Twenty-Nine
“On the planet Ceres, to which the caravan went, it found the magnificent vegetal growth, the miraculous land, on which everything grew without cultivation. Flowers, fruits, trees, plants, cereals and vegetables, everything that provides shade, all the verdure that delights the gaze, all the woods that shelter the joyful concerts of birds, all the perfumes and all the charms of nature were created instantaneously, and on Ceres, there was no fatigue or labor; the soil smiled at everyone; it was the good mother with fecund breasts, to which the universe went for nourishment and rejoicing.
Thirty
“But the most curious planet of all, and certainly the most appreciated, was Venus.
“One did not find there astronomers, nor physicians, nor fertile soil, nor marvelous soap; everywhere, one found nothing but flowers. Venus was an immense garden filled with birds with melodious songs and insects with ravishing wings; no snow, rain or fog ever penetrated that planet. One saw nothing but rose-bushes