“Good God!” exclaimed the Manseau. “What would you say if you were in certain countries, where a case is only passably long when it has only dragged on for twenty years?”
“Twenty years?” said our man, amazed. “And how many centuries do those people live?”
“They live a little less long than you, but they spend three-quarters of their days in court...”
The poor fellow was about to ectasize further when the public usher brought forward the affair in question. A businessman of Sanor, having broken with his associate, had accused him of several misdemeanors, and sought to lose him public confidence. The calumniator, brought before the tribunal, could not produce any proof of his assertions. Twenty witnesses of good reputation had deposed in favor of the calumniated; all procedures had been followed; it was necessary to pronounce a verdict. We did not see any advocate; the president fulfilled the office, as was customary, and spoke for the guilty party. No one spoke for the innocent man, who had no need of it. In spite of the president’s efforts to excuse the calumniator partially, the four judges and the college of mute judges condemned him to the full penalty for crimes of that sort.
As soon as the president had pronounced the verdict, in a sorrowful voice, all the spectators withdrew. We were obliged to do likewise. As we went out, I asked our informant why there were no advocates.
“We had them once,” he told me, “but the excessive desire to win often caused them to exceed their duty. They fascinated the minds of judges, dragged out cases, and more than once put crime in security at the expense of innocence. We no longer have any; the president defends the guilty himself, the others are sufficiently protected by the justice of their case.”
I asked him then why we were removed so promptly from the courtroom.
“In order not to humiliate the condemned,” he replied. “He will be fetched from is home to subject him to his punishment, and everyone will withdraw from his passage.”
“But what is that punishment?” the Manseau asked.
“He will have a large bonnet on his head, in which these words will be legible, which an executor of justice will proclaim to him: This man is a calumniator. He will have to make a procession of one hour through the city for a hundred days, after which it will be finished. The punishment is very severe, but it’s such a great crime to murder a reputation!”
As the people were sufficiently reserved not to go to insult the unfortunate, we did not want to appear any more inhumane, and we went into another room, where the women judges were pronouncing on minor cases. The ceremonies were the same as in the criminal court, except that there were only two judges. The public usher started speaking just as we went in. She related the case of a laundress who was demanding justice because an escaped horse had drunk the water from her trough. The woman claimed that the owner of the horse ought to come in person to fill the trough, or indemnify her for her loss.
After a few questions, to which the answers were extravagant, the judges sentenced the plaintiff to pay the costs—which were, in truth, minimal—and to be jeered in public, for having brought a case without a plausible reason. As for the master of the horse, he was obliged to give a gold coin to the profit of the poor because he had allowed his horse to escape.
After that sentence, given that no more plaintiffs presented themselves and it was already late, the session was lifted.
We had noticed that there were no mendicants in Sanor; that particularity appeared to us to be miraculous, for we knew of few countries in our world that were not infested with them. The sentence that had just condemned a bourgeois to a fine for the benefit of the poor reminded us to seek information as to how the unfortunate were treated on the island where we were.
That evening, therefore, having gone to see Tristan, I asked his father-in-law to enlighten me on the matter.
“Mendicity,” he told me, “is considered here to be the mantle of idleness and bad morals. It is still in usage in several neighboring lands, but it was reformed here a long time ago. The states that tolerate vagabondage are ordinarily desolated by brigands and rogues. The liberty of wandering in the provinces gives them the means to avoid the gaze of the police, who watch over all citizens; they gather in bands and pillage on the roads; even in the towns they can adopt the métier of thieves, and then there is no more security. That is why we receive the infirm poor, or those too old to work, in vast hospitals. Other workless unfortunates who are capable are occupied on the roads in public works and in public workshops, according to their strength and skills. Like everyone else, they have one day’s rest for every five of labor, and the entire nation benefits from it; in addition, to no longer having the dolor of seeing the depiction of human misery everywhere, it has the satisfaction of knowing that poor people enjoy a supportable lot, which they owe to their common mother, the fatherland.”
“But where do you find the funds to cover all the expenses of those establishments?” I asked.
“Those expense are less considerable than you imagine,” he governor of the port replied. “The majority of the unfortunate earn, by their labor, enough to satisfy their needs, and the establishments, numerous at first, soon became scarce, because they have dissuaded idleness and there are now few idlers. Besides which, all pecuniary fines are to the profit of the poor, as many of those of whom the state takes care as those in their particular area. In times of famine, a fraction of tax revenues is devoted to them.”
On another day, I went to spend the evening with Clairancy and the Manseau in a kind of public café. There were a great many foreigners there whom commerce had assembled in Sanor. After various conversations, a dispute arose between them over religions, and each, as was his right, gave preference to his own.
“To believe that a religion comes from God himself,” said one little man two and a half feet high, “it is necessary that it be proven by prodigies. Now, nothing is more marvelous that the life of our great prophet Ellimant. The Vallis, plunged in the ignorance of barbarity, adored no other gods than clouds and the trees that give them fruit. Ellimant was born in an apple, and he informed us that there is no other god than the air, which rejoices and animates all of nature. He also taught that the apple tree is a tree of predilection, and that all the friends of God ought only to eat its fruit on their knees.
