Can you believe it? He is accused.... But, good Gods! When I only think of it, the feathers stand up on my head. He is accused of not having merited a friend for the last six years; so they have condemned him to be a king, and king of a people of another species. If his subjects had been of his kind, he might have dipped into their pleasures, at least with his eyes and his desire; but since the pleasures of one species have no relation at all to the pleasures of another species, he will undergo all the fatigues and will drink all the bitterness of royalty, without being able to taste any of its compensations. He was sent off this morning surrounded by a number of doctors, who have to watch that he does not poison himself on the journey."
Although my guard was naturally a great talker, he dared not converse with me alone any longer for fear he should be suspected of a compact with me.
At the end of about a week I was again brought before my judges. I was placed upon the fork of a small leafless tree. The learned birds, solicitors, counsel and judges, were perched in rows according to their rank on the summit of a large cedar. The others, who were only present at the assembly from curiosity, were placed pell-mell so that all the seats were filled, that is to say, so that the cedar branches were covered with birds' feet.
The magpie, who, as I had noticed, had always been filled with compassion for me, came and perched on my tree, where it feigned to amuse itself by pecking the moss.
"It is impossible for you to know", it said, "how much your misfortune moves me; for although I am not ignorant that a man among living beings is a pest of which every civilized state ought to purge itself, yet when I remember I was brought up by them from the cradle, that I learned their language so perfectly I almost forgot my own, and that I ate such excellent soft cheeses from their hands, I cannot think of it without water coming into my eyes and mouth; I feel for you a tenderness which prevents me from inclining towards the juster party."
It had finished speaking when we were interrupted by the arrival of an eagle, which came and perched on the boughs of a tree near mine. I should have risen to get on my knees before it, thinking it was the king, if my magpie had not kept me in my former position with its foot.
"Do you suppose", it said, "that this large eagle is our sovereign? That is a supposition of men who, because they allow themselves to be commanded by the largest, strongest and most cruel of their companions, and judge all things from themselves, foolishly imagine that the eagle must command us. But our policy is very different. We choose only the weakest, the gentlest and the most peaceful for our kings; moreover, we change them every six months and we choose them weak so that the humblest individual they have wronged may be avenged upon them. We choose them gentle so that they may neither hate nor be hated by anybody. And we desire them to be of a peaceful temper in order to avoid war, the channel of all injustices.
"Every week a parliament is held, where anyone may complain of him. If there are only three birds dissatisfied with his government he is dethroned and they proceed to a new election. During the day the parliament is held, our king is placed on the top of a tall yew on the edge of a pond, with his feet and wings bound. All the birds one after another pass in front of him, and if any one of them knows he deserves the last punishment, it may cast him into the water; but it must at once justify itself for what it has done, otherwise it is condemned to a sad death."
I could not forbear interrupting him to ask what he meant by a sad death; and this is what he replied:
"When a bird is judged culpable of a crime so enormous that death is too small an expiation, they try to choose a death which contains the pain of several; and they proceed as follows: those among us whose voices are the most melancholy and the most funereal are attached to the guilty person, who is carried to a sad cypress. There these sad musicians gather around him and fill his soul through his ears with such lugubrious and tragical songs that the bitterness of his grief disorders the economy of his organs and so presses upon his heart that he pines visibly and dies suffocated with sadness. However, such a spectacle never happens; for since our kings are very gentle they never provide anyone with the opportunity of desiring to risk so cruel a death for the sake of vengeance. The reigning monarch at present is a dove, whose temper is so peaceful that the other day when two sparrows had to be reconciled there was all the difficulty in the world to make him understand what enmity is."
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.Is not this pride utterly insupportable? Could one who entertained such a conception deserve a punishment less than that of being born a man? Yet it is not on this account that I urge you to condemn this man; since the poor beast has not the use of reason like ourselves, I excuse his errors in so far as they are produced by lack of understanding; but I ask justice on account of those which are daughters of his will. As, for example, that he kills us without being attacked by us; that he eats us when he might satisfy his hunger with more suitable food; and, which I consider the most cowardly of all, that he debauches the natural disposition of hawks, falcons and vultures, by teaching them to massacre their kind, to feed upon their like or to deliver us into his hands.This consideration alone is so heinous that I ask the court to condemn him to extermination by a sad death.[68]
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.
Is not this pride utterly insupportable? Could one who entertained such a conception deserve a punishment less than that of being born a man? Yet it is not on this account that I urge you to condemn this man; since the poor beast has not the use of reason like ourselves, I excuse his errors in so far as they are produced by lack of understanding; but I ask justice on account of those which are daughters of his will. As, for example, that he kills us without being attacked by us; that he eats us when he might satisfy his hunger with more suitable food; and, which I consider the most cowardly of all, that he debauches the natural disposition of hawks, falcons and vultures, by teaching them to massacre their kind, to feed upon their like or to deliver us into his hands.
This consideration alone is so heinous that I ask the court to condemn him to extermination by a sad death.[68]
The whole Bar shivered with horror at the idea of so great a torture; and, with the purpose of moderating it, the King made a sign to my counsel to reply. It was a starling, a great jurisconsult, who, striking his foot thrice upon the branch which supported him, spoke to the assembly as follows:
"It is true, gentlemen, that moved by pity I undertook the case of this wretched beast; but, at the moment of pleading, remorse of conscience has come to me and a kind of secret voice forbidding me to undertake so detestable an action. Thus, gentlemen, I declare to you and to the court that for the sake of my soul's salvation I will not contribute in any fashion towards the duration of such a monster as man."
The whole populace clapped their beaks as a sign of rejoicing and to congratulate the sincerity of so worthy a bird.
My magpie presented itself to plead in his place, but silence was imposed upon it because, since it had been brought up by men and was perhaps infected by their morals, there was some fear it would approach my case with a prejudiced mind; for the Court of Birds will not hear an advocate who is more interested on behalf of one client than another, unless he can show that this preference comes from the party's right.
When my judges saw that nobody came forward to defend me they stretched out their wings, shook them and flew immediately to consultation.
