All the titles and inscriptions were in the vulgar language of the country. The Manseau was astonished by that.
“These people mustn’t have an ancient language, as we do, since they make use of the popular idiom here,” he said. At the same time, he asked an Alburian what education was given in the schools of Albur.
“Until the age of twelve,” the Alburian, “our children learn to swim, to run, to dance, to defend themselves against ferocious beasts and to climb trees. At the same time, they are taught a domestic métier of their choice, and, in brief, everything that can give them strength, with the means of earning a living by manual labor, if they are obliged to do so. You understand that I’m talking about the rich; the poor learn to read in our public schools; after that, their parents do with them as they wish.
“When they reach the age of twelve, children take up books, the pencil and the pen, and they are taught the beauties of their language while they are trained in drawing and writing; then they are required to learn some good dead language, particularly the ancient language nate, from which the Alburian language was formed, but without ceasing the study of the maternal idiom, which must precede, accompany and follow any other study.
“At fifteen, they are taught about God, and given the sacred book. After that, they are nourished on moral works, and taught history and geography. At eighteen, the school is closed to them, and they do the rest on their own. That education is for females who have a fortune as well as males, except that females don’t learn a dead language.”
“This nate language you mention, is it beautiful?” asked Clairancy.
“Admirable, rich, fecund and harmonious—as beautiful as the Alburian tongue. A few scholars still speak it among themselves, and make use of it in their discourse, but it’s forbidden to print it.”
“What! What about the great works?”
“Oh, the great works of the ancient Nates are printed every day, and are in the hands of all those who understand them, but for four thousand years the people no longer speak like them; those who want to write in that language now only produce barbaric rhapsodies; why print trivia when one has masterpieces? Where would national dignity be if our scholars, possessing, as all scholars admit, the most beautiful language on the globe, abandoned their mother unworthily in order to caress a four-thousand-year of phantom that they only see through a cloud? It would not be an Alburian writing, but a man without a fatherland.”
“However,” said the Manseau, “a scholarly language is more imposing, more sublime, more concise and more respectable...”
“Don’t say that a dead language is sublime in the mouths of people who have only learned it with books,” the little man replied. “If an ancient Nate came back to earth and found a beautiful inscription here—beautiful in our opinion, I mean—made by an Alburian, he might well judge ridiculous and trivial what would appear sublime to us. As for conciseness, that is in all languages when one seeks it carefully, and everything that relates to the fatherland is respectable. An inscription is not put at the foot of a monument for the scholars of the nation, who have no need of it, but for the entire nation, for the people, for foreigners.
“Now, I ask you, what would the people think if, passing before a monument, and desiring to know it, only found unintelligible words thereon? What would foreigners think, on seeing a dead language occupy the rights of the living language? They would think that the Alburians had a patois rather than a language since they were blushing at it. And what would posterity think, on finding a language here more than four thousand years older than the one in use? Posterity would say that it no longer knew what language was spoken in Albur...
“There are still countries on the globe where the barbaric custom of employing a foreign idiom still exists, but it is maintained by scholars who speak their maternal tongue poorly and prefer to have recourse to a gibberish unknown to the multitude rather than betray their ignorance and poor taste. Here, if scholars wrote in the nate language, they would be turned to ridicule, as poor souls who do not know Alburian, since that language is there, which could express their ideas perfectly well.
“We also have neighbors who pray to the great God in obsolete language. Such a proposal would be poorly received by us; we want to know how we are speaking to God, and that is what we require; the people would believe it an insult to the deity if the priests addressed him in a foreign jargon. You’ll agree that they would be right. But I beg your pardon...”
At that moment, the little man perceived a lady to whom he went to speak, and we left the museum gardens, more astonished every day by the great wisdom of those people.
Only one thing displeased us in their customs, and that was the universal abstinence from meat. We were all marvelously healthy; we found the diet that we followed in the land very good, but if we were impatient during our first sojourn in the realm of Albur, the same desire to eat meat came to torment us again, six months after our arrival in the capital. We had had time to forget the flesh of bears, but if we had had a ham it would have been a great feast for us.
“That one doesn’t eat dogs, because their friends to humans, I can understand,” said Tristan, “and that’s universal. That one abstains here from those big lizards known by the name of lossines, I also excuse, since they’re useful animals. That horses, donkeys, mules and elephants, which render good services, are respected, I also pass. But why respect pigs, which are only good to be eaten?”
“I will also pardon them,” added Edward, “for not eating cats, which have some utility; oxen, which labor the land; sheep, which give us wool; goats, which furnish meat; poultry, which bring us their eggs—but why spare pigs, hares, rabbits and turkeys?”
“I wouldn’t even be annoyed,” Clairancy continued, “if they also protected hares, roe deer, grouse and all innocent creatures, which only ought to fall under the claws of ferocious beasts, but I’d like to eat pork, turkey, wild boar and all the carnivorous beasts, which have no grounds or complaint, under the law of talion, and which would only be submitting to the fate to which they subject so many other small animals.”
Those speeches, which we repeated frequently, soon gave us an immoderate desire to return to meat, in spite of all the laws of the country where we were living.