“As Ellimant said that he was sent from on high to lead the Vallis to the immortal abode, where they would eat apples standing up, no one wanted to believe him without miracles, so he wrought them.
“A great mountain separated our principal town from a river from which it was necessary to draw water. Ellimant pointed his finger at the mountain; the mountain split in two, opened and easy route, and in the four thousand years since the miracle occurred, the two parts of the mountain have never joined up again.
“An enormous serpent eighty inches long and proportionate in girth, was ravaging the land; Ellimant made a sign, and the serpent flew away in the form of a black flame.
“An evil spirit, sent by the demon of night to kill Ellimant, showed himself to the assembled people and began to preach against the divine prophet. Ellimant threw a little water in the face of the evil spirit, and killed it. The monster quickly got up, in the form of a great bear. Ellimant struck it with his staff, and split it in two. The upper half of the evil spirit reanimated itself again in the form of a giant bird; the other half took the shape of a wolf. Then Ellimant broke the bird’s wings and forced the two animals to fight one another. Then, as the people were afraid, the prophet begged the god of the air and the daylight to reassure the assembly. Immediately, a great bird the color of fire fell upon the two monsters that were fighting and lifted them up, in the sight of everyone. Such prodigies were renewed so many times that it would be necessary to be an idiot not to believe in the mission of the divine Ellimant.”
“We don’t admit those bizarre marvels,” replied a Banois, “which lend ridicule to arms against religion. We don’t think there can be a demon of the night, or any evil sp
irit. We believe that God is unique, that he reigns sovereignly over all nature, surrounded by his angels, who are his ministers.”
“God has no need of ministers,” interjected a Noladan. “His ministers are his desires. He reigns alone, and did not want to perform and other miracle than the creation of the world.
“Before that epoch there was no light except in the part of the sky inhabited by God himself, and that light was produced by the presence of God. A fish, larger than our globe, occupied the inferior part of space. A goat as long as a journey of five thousand days had lived since time immemorial in a plain suspended above the monstrous fish, and a pigeon the size of sixty forest towns inhabited the upper part of the void.
“When God wanted to make the world, the goat was changed into the globe that we inhabit; the great fish became liquid and formed the seas; the pigeon, subject to metamorphosis in its turn, was changed into the air, and we breathe it every day. After that, God sent a portion of his light to the earth, with the order to warm it, to populate it with humans and animals, and to illuminate it until the end. The light obeyed, and after God, we worship the light that represents him to us.”
“What you’ve just told us,” added an old Olfe, “is good at the most for amusing children. This is our belief, and it’s founded on facts furnished with evidence. Before this earth existed, the world was inhabited by the spirit of good, in the form of a great lizard, and by the demon of evil, in the form of a great tortoise. The spirit of good wanted to make the globe and populate it; the demon of evil wanted that too. But when the spirit of good had produced a river, the demon of evil immediately poisoned it; when he spirit of good planted a sweet fruit, the demon of evil rendered it bitter; with the result that after many arguments, they separated. The demon set about creating night, thunder and ferocious beats, but as he was very slow, the spirit of good created much faster than him, and he produced the light, with everything that is good in the world. Again, the demon of evil wanted to spoil everything, but the spirit of good, being much stronger than him, covered him with a shell and threw him into the sea, from which he has never been able to emerge. After that, the spirit of good retired into the sky.
“Since that time, all the little monsters that the demon of evil made in his image bear a heavy shell like his, which has the virtue of preventing them from doing harm; and all the beings that the spirit of good has created, having conserved his form and his benevolence, are adored among us, after their creator. Tortoises are sacrificed to them, and strangers who have killed, out of ignorance or malice, a respectable lizard...”
Other foreigners recounted similar extravagances in their turn. An Alburian explained his theology in a few words. It was deemed too simple, and all the friends of the marvelous called the Alburians ignorant. After that, someone asked our opinion. We replied frankly that the only religion worthy of mortals was that of the realm of Albur, and that after that one, we preferred the religion of Sanor, but we only knew the theory of the latter, which had appeared to us to be very simple.
The foreigners, interested in saying otherwise, then looked at us with all their eyes. Then they spoke to one another, laughing with disdain, and doubtless saying that we too were crassly ignorant people...
XXIII. The Manseau’s marriage. Williams’ divorce. Clairancy’s marriage. An epidemic. Williams’ death. The terrible decrees of the High Priest of Sanor.
Bloody funerals. Flight.
Edward and Tristan settled down well enough with their little wives. The Manseau continued to defer his promise of marriage to the Empress’s first chambermaid. The poor girl did everything possible to engage him to take that step, but it was a little like talking to a deaf person. Unfortunately, by virtue of being courted by the Manseau, the chambermaid became pregnant. Martinet felt his entrails stir slightly at the idea that he was a father, but he still did not come to a decision.