I learned afterwards that the greater part insisted strongly that I should be exterminated by a sad death; but yet, when they perceived the King inclined to milder measures, they revised their opinions; thus my judges moderated themselves and instead of a sad death, which they remitted, they thought meet to fit my punishment to one of my crimes. To annihilate me by a punishment which would serve to undeceive me by challenging the pretended empire of men over birds, they ordered that I should be given up to the anger of the weakest among them; which meant that they condemned me to be eaten by flies.
At that moment the assembly rose and I heard a murmur go round that the circumstances of my suffering had not been gone into in detail, because of an accident to a bird of the party, which had fallen in a swoon just as it was about to speak to the King. They thought this had happened from the horror caused it by looking too fixedly at a man; and so the order was given for me to be taken away.
Sentence was pronounced upon me; and as soon as the osprey who filled the office of clerk of the court had finished reading it to me, I perceived the sky about me black with flies, humble-bees, midges, gnats, and fleas, buzzing with impatience. I expected to be carried off by my eagles as before, but in their place I saw a great black ostrich, which set me shamefully astride its back; for with them this position is the most ignominious in which a criminal can be placed, and whatever offence a bird has committed it cannot be condemned to this.
The archers who took me to execution consisted of fifty condors and as many griffins; before and behind them flew very slowly a procession of ravens croaking something lugubriously and I thought I heard in the distance responses from screech-owls.
When we left the place where judgment had been pronounced upon me, two birds of paradise who had been ordered to be present at my death came and perched on my shoulders. Although my soul was greatly troubled by horror at the step I was about to take, I yet remember almost all the reasonings by which they tried to console me.
"Death", said they, with their beaks in my ear, "is certainly not a great evil, because our good mother Nature subjects all her children to it; and it cannot be an affair of great consequence, because it happens at any moment and from so small a cause; for if life were so excellent it would not be in our power to withhold it from offspring; or if death brought with it consequences so important as you persuade yourself, it would not be in our power to give it: on the contrary, there is every probability that since every animal begins in play, it ends similarly. I speak to you in this way because, since your soul is not immortal like ours, you may well suppose when you die that everything dies with you. Do not be troubled then at undergoing what some of your companions will undergo later. Their condition is more deplorable than yours; for if death is an evil, it is only an evil to those who are condemned to die; compared with you, who have only an hour between here and there, they will be fifty or sixty years a-dying. Then, you know, he who is not yet born is not unhappy. Well, you are about to resemble him who is not yet born; a twinkling of an eye after life, you will be what you were a twinkling of an eye before; and immediately after that twinkling of an eye you will be dead as long as he who died a thousand centuries ago. But in any case, granted that life is a good, the same chance which in the infinity of time made you what you are may some day cause you to exist again. May not that matter, which by constant mixing finally reached that number, that disposition and that order necessary to the construction of your being, once more by remixing reach the state required to cause you to feel again? Yes, but, you will say, I do not remember to have existed. Why! my dear brother, what do you care so long as you are conscious of existing? And then may it not be that to console you for the loss of your life you will imagine the same reasons which I now put before you?
"These are considerations sufficiently strong to oblige you to drink this bitter cup with patience; but I have others still more urgent, which doubtless will bring you to desire it. My dear brother, you must convince yourself that, since you and other brutes are material, and since death instead of annihilating matter simply alters its economy you must, I say, believe with certainty that when you cease to be what you were you will begin to be something else. Suppose you become a clod of earth or a stone, well, you will be something less wicked than man. But I have a secret to discover to you, which I should not like any of your companions to hear from my mouth; and that is, when you are eaten, as you will be, by our little birds, you will pass into their substance: yes, you will have the honour of contributing (even though blindly) to the intellectual operations of flies, and though you do not reason yourself, you will at least share in the glory of making them reason."
At about this point of their exhortation we reached the place fixed upon for my execution.
There were four trees very close to each other and about the same distance apart, on each of which at the same height was perched a large heron. I was taken down from the black ostrich and a number of cormorants carried me to the place where the four herons were waiting for me. These birds, firmly seated each on its tree opposite each other, wound their prodigiously long necks about my legs and arms as though they were ropes, and bound me so tightly that although each of my limbs was only tied by the neck of one bird I had not the power to move it at all.
They were to remain a long time in this position; for I heard orders given to the cormorants who had lifted me to catch fish for the herons and to slide their food into their beaks. They were still waiting for the flies, because they cleft the air with a flight less rapid than ours; nevertheless we were never out of hearing of them. The first thing they undertook was to apportion my body, and this arrangement was made so cunningly that they assigned my eyes to the bees, so that I should have them stung out as they ate them; my ears to the humble-bees, so that I should have them deafened and devoured at the same time; and my shoulders to the fleas, in order that I should have them pierced by itching bites; and so on for the rest. Scarcely had I heard these orders arranged, when suddenly I saw the insects approaching. It seemed as if all the atoms of which the air is composed had been changed into flies; for only two or three weak rays of light reached me, and these appeared to slip through to get at me, so closely were these battalions drawn up and so near my flesh were they.
But just as each one of them was choosing the place it desired to bite me, I saw them suddenly retreat; and among the confusion of a vast number of shouts, which re-echoed to the clouds, I several times made out the words:Pardon, pardon, pardon.
Two turtle-doves then came up to me. At their arrival all the dismal apparatus of my death disappeared; I felt my herons loose the circles of the long necks which bound me; and my body, stretched out like a Saint Andrew's cross, slipped from the top of the four trees to the foot of their roots. I expected from this fall to be shattered on the ground against a rock; but at the height of my terror I was very surprised to find myself seated on a white ostrich, which set off at a gallop as soon as it felt me on its back.
I was taken by a road different from that by which I had come; for I remember passing through a large wood of myrtles and another of terebinth trees leading to a huge forest of olive trees, where King Dove was awaiting me in the midst of all his court.
As soon as he saw me, he signed for me to be helped down. Immediately two eagles of the guard extended their feet and carried me to the Prince. I respectfully attempted to embrace and to kiss his Majesty's little spurs, but he evaded me.