“Let’s go hunting tomorrow,” said the Manseau. “We’ll catch some good game and make an immediate feast of it.”
The resolution was soon made; we set off the following day, under the pretext of an excursion outside the city, each arms with a staff, our copper knives and a kind of phosphoric brick that the king had given us a few days before, and a few loaves of bread,
We were in the country in half an hour; then we headed for a wooded hill no more distant from the city than a petty league. We plunged into the dense wood in order to avoid all gazes, and each started hunting on his own. Edward was the first to discover a lair in which there was a sow and two piglets. He hastened to call us; we gathered in a small grassy clearing surrounded by trees; the sow and the two piglets were already dead. We impaled the mother on a spit, lit a good fire and waited until the morsel was cooked. The sow was no bigger than a small suckling-pig, but somewhat tougher. However, after having roasted for two hours it was done to a turn, and was expedited with a delighted appetite.
That feast appeared to us so agreeable that we carried the two piglets away in our pockets, with a few other small animals that came to hand, and were killed for our supper, without knowing exactly what species they were. We then went back to the city with the firm design of coming back to hunt every two or three days.
When we were shut in our house, Edward set about cooking, and we ate the rest of our game for the evening meal. We were so well hidden that we believed that we had not awakened the slightest suspicion, but two days later, as we were about to make a new excursion, the King came to see us with the saddest expression.
“What have you done?” he said to us. “Public indignation has fallen on your heads. We blamed the Sanorlians
for the persecutions that the exercised against you, but we recognize now that you attracted them by your faults, and by your weakness in ceding to your passions. You are going to give death to beings that God has animated, like you. Your crime is almost that of murderers. The forest wardens found the bones of which you ate the flesh. The remains of your bloody meal were also found in your room. An Alburian guilty of such an excess would be condemned to labor in the mines for five years. The magistrates have been informed against you. Flee—that is the last service I can render you. Go to another country. The Alburians are feeble by comparison with you, but mass and number outweigh strength and courage. Adieu.”
On saying those words, Prince Sora climbed back into his carriage and drew away as quickly as possible, leaving us all in an amazement that I cannot express.
XXIX. Departure from the realm of Albur.
A dragon or winged serpent.
Entry into the land of the Banois.
It was, however, necessary to depart. We had broken the principal law of the hospitable nation where we had been treated so well. The indignant Alburians no longer regarded us as anything but odious prevaricators, and although they were not about to try to kill us, as on the island of Sanor, they would judge us according to their custom. We were strong enough to rest a crowd of those little men, but what resources could we oppose to their innumerable masses? Then again, what a sad existence we would have in a country in which we wanted to remain by force, in addition to which we would close entry thereby into the other realms of the globe, from which it was impossible to remove ourselves. What we had done among the Sanorlians was easily excused, because that nation was not liked, but we would not have been pardoned for a similar excess in Albur, whose people were generally respected.
While each of us was rolling these various thoughts around his head in silence, Edward suddenly opened his mouth and exclaimed: “Me, I’m leaving. Who loves me, follow me! We’ve been bored for some time in this kind of society; since, in spite of our regrets and vain desires, nothing can enable us to get back up to the Earth, where we’ve left our families, let’s at least try not to die of chagrin in the little globe where we’re buried. The best means of distracting ourselves is variety, so let’s travel. Let’s visit the neighboring lands; we’ve been treated like men here; perhaps elsewhere we’ll be received like gods.”
Edward’s advice was immediately adopted. We got ready to leave. Our clothes were soon packed; everyone put on his back a package of what he possessed, and we left the city without waiting for nightfall.
We addressed ourselves in vain to several Alburians to ask them what road we ought to take; no one replied, and all the citizens turned their backs on us. At the first village we came to, however, a peasant told us that we had twenty full days of travel to get to the lands of the Banois.
Those twenty days of travel were only twenty-two leagues by our measure; we covered them in two days, eating what we could find; we feasted at our ease on dead flesh, hunting and fishing.
“Since we’re hunting in order to eat meat,” said Tristan, “let’s at least do it in such a way as to merit our punishment.”
At the end of the second day, as we were approaching the frontier of the realm of Albur, we went into a fortified town in order to spend the night there. Our crime was unknown there as yet. We asked to speak to the governor. The entire town, charmed to see the six famous giants of whom they had heard so much talk, led us as if in triumph to the town hall. The governor, delighted to be able to meet us face to face, asked us what hazard procured him the pleasure of making our acquaintance, and how he could be useful to us. We replied that we had asked King Sora for permission to travel in his realm and neighboring ones, and that we begged him, in consequence, to give us shelter.
“The election hall is empty,” he said. “I offer it to you; you will be treated as well as possible there. Be sure that I am too glad to have seen you not to render your sojourn in the town agreeable. Many of my fellow citizens have made the journey to the capital in order to be able to look at you other than in paintings, but I, retained here the duties of my responsibilities, have only been able to wish that you might have a desire to travel.”