Now, on that island, where a large proportion of women stray from conjugal fidelity without a scruple and without risk, there was a so-called moral law that condemned to the penalty of death any abused young woman who became pregnant and whose seducer did not want to marry her. Rarely were men found abominable enough to allow the weak lover whose first fruits they had ravaged to die, all the more so as one could divorce after nine months of marriage, but in sum, there were a few of them, and they had no other punishment to dread than public scorn and exclusion from all honors.
Six months after the emperor’s death, one day when the Manseau and I were walking in the port, twenty well-armed soldiers came to ask my companion to go with them. He was immediately taken to the tribunal. The law had just learned of the chambermaid’s pregnancy; she had accused the Manseau of being its author. The judges who were old women, had Martinet summoned, and after a brief sermon on incontinence, they engaged him to render honor to his lover, if he did not want to send her to her death.
The poor girl’s tears, and the love the Manseau had for her, pleaded her cause so well that the marriage was decided. It was celebrated the following day, with the usual ceremonies. Martinet consoled himself for it by the hope of soon seeing himself live again in a child of whom he would truly be the father, and by the promise his wife made him to think of nothing but his happiness.
In the meantime, Williams, who saw no salvation for infidels, and who was desolate in advance because of the certain damnation of his wife, strove to convert her. But the daughter of the High Priest of Sanor was firmly indoctrinated in the religion of her homeland, and as she was more intelligent than her husband she beat him theologically; it would not have required much for her to lead Williams to embrace her religion instead of rendering herself to ours.
The poor man, who did not like it when people argued with him, ended up declaring to his wife that he wanted her to become Christian, and her persecuted her so much on that point that she divorced him and returned to her father’s house. The old priest, indignant at his son-in-law’s behavior, resolved to avenge himself.
Hazard soon furnished him with an opportunity. In the meantime, Williams came back to live with me, the only one of the troop remaining in the palace that had been given to us as a residence.
Soon afterwards, the nine months of the Empress’s mourning elapsed. The love that she had for Clairancy was not extinct in enjoyment; it seemed, on the contrary, that they loved one another more than ever. As the sovereign of Sanor was free to choose a spouse, she did not seek anyone but Clairancy. The poor fellow had the weakness to rejoice in the prospect of the throne; he imagined that he would be happy enough there to forget his homeland.
The marriage was made, to our great joy, because we thought that it would cement our good fortune forever. But Clairancy had scarcely been commanding Sanor with the title of Emperor for three days when an unexpected catastrophe arrived to destroy our joy. An epidemic of disease produced by warm rains and pestilential fogs ravaged the capital.
Williams’ wife died. Her father, in despair, wanted at least to console himself and exercise his vengeance on the man who had tormented her so much for six months. By virtue of his absolute power over funerals, he ordered that Williams should be burned on his wife’s tomb.
As soon as we learned about that terrible decree, and had been told that it was in vigor in Sanor from time to time, we were gripped by fear. The Emperor tried in vain to interpose his authority to save his former comrade; the order of the High Priest had to be carried out, without it being possible to reduce its rigor. Williams, who was not very well, was so afflicted by the imminence of such a cruel death, which seemed to him to be inevitable, that he was obliged to take to his bed.
As the funeral was not to take place for two days, he told us that he had decided to flee at nightfall, and urged us to imitate him—but he did not have the strength; his illness was getting worse by the hour, and, either because of the epidemic or the terror of the pyre, he died the following evening in our arms. Clairancy was present, as well as all our other comrades. We shed sincere tears for him;
our troop was diminished; our fate appeared to us to be frightful.
We proposed to make honorable obsequies to our poor companion; our palace was surrounded by soldiers who took the body away from us by force and carried it to the home of the priest, who had it burned as if it were alive. We were all consternated, but that was only the beginning of our troubles.
Death, which struck thousands of victims, then carried off Tristan’s wife. The high priest thought he ought to profit from that second opportunity to satisfy his vengeance, all the more so as it was to Tristan that he owed his daughter’s unfortunate marriage.
Tristan’s wife was noble, and was to be buried in a kind of extremely deep subterrain, where her ancestors reposed.19 While we were deploring the misfortune of our widowed companion, and he was weeping sincerely for the loss of an adored spouse, the high priest of Sanor issued a second decree, which condemned Tristan to be buried alive with his wife’s mortal remains.
That blow, so terrible for us, produced a different effect on Tristan’s mind than the one the fear of the pyre had had on Williams. He did not think of fleeing, but of avenging himself. He told Clairancy that he was counting on his help, if he still loved his companions.
In the meantime, the frightened Manseau came to tell us that his wife was ill, and that he was leaving the country...but we were all, from that moment on, visibly guarded by more than two hundred men. Only Clairancy enjoyed his liberty.
The time of the funeral of the port governor’s daughter having arrived, they came to take her away for the ceremonies, and they took the desolate Tristan away with the body. He had taken care, however, to arm himself well. We followed him, similarly armed, and all determined to act. We had plotted a carnage that might have good results if we were fortunate.
Voyage to the Center of the Earth Page 15