"I ask you", said he, "whether you know this bird."
At these words they showed me a parrot, which began to strut and flap its wings, when it perceived I was looking at it.
"It seems to me", I exclaimed to the King, "that I have seen it somewhere, but I am so confused by fear and joy that I cannot yet tell precisely where it was."
At these words the parrot came to me, embraced my face with its two wings and said:
"What! You do not recognise Cæsar, your cousin's parrot, on whose account you have so often maintained that birds reason? Just now, during your trial, it was I who tried to declare after the session what obligations I have to you, but the pain of seeing you in so great a peril made me fall into a swoon."
His speech completed the unsealing of my sight. Having recognised him I embraced and kissed him; he embraced and kissed me.
"'Tis you, then, my poor Cæsar", said I, "whose cage I opened to return you the liberty taken from you by the tyrannical custom of our world?"
The King interrupted our caresses and spoke to me to this effect:
"Man, with us a good action is never lost; for this reason, although as a man you deserve to die simply because you were born, the Senate pardons you your life. This act of recognition may well accompany that intelligence with which Nature enlightened your instinct, when she made you suspect in us that faculty of reasoning you were incapable of comprehending. Go then in peace and live happily."
He whispered some orders and my white ostrich, led by the two turtle-doves, carried me away from the assembly. After galloping me for about half a day, the ostrich left me near a forest, into which I plunged as soon as it had gone. There I began to taste the pleasure of liberty and of eating the honey which flowed down the bark of the trees. If my body could have resisted the exertion I think I should never have finished my walk, for the agreeable diversity of the place made me continually discover something more beautiful; but when at last I found myself worn out with fatigue I sank down upon the grass. Stretched out thus under the shadow of the trees I felt invited to sleep by the soft coolness and the silence of solitude, when an indistinct noise of confused voices, which I seemed to hear fluttering about me, woke me with a start.
The ground appeared very flat and did not bristle with any bush to interrupt the sight, and mine therefore ranged far afield among the forest trees; yet the murmur which reached my ear could only have come from close beside me. Listening more intently, I distinctly heard a sequence of Greek words, and among the conversation of a number of people I heard one expressing himself as follows:
"Doctor, one of my relatives, the three-headed Elm, informs me by a Finch, which he sends me, that he is sick of a hectic fever and of a moss disease, which covers him from head to foot. I beseech you, by your friendship for me, to prescribe something for him."
I remained a little time without hearing anything, but after a short space it seemed to me I heard this reply:
"Even if the three-headed Elm were not your relative, and even if this request were made me by the most outlandish of our species, instead of by you, who are my friend, my profession would nevertheless oblige me to help him. Tell the three-headed Elm that to cure his illness he must suck up as much damp and as little dry as possible; for this purpose he must send the small threads of his roots towards the wettest parts of his soil, converse only of cheerful matters, and every day listen to the music of a few excellent Nightingales. He will then let you know how he feels after this regime; and then, according to the development of his illness, when we have prepared his humours, some Stork among my friends will give him a clyster, which will set him fairly on the road to convalescence."
After these words I did not hear the least sound, but a quarter of an hour later a voice, which I think I had not before noticed, reached my ear; this is what it said:
"Are you asleep, forked tree?"
I heard another voice reply thus: "No, fresh bark, why?"
"Because", replied the voice which had first broken the silence, "I feel disturbed in the manner we are accustomed to be when those animals called Men approach us and I should like to ask if you feel the same thing."
Some time passed before the other replied, as if he were concentrating his most secret senses upon this investigation. Then he exclaimed: "By heaven! you are right, and I swear my organs are so filled with the presence of a man that I am very much deceived if there is not one very close at hand."
Several voices then exclaimed together that assuredly they perceived a man. However much I gazed about me on all sides I could not discover whence this speech came. At last, when I had a little recovered from the horror into which this event had cast me, I replied to that voice, which I thought I had noticed asking if there were a man there, that there was one.
"But I beg you", I went on immediately, "whoever you are speaking to me, to tell me where you are."
A moment after I heard these words: "We are in your presence, your eyes behold us and you do not see us! Behold the oaks upon which we feel your sight is resting, it is we who speak to you, and if you are surprised that we should speak a language used in the world whence you come, know that our first fathers were born there; they dwelt in Epirus in the forest of Dodona,[69]where their natural kindness caused them to render oracles to those who consulted them in trouble. For this purpose they learned the Greek language, at that time the most universal, in order to be understood; and because we descend from them, from father to son, the gift of prophecy has come down to us. Well, you must know that a large eagle who was sheltered by our fathers in Dodona could not go hunting because it had broken one of its hands and therefore fed upon the acorns furnished it by their branches, when, one day, tired of living in a world where it suffered, it took flight towards the Sun and continued its voyage so happily that at last it reached the luminous globe where we are now; but the heat of the climate on its arrival made it vomit; it threw up a number of undigested acorns; these acorns germinated and from them grew the oaks which were our ancestors.
"In this way we changed our dwelling-place. But although you hear us speak a human language, it does not mean that other trees express themselves in the same way; only those oaks issued from the forest of Dodona speak as you do. As to other plants, this is how they express themselves: have you never noticed that fine gentle breeze which never fails to breathe on the outskirts of woods? That is the breath of their speech, and the little murmur or the delicate noise by which they break the silence of their solitude is actually their language. But although the sound of forests always seems the same, it is really so different that every kind of plant has its own; the birch does not speak like the maple, nor the beech like the cherry-tree. If the silly people of your world heard me as I am now speaking, they would think there was a devil imprisoned under my bark; for, far from believing that we can reason, they do not even suppose that we have a sentient soul, although every day they see that at the first blow given a tree by the wood-cutter the wedge enters four times deeper into the flesh than at the second blow; from which they ought to conjecture that the first blow assuredly surprised the tree and struck it unexpectedly, then that, immediately it was warned by the pain, it collected itself, united its forces to resist and became as it were petrified to combat the hardness of its enemy's weapon. But my intention is not to make the blind understand light; to me an individual is the whole race and the whole race is but an individual when that individual is not infected by the errors of the race; be attentive therefore, since when I speak to you I imagine I am speaking to the whole human race.
