A Voyage to the Moon

112

Democritus was the originator of the atomic theory.

113

A lively Spanish dance-measure.

114

Wick (cf. the Standard Dictionary). Some modern French editions have "pelotons de verre," meaning "glass bulbs," but this is evidently a mistake, since the seventeenth-century editions have verres, which is their form, in all cases, for the modern vers. See also the first meaning of peloton in Littré.

115

The incandescent electric light?

116

Cyrano's own work. It is full of interesting matters, including a trip through the country of the Birds, which offers many points of comparison with Gulliver's Voyage to the country of the Houyhnhms. Cyrano finally, under the guidance of Campanella, arrives at the land of the Philosophers of the Sun (compare Swift's Laputa), where he meets Descartes and Gassendi, as Gulliver does in the Laputan province of Glubbdubdrib (Voyage to Laputa, chap. viii.).

Cyrano's machine for reaching the sun, depicted in the illustration opposite, is best described in the words of M. Rostand's play, and completes our parallels with all the six means of scaling the sky which Cyrano there enumerates: "Or else, I could have let the wind into a cedar coffer, then ratified the imprisoned element by means of cunningly adjusted burning glasses, and soared up with it."

117

Probably Campanella; cf. p. 78, n. 1 (#p_76). On his "great work," cf. also p. 79, n. 1 (#cn_61).

118

Is this an anticipation of the phonograph?

119

Readings. Cf. Sir Thomas Browne: "In the lecture of Holy Scripture, their apprehensions are commonly confined unto the literal sense of the text."

120

Cf. M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, act I. scene iv.: "Cyrano. A great nose is properly the index of an affable, kindly, courteous man, witty, liberal, brave, such as I am! and such as you are forevermore precluded from supposing yourself, deplorable rogue!"

121

Vesuvius.

122

Fr., "travaux," i. e., old English Travails.

123

The Manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale ends differently: "I enquired at the port when a ship would leave for France. And when I was embarked, my mind ran upon nothing but the Wonders of my Voyage. I admired a thousand times the Providence of God who had set apart these naturally Infidel men in a place by themselves where they could not corrupt his Beloved; and had punished them for their pride by abandoning them to their own self-sufficiency. Likewise I doubt not that he has put off till now the sending of any to preach the Gospel to them, for the very reason that he knew they would receive it ill; and so, hardening their hearts, it would serve but to make them deserve the harsher punishment in the world to come."

This is very likely the original ending of the work as it was circulated in Manuscript between 1649 and 1655. In any case, the particular thrust-and-parry used here is a favorite stroke with the "libertins" of the epoch in their duels against "Les Préjugés." "These are not my opinions and arguments," they say; "Heaven forbid!.. They only express the ideas of my characters which of course I abhor." At the same time the arguments have been stated, which was the object in view. Cyrano has several times used this method already, notably at the end of Chapter xvi.

The ending in the text above, that of all the editions, may have been substituted by Cyrano himself during his last illness.