When he had finished his long speech, the Manseau asked him whether the governors of the towns of Albur did not have the power to abandon the tiller temporarily for their pleasures, as is practiced so widely elsewhere.
“Certainly not,” the Alburian replied. “A man who occupies any position here must occupy it entirely.”
“You mentioned paintings,” Tristan put in. “Have our portraits been made?”
“Certainly,” the governor replied—and he gave us each a copy.
We were unaware of that particularity, and had not perceived that we had been sketched. The resemblance, however, was perfect.
All those circumstances astonished us, and gave us some regret for the likeable country that we were about to quit. We were brought an abundant supper, and the governor was kind enough to keep us company.
“You’re going to enter the land of the Banois tomorrow,” he told us. “They’re a people constituted very differently from us. People only speak there in song, and the natives are born with such a great disposition for music that the infants cry rhythmically and everyone laughs in cadence.”
That news excited our curiosity and diminished our regret for the Alburians somewhat.
“If what the governor says is true,” the Manseau said to us, “we’ll have opera for free there and concerts all the time.”
“But for a people to sing incessantly,” Clairancy added, “the language must be very facile and harmonious?”
“The language is a daughter of ours,” said the Alburian, “and the Banois have softened it so much that they mold it as they wish. At any rate, it’s too simple to embarrass you for long, and I’m sure that you’ll speak it easily after two months.”
After a long conversation about the mores, customs and habits of the Banois, we separated—which is to say that the governor went to bed, and we did likewise. The next day, in the morning, we got ready to leave,
The governor came to say goodbye, and told us that as the Banois were in some respects superstitious and timid, they might well be frightened on seeing us; that to prevent a poor welcome he would send some of his people with us, charged with a letter of recommendation, which would advise the people to regard us as benevolent and sage beings, not as dangerous giants.
We thanked the governor again; he expedited his missive rapidly, and gave us one of his valets, who spoke the Banois language, to accompany us as far as that land.
The little messenger put the letter in his pocket. Edward who wanted to march, took the messenger in his arms, and we left the town, escorted by the people.
When we had crossed the frontier of the realm of Albur, we entered the country of the Banois. The little Alburian who was accompanying us asked us to wait at the foot of a mountain while he went to inform the local people of our arrival.
There was a small forest of green trees near the mountain, where we went to rest. As the Banois frontier town was some distance away, for the natives, and we did not expect to see our little man return for several hours, we went into the dense woods in search of trees or fruits that were unknown to us.
After we had rejoiced in finding a bush there bearing some resemblance to European cherry-trees, we were about to go back to the foot of the mountain where the Alburian was to rejoin us when we heard long hissing sounds around us. We had already seen reptiles in the little globe, but those we knew did not hiss and were not dangerous. Each of us therefore held himself on guard until the animal that was causing us anxiety cared to show itself.
While we were looking around, Edward, who had drawn his saber, ran in front of the Manseau. That movement having attracted our attention, we saw at our feet a large expiring dragon. Our fear would be as difficult to describe as our surprise.
“Perhaps this forest is dangerous,” said Clairancy. “
Let’s hurry to get out of it; we can examine the beast that Edward has just killed later.” As he spoke he picked up the dragon by the neck, and we hastened back to the hill where our Alburian had left us.
We studied our prey as we went, and we all uttered loud exclamations of astonishment. We knew that the ancient writers talked about dragons as winged serpents that really existed, but the moderns, whom we thought better instructed, had habituated us to regarding dragons as fabulous animals. However, if they are found on the subterranean globe, they might equally well exist in the sublunar world...
At any rate, the one before our eyes really was a dragon, or, if you prefer, a winged serpent. It was seven feet long and a foot in circumference; its wings, formed of slack membranes, like those of bats, embraced when deployed a span equal to the length of the body. It had four extremely thin legs nine or ten inches long, terminating in webbed feet.
All these particularities confirmed us in the ancient opinion that dragons lived on earth, in the water and in the air. Its muzzle had the form of a wolf’s, and its head was equal in size to that of the animal that England has exterminated from her bosom. Its skin had no scales and was not covered in fur, but smooth, and was tawny yellow, like tanned calfskin.
We learned subsequently that dragons are common in the Banois lands, and that it is regarded as a sacred animal, so the murder we had just committed would have got us expelled from the country before entering it if it had been discovered. Fortunately, Clairancy thought that such a large animal might inspire some terror in such a small people, and as the dragon is an extraordinary creature, it was natural enough to presume that it might have a certain cult in a country that had been described to us as superstitious. We therefore took the dead animal back to the forest quickly, and waited for our messenger more tranquilly.
The Banois had less wisdom than the Alburians, but much more curiosity; they were a lively people, prompt and impatient; no sooner had the Alburian’s missive been read, and no sooner had the arrival of six giants been announced in newspapers advertising marvels, than crowds, far from being frightened of us, as we had feared, hastened out of the town at a run to come to meet us. We soon heard a buzz of confused voices, which announced the approach of the people among whom we were about to spend several months. After a few moments, we perceived a multitude of the little people coming toward us, running as fast as they could.
Voyage to the Center of the Earth Page 19