"In the first place you must know that almost all the concerts at which the birds make music are composed in praise of trees; moreover, to repay the care they take in celebrating our worthy actions, we are careful to hide their loves; for you must not imagine when you find so much difficulty in discovering one of their nests that this is the result of the prudence with which they have hidden it; it is the tree itself which folds its boughs all around the nest to protect its guest's family from the cruelties of man. To prove that this is so, observe the nests of those which are either born for the destruction of the birds, their fellow-citizens, like sparrow-hawks, hobbies, merlins, falcons, or of those which only speak to quarrel like jays and magpies, or of those which delight to terrify us, like owls and night-jars; you will notice that their nests are exposed to everybody's sight,[70]because the tree holds its branches away from them in order that they may be taken.
"But it is unnecessary to mention so many details to prove that trees exercise all your functions both of the body and of the soul. Is there any one among you who has not noticed in the spring, when the Sun has delighted our bark with fertile sap, that we lengthen our boughs and spread them out, covered with fruit, on the breast of the earth whereof we are amorous? The earth, on its side, opens and is warmed with the same ardour; and as if each of our boughs were a male organ she draws near to join with them; and our boughs transported with pleasure discharge into her lap the seed with which she burns to conceive. She is nine months in forming this embryo before she brings it forth; but the tree, her husband, fearing the winter cold may harm her pregnancy, casts off his green robe to cover her, while to hide a little of his own nudity he is content with an old cloak of dead leaves.
"Well, you men eternally see these things and never perceive them; still more convincing things pass before your eyes and your stupidity is not even disturbed."
My attention was closely directed to the speech I heard from this arboreal voice and I was awaiting the remainder when it suddenly ceased speaking in a tone similar to that of a person who is prevented from speaking by short breath.
When I found it altogether obstinate in its silence I conjured it by everything I thought might move it to deign to instruct a person who had risked the perils of so great a voyage only for the purpose of learning. At the same time I heard two or three voices making the same supplication for love of me and then I distinguished one, saying to it as if it had been annoyed:
"Well, since you complain so much of your lungs, take a rest, and I will tell him the 'Story of the Lover-Trees'."
"Oh you, whoever you may be", cried I, throwing myself upon my knees, "the wisest of all the oaks of Dodona, who deign to take the trouble to instruct me, know that your lesson is not wasted upon one who is ungrateful; if ever I return to my native globe I make a vow that I will publish the marvels which you do me the honour to let me witness."
As I finished this protestation I heard the same voice continue thus: "Little man, look twelve or fifteen paces to your right hand, you will see two twin trees of moderate height intertwining their branches and their roots and trying in a thousand ways to make themselves one."
I turned my eyes towards these love-plants and I noticed that the leaves of both were lightly agitated by a half-voluntary emotion, while their rustling created a murmur so delicate that it scarcely reached the ear; and yet one would have said that by this means they were trying to question and answer each other.
When the time necessary for me to notice this double plant had passed, my good friend the oak took up the thread of his discourse thus:
"You cannot have lived so long without the famous friendship of Pylades and Orestes coming to your knowledge?
"I would describe to you all the joys of a gentle passion and I would relate to you all the miracles with which these lovers have astonished their age, did I not fear that so much light would dazzle the eyes of your reason, and therefore I will only paint these two young Suns in their eclipse.
"It will suffice you then to know that one day in battle the brave Orestes sought his dear Pylades, to taste the pleasure of conquering or dying in his presence. When he perceived him in the midst of a hundred arms of iron lifted above his head, alas! what did he become? He rushed despairingly through a forest of pikes, he shouted, he howled, he foamed; but how badly I express the horror of his movements in his despair! He pulled out his hair, he gnawed his hands, he tore his wounds; and at the end of this description I am obliged to say that the means of expressing his grief died with him. When he thought to cut a path with his sword to rescue Pylades, a mountain of men opposed his passage. Yet he cut through them; and after trampling long over the bloody trophies of his victory, little by little he approached Pylades; but Pylades seemed to him so near death that he scarcely dared ward off his enemies any more for fear of surviving the thing for which he lived: to see his eyes filled already with the shadows of death one would even have said he tried to poison the murderers of his friend with his looks. At last Pylades fell lifeless; and the amorous Orestes, feeling his own life ready to leave his lips, yet retained it until his wandering sight sought and found Pylades among the dead, when, kissing his mouth, he seemed as if he would throw his soul into his friend's body.[71]
"The younger of these heroes died of grief on the body of his friend; and you must know that from their rotting flesh (which doubtless had fertilised the earth) there sprang up among the whitening bones of their skeletons two young saplings, whose trunks and branches mingled together and seemed to hasten their growth only to twine more closely together. It was apparent they had changed their being without forgetting what they had been; for their perfumed buds leaned one upon the other and warmed each other with their breath as if to make them open more quickly. But what shall I say of the loving portioning maintained by their fraternity? Never was the juice in which nourishment resides offered to their stock but that they shared it with ceremony. Never was one of them ill-nourished but that the other was sick with weariness; both drew from the breasts of their nurse within as you suckle them from without. Finally these happy lovers produced apples, and such miraculous apples that they performed even more miracles than their Fathers. Those who ate the apples of one tree immediately became passionately in love with anyone who had eaten the fruit of the other. And this happened almost every day, because the shoots of Pylades surrounded, or were surrounded by, those of Orestes, and their almost twin fruits could not resolve to part from each other.
"Nature, however, had differentiated the energy of their double essence so carefully that when the fruit of one of the trees was eaten by a man and the fruit of the other tree by another man, this caused a reciprocal friendship and when the same thing happened to two persons of different sex it caused love, but a vigorous love which retained the character of its cause; for although this fruit proportioned its effect to the eater's capacity, softening its virtue in a woman, it still preserved something masculine.
"It must also be noticed that he who ate more of the fruit was the more beloved. This fruit failed not to be very sweet and very beautiful, since nothing is so beautiful and so sweet as friendship; and these two qualities of beauty and goodness which are never met with in one person caused them to be in such repute. How many times have its miraculous virtues multiplied the copies of Orestes and Pylades! Since that time have been seen Hercules and Theseus, Achilles and Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus; in short, an innumerable number, who by more than human friendships have consecrated their memory in the temple of eternity. Cuttings were taken to Peloponnesus and the drill-ground, where the Thebans trained their youth, was ornamented with them. These twin trees were planted in lines and at that season of the year when the fruit hangs upon the boughs, the young men, who went to the park every day, were tempted by the beauty of the fruit and did not abstain from eating it: usually their courage felt the effect at once. They were seen to exchange souls pell-mell; each of them became the half of the other, lived less in himself than in his friend, while the most cowardly would attempt dangerous things for his friend's sake.
"This heavenly malady warmed their blood with so noble an ardour that by the advice of the wisest men this band of lovers was enrolled for war in the same company. Since that time, on account of the noble deeds they performed, they have been called the Sacred Band.[72]Its exploits went far beyond anything Thebes had imagined; for in battle each of these brave men dared such incredible efforts to protect his lover or to deserve his love that Antiquity saw nothing like it; and as long as that company of lovers existed, the Thebans, who before that time were considered the worst soldiers of all Greece, fought and always overcame the most warlike peoples of the earth, from even the Lacedemonians downwards.
"But among an infinite number of praiseworthy actions produced by these apples they innocently caused some which were very shameful.
"Myrrha,[73]a young lady of quality, ate of them with Cinyrus, her father; unhappily one ate of Pylades and the other of Orestes. Love immediately swallowed up Nature and confused it to such an extent that Cinyrus could swear 'I am my son-in-law' and Myrrha 'I am my stepmother'. In short, I think it sufficient to tell you, in order that you should understand the whole crime, that at the end of nine months the father became the grandfather of those he begat and the daughter brought forth her brothers.
"But chance was not content with this crime alone; it willed that a bull, having entered the gardens of King Minos, unhappily found some apples under a tree of Orestes and devoured them; I say unhappily, because Queen Pasiphaë ate this fruit every day. They became madly in love with each other. I shall not explain their enormous pleasure; suffice it to say that Pasiphaë was plunged in a crime which hitherto had no example.
"The famous sculptor Pygmalion precisely at that time was carving a marble Venus in the palace. The Queen, who delighted in good workmen, presented him with a couple of these apples; he ate the finest; and because he chanced to lack water, which, as you know, is necessary to the cutting of marble, he moistened his statue with the juice. The marble penetrated at the same time by this juice, little by little grew soft; and the energetic virtue of the apple carrying on its labour according to the workman's plan followed within the image the features it had met with on the surface, for it dilated, warmed and coloured in natural proportions the parts it met with in its passage. Finally the marble became living and touched by the apple's passion embraced Pygmalion with all the strength of her heart; and Pygmalion, transported by reciprocal love, received her for his wife.
"In the same Province the youthful Iphis had eaten of this fruit with the beautiful Ianthë, her companion, in all the circumstances necessary to cause a reciprocal friendship. Their eating was followed by the customary effect; but because Iphis found the fruit to be of a very agreeable taste she ate so many that her friendship, increasing with the number of apples of which she was insatiable, usurped all the functions of love and this love by increasing little by little became more masculine and more vigorous; for her whole body, imbued with this fruit, burned to form the movements which coincided with the enthusiasms of its will and moved its matter so powerfully that it fashioned itself much stronger organs, able to carry out its thought and to content its love wholly to the most virile extent; that is to say, Iphis became what is needed to espouse a woman.
"I should call this adventure a miracle if I had any other name to describe the following event:
"A very accomplished young man called Narcissus had deserved by his love the affection of a very beautiful girl, whom the poets have celebrated under the name of Echo. But, as you know, even more than those of our sex, women are never so beloved as they desire; and she, having heard the virtues of these apples of Orestes greatly commended, went about to collect them from several places; and because she was fearful and her love apprehended the apples of one tree might have less strength than those of the other, she willed him to taste of both; but he had scarcely eaten them when Echo's image was effaced from his memory, all his love turned towards the person who had digested the fruit, he was the lover and the beloved; for the substance derived from the apple of Pylades embraced within him that from the apple of Orestes. This twin fruit, extending through the whole of his blood, excited all the parts of his body to caress themselves. His heart, into which flowed their double virtue, darted its flames within; all his limbs animated by his passion desired to penetrate each other. Even his image, which burned in the coldness of pools, attracted his body to join with it; in short, poor Narcissus became madly in love with himself. I shall not be so tedious as to relate to you his deplorable catastrophe; past ages have already sufficiently spoken of it and I have still two adventures to tell you, which will better fill up the time.
"You must know that the beautiful Salmacis frequented the shepherd Hermaphrodite, but with no familiarity beyond that authorised by the vicinity of their homes, when Fortune, who delights to trouble the most peaceful lives, permitted that Hermaphrodite should win the prize for running and Salmacis that for beauty in a meeting for games, where the prizes for beauty and running were two of these apples. They had been plucked together, but from different boughs, because these amorous fruits mingle with such cunning that one from Pylades is always met with beside one from Orestes; and their appearing to be twins was the cause that they were usually plucked in pairs. The beautiful Salmacis ate her apple and the gentle Hermaphrodite placed his in his shepherd's scrip. Salmacis, inspired by the enthusiasms of her apple, and of the shepherd's apple, which began to grow warm in his scrip, felt attracted towards him by the sympathetic ebb and flow of her apple with the other.
"The shepherd's parents, perceiving the nymph's desires, tried to preserve and to increase them, because of the advantages they perceived in this alliance; and therefore, having heard these twin apples vaunted as a fruit whose juice inclines the mind to love, they distilled some of them and found means to cause their son and his mistress to drink the purest quintessence. They had sublimated its energy to the highest degree it could attain and thereby lighted in these lovers' hearts so vehement a desire of joining together that at first sight Hermaphrodite was absorbed in Salmacis and Salmacis melted away in the arms of Hermaphrodite. They passed into each other and they composed from two persons of different sex a double 'something', which was neither man nor woman. When Hermaphrodite desired to enjoy Salmacis he found he was the nymph herself; and when Salmacis desired to be embraced by Hermaphrodite she felt she was the shepherd. Yet this double 'something' retained its unity; it begat and conceived without being either man or woman. In short, Nature here produced a marvel, which she has never since been able to prevent from being unique.
"Well, are not these astonishing stories? They are; for to see a daughter lie with her father; a young princess satisfy the desires of a bull; a man yearn to enjoy a stone; another marry with himself; to see one celebrate as a girl a marriage she consummates as a boy, cease to be a man without beginning to be a woman, become double outside the mother's womb and twin of a person who is no relative; all these are very distant from the ordinary paths of Nature. And yet what I am about to tell you will surprise you even more.
"Among the sumptuous diversity of all sorts of fruits brought from the most distant climates for the wedding banquet of Cambyses, they presented him with a graft of Orestes, which he inserted in a plane-tree; and among other delicacies, at dessert they put before him apples of the same tree.
"The agreeable taste of the fruit led him to eat a great deal of it; and after the three digestions, which converted the substance of this fruit into a perfect germ, he formed from it in the queen's womb the embryo of his son Artaxerxes; for all the details of his life caused his doctors to conjecture that he must have been produced in this way.
"When this prince's youthful heart was of an age to merit Love's anger it was noticed that he did not sigh for his own kind; he loved only trees, orchards and woods; but above all those to which he appeared tender, the plane-tree on which his father Cambyses had formerly grafted the shoot of Orestes consumed him with love.
"His temperament followed so scrupulously the plane-tree's progress that he seemed to grow with the branches of that tree; every day he went to embrace it; in his sleep he dreamed of nothing else; and he transacted all his business under the curve of its green tapestry. It was perceived that the plane-tree, pierced by a reciprocal ardour, was ravished by his caresses; for suddenly, without any apparent reason, its leaves were seen to stir and as it were to thrill with joy, the branches curved down upon his head as if to make him a crown and descended so near his face that it was easy to perceive this was rather to kiss him than from a natural tendency to grow downwards. It was even noticed that the tree jealously ranged and pressed its leaves together for fear lest the rays of daylight as they glided through should also kiss him. The king for his part placed no limits to his love. He caused his bed to be made at the foot of the plane-tree and the plane-tree, not knowing how to repay such friendship, gave him the most precious thing trees have—honey and dew—which it distilled every morning upon him.
"Their caresses would have lasted longer if death, the enemy of all beautiful things, had not ended them. Artaxerxes expired of love in the embraces of his dear plane-tree; and all the Persians, afflicted at the loss of so good a prince, decreed (in order to give him some satisfaction after death) that his body should be burned with the branches of this tree, without any other wood being used to consume him.
"When the pyre was lighted its flame was seen to knit with that of the body's fat and their burning hair curled together and diminished in pyramid shape until it was out of sight.
"This pure and subtle fire did not divide; but when it reached the Sun, to which as you know all igneous matter tends, it formed the germ of the apple-tree of Orestes, which you see there on your right hand.
"Now the seed of this fruit is lost in your world and this misfortune happened as follows:
"Fathers and mothers, who, as you know, in directing their families, are governed only by interest, were angry that their children as soon as they had tasted these apples bestowed on their friend everything they possessed; and so the parents burned as many of these plants as they could discover. The extinction of the race is the reason why a true friend is no longer found.
"As these trees were consumed by fire the rains which fell on them calcined the ashes, so that the congealed juice petrified in the same way that the humour of burnt fern is metamorphosed into glass; and thus in all the countries of the Earth the ashes of these twin trees formed two metallic stones called to-day the iron and the loadstone, which, because of the sympathy of the fruits of Pylades and Orestes, whose virtue they have always preserved, aspire every day to embrace; and notice that if the piece of loadstone is larger it attracts the iron, but if the piece of iron exceeds the other in quantity it attracts the loadstone, as happened of old in the miraculous effect of the apples of Pylades and Orestes; for whoever had eaten more of one of them was the more beloved by him who had eaten of the other.
"Well, iron feeds upon the loadstone and the loadstone feeds upon iron so visibly that the one grows rusty and the other loses its strength unless they are brought together to repair what is lost of their substance.
"Have you never observed a piece of loadstone placed on iron filings? In a flash you see the loadstone covered with these metallic atoms; and they grip with such amorous ardour so suddenly and so impatiently that after they have embraced everywhere you would say there is not a grain of loadstone which does not desire to kiss a grain of iron, and not a grain of iron which does not wish to unite with a grain of loadstone; for the iron and the loadstone, when separated, continually send out from their bulk the most active small bodies in search of what they love, but when they have found it and have nothing more to desire, each terminates its travels; the loadstone spends its repose in the possession of the iron, as the iron collects all its being to enjoy the loadstone. It is therefore from the sap of these two trees that the moisture flowed from which these two metals were born. Before that they were unknown; and if you wish to know from what matter they manufactured weapons of war—Samson armed himself with the jaw-bone of an ass against the Philistines; Jupiter, King of Crete, with artificial fire by means of which he imitated thunder and overcame his enemies; and Hercules conquered tyrants and tamed monsters with a club. But these two metals have another much more specific relation to our two trees. You must know that although this lifeless couple of lovers turn towards the pole, they never do so except in each other's company; and I will discover to you the reason of this after I have discoursed to you a little about the poles.
"The poles are the mouths of the sky by which it takes in the light, heat and influences it has diffused upon the Earth; otherwise, if all the treasures of the Sun did not return to their source it would long ago be extinct (since its light is only a dust of burning atoms shed from its globe) and would shine no more or else this abundance of small igneous bodies heaped continually upon the Earth would already have consumed it. Therefore, as I have said, the sky must have vent-holes by which the repletions of the Earth are cast out and others by which the sky can repair its losses, so that the eternal circulation of these little bodies of life may successively penetrate all the globes of this great universe. Now the vent-holes of Heaven are the poles by means of which it feeds upon the souls of everything that dies in its worlds and all the planets are the mouths and pores by whose means its spirits are exhaled afresh. And to show you that this is not so novel a fancy, observe that when your ancient poets, to whom philosophy had discovered the most hidden secrets of Nature, were speaking of a hero and desired to say that his soul was gone to dwell with the Gods, they expressed themselves thus: 'He has risen to the pole; he is seated above the pole; he has passed the pole:' because they knew that the poles were the only entrances by which the sky receives all that has left it. If the authority of these great men does not fully satisfy you, the experience of those moderns who have travelled towards the north will perhaps content you. They have found that the nearer they approach the Bear during the six months of night, when it was thought this country was entirely black, the horizon was illuminated by a great light, which could only come from the pole, because the nearer they approached it, and consequently the farther they drew from the Sun, the larger the light became. It is therefore very probable that this light proceeds from rays of daylight and from a great heap of souls which, as you know, are made of luminous atoms alone, returning to the sky by their accustomed portals.
"After that it is not difficult to understand why iron rubbed with loadstone or loadstone rubbed with iron turns towards the pole; for since they are extracted from the bodies of Pylades and Orestes and have always preserved the propensities of the two trees, as the two trees preserved those of the two lovers, they must aspire to rejoin their soul, and so they strain towards the pole, whither they feel it has risen, with this proviso, that the iron does not turn unless it is rubbed by the loadstone nor the loadstone if it is not rubbed by the iron, because iron will not abandon a world without its friend, loadstone, nor loadstone without its friend, iron; and they cannot resolve to make this voyage without each other."
I think the voice was going to begin another discourse; but it was prevented by the noise of a loud alarm; the whole forest in disturbance echoed with the words:Beware the plague!andPass it on!
I begged the tree, which had talked to me so long, to inform me what was the reason of this great disorder.
"My friend", it said, "in this district we have not yet received precise details of the misfortune; I can only tell you in three words that the plague by which we are menaced is what men call a conflagration; and we may well name it a plague, for among us no disease is so contagious. The remedy we shall apply to it is to hold our breath and then to blow all together on the place whence the conflagration is moving, in order to repulse this dangerous air. I think this burning fever has been brought to us by a Fire-Beast, which for some days has been wandering about these woods; for since these beasts never go without fire and cannot do without it, this one no doubt has set fire to one of our trees.
"We have sent for the Ice-Animal to come to our aid; but it has not yet arrived. But now farewell, I have no time to talk to you, I must think of the common safety; and you yourself should take to flight, otherwise you run the risk of being involved in our ruin."
I followed its advice, but without hurrying very much, because I knew my legs. However I was so ignorant of the plan of that country that at the end of ten hours' walking I found myself behind the forest I thought I was avoiding; and to increase my apprehension, a hundred terrible thunder-claps shook my brain, while the pale dismal light of a thousand flashes of lightning quenched my eye-balls.
From moment to moment they increased with such fury one would have said the foundations of the world were about to collapse; yet, in spite of it all, the sky never appeared clearer. I was unable to find reasons for this and my desire of knowing the cause of so extraordinary an event urged me to walk towards the place whence the noise seemed to come.
I walked for about four hundredstadia, at the end of which I perceived in the middle of a very large field what looked like two balls which, after moving round each other for a very long time with a humming noise, came together and then recoiled; and I observed that the moment of the shock was that when these great noises were heard. Drawing nearer I perceived that what at a distance had seemed to me to be two balls were two animals; one of them, although round at the base, formed a triangle from the middle, and its very high head with red hair streaming upwards narrowed off in a pyramid shape, while its body was filled with holes like a sieve and one could see through these hollow places, which served it as pores, little flames issuing forth which seemed to cover it with fiery plumage.
Walking round I met a most venerable old man looking at this wonderful combat with as much curiosity as I. He signed to me to approach; I obeyed and we sat down beside each other.
I was about to ask him what motive had brought him into this country, but he closed my mouth with these words:
"Well, you shall know the motive which brought me into this country."
And immediately he related to me at length all the details of his journey. I leave you to imagine whether or no I was astounded. But my amazement was increased, for just as I was burning to ask him what demon revealed my thoughts to him, he exclaimed:
"No, no, 'twas not a demon revealed your thoughts to me."
This new trick of divination caused me to observe him with more attention than before and I noticed he was imitating my carriage, my gestures, my appearance, placed all his limbs and disposed all the features of his face on the pattern of mine; in short, my shadow in relief would not have represented me better.
"I see", he went on, "you are anxious to know why I imitate you, and I am glad to tell you. Know then that in order to understand what goes on inside you, I arrange all the parts of my body in an order similar to yours; for, by arranging all parts of me like you, I excite in myself by this disposal of my matter the same thought that is produced in you by this same disposal of your matter.
"You will conceive this effect to be possible if you have ever before observed that twins resembling each other have generally similar minds, passions and wills; to such an extent that two doubles were met with in Paris who had always undergone the same illnesses and the same health, had married without knowing the other's intention at the same hour of the same day, wrote each other letters, whose sense, wording and construction were the same and who composed the same sort of verses on the same subject, with the same conceits, the same turn and the same order. But you must see that if the composition of the organs of their bodies were similar in all circumstances they could only act in a similar manner, just as two equal instruments equally struck must give forth an equal harmony; and so when I model my body on yours and become, as it were, your twin, the same movement of matter must cause us both the same movement of the mind."
After this he again settled himself to imitate me and went on thus: "You are now very anxious to know the origin of the battle of these two monsters, whereof I will inform you. Learn then that the trees of the forest behind us were not able to repulse the violent efforts of the Fire-Beast with their breath and therefore sought the aid of the Ice-Animal."
"I have only heard these animals spoken of", I said, "by an oak in this country, but this was in great haste, for it was only thinking of its safety; and so I beg you will inform me."
He spoke in this way: "In this globe where we are the woods would be very scattered, on account of the desolation caused them by the large number of Fire-Beasts, but for the Ice-Animals which every day at the request of their friends the forests come to heal these sick trees; I say heal, because as soon as their icy mouth breathes upon the coals of this plague they are extinguished.
"In the world of the Earth, whence you come and whence I come, the Fire-Beast is called a Salamander and the Ice-Animal is known by the name of Remora.[74]Well, you must know that the Remora dwells towards the extremity of the pole in the deepest part of the frozen sea, and it is the cold which evaporates from these fishes through their scales, which in those districts freezes the sea-water, although it is salt.
"The greater part of the pilots who have sailed to discover Greenland have noticed at one season of the year that the ice which stopped them at other seasons was no longer to be met with; but although this sea was free of ice at the time when winter is at its harshest they have not failed to attribute the cause to the melting of the ice by some secret warmth; but it is much more likely that the Remoræ, which feed on nothing but ice, had absorbed them at that time. You must know then that some months after they are filled this terrible digestion makes their bellies so cold that the mere breath they exhale freezes the whole Polar Sea again. When they come out on land (for they live in both elements) they feed on nothing but hemlock, aconite, opium, and mandragora.
"In our world people wonder whence come those chilly north winds, which always bring the frosts with them; but if our compatriots knew, as we do, that the Remoræ inhabit that climate, they would understand, as we do, that these winds come from the breath wherewith these fishes attempt to repulse the heat of the Sun as it approaches them.
"That Stygian water used to poison the great Alexander, whose cold petrified his entrails, was the piss of one of these animals. In short, the Remora contains so eminently all the principles of cold that when it passes under a ship, the ship is gripped by cold and remains so benumbed it cannot move from where it is. That is the reason why half of those who have sailed northward to discover the pole never returned, because it would be a miracle if the Remoræ, whose number is so great in that sea, did not stop their vessels. So much for the Ice-Animals.
"As to the Fire-Beasts, they dwell in the earth under mountains lighted by bitumen, such as Ætna, Vesuvius and the Red Cape. The pimples you see on this one's throat, which proceed from the inflammation of its liver, are...."[75]
After that we remained without speaking to watch this extraordinary duel.
The Salamander attacked with great ardour, but the Remora withstood him impenetrably. Each blow they exchanged caused a clap of thunder, as it happens in the worlds round about where the meeting of a warm with a cold cloud excites the same noise.
At every glance of anger cast by the Salamander upon its enemy there came from its eyes a red light, which seemed to burn the air as it flew along; the beast sweated boiling oil and pissed acid.
The Remora, on its side, fat, square, and heavy, showed a body all scaly with icicles. Its large eyes looked like two crystal plates, whose glances carried with them so benumbing a light that I felt winter shiver upon every limb of my body it looked at. If I put my hand before me, it was numbed; the very air about the beast, attacked by its rigour, grew thick with snow, the earth hardened under its feet; and I could trace the footprints of the beast by the chilblains which greeted me when I walked above them.
At the beginning of the fight the Salamander had made the Remora sweat by the vigorous attack of its first ardour; but at length this sweat growing cold enamelled the whole plain with so slippery a frost that the Salamander could not join battle with the Remora without falling. The philosopher and I could easily see it was tired from falling and rising up again so often; for the thunder-claps created by the shock as it struck its enemy, which were before so terrible, were now only the dull sound of those small rumbles which mark the end of a storm; and this dull sound, diminishing little by little, degenerated into a hissing like that of a red-hot iron plunged into cold water.
When the Remora perceived the combat was drawing to an end by the weakening of the shock which now scarcely shook it, it rose up on one angle of its cube and let itself fall with the whole of its weight on the Salamander's belly so successfully that the poor Salamander's heart, in which all the remainder of its heat was concentrated, made so horrible a noise in bursting that I know nothing in Nature to compare with it.
Thus died the Fire-Beast beneath the passive resistance of the Ice-Animal.[76]
Some time after the Remora had retired we approached the field of battle and the old man, having covered his hands with the earth on which it had walked as a preservative against burns, picked up the Salamander's corpse.
"With this animal's body", said he, "I shall need no fire in my kitchen; for as long as it is hung on the jack it will roast and boil everything I put on the hearth. As for the eyes, I shall keep them carefully; if they were cleansed from the shadows of death you would take them for two little suns. In our world the ancients knew how to make use of them; they called them Perpetual Lamps and they were only hung in the pompous sepulchres of illustrious persons. In excavating certain of these famous tombs our moderns have met with some of them, but broke them in their ignorant curiosity by thinking to discover behind the broken membranes the fire they had seen shining through."
The old man continued to walk and I followed him, listening to the marvels he told me. Now, as touching the combat, I must not forget the conversation we had concerning the Ice-Animal:
"I do not think", said he, "that you have ever seen a Remora[77]; for these fishes never rise to the surface of the water and hardly ever leave the Northern Ocean. But doubtless you have seen certain animals which to some extent might be said to be of their species. I told you a little while ago that the sea about the pole is filled with Remoræ, who cast their fry on the mud like other fishes. You must know that this seed, the extract of their whole mass, contains all its cold so eminently that if a ship sails over it, the vessel contracts one or several worms which become birds, whose cold blood causes them to be placed in the order of fishes, although they have wings; and therefore the Holy Father, who knows their origin, does not forbid them to be eaten in Lent. They are what you call barnacle-geese."[78]
I continued walking with no other purpose than that of following him, so delighted at having found a man that I dared not take my eyes from him, I was so afraid of losing him.
"Young mortal", said he, "(for I see you have not yet, like me, paid that tribute we all owe to Nature), as soon as I saw you I recognised in your face something which makes one anxious to pursue the acquaintance. If I am not mistaken, from the circumstances of your body's conformation you must be French, and a native of Paris. That town is the place where I ended my misfortunes after having carried them through all Europe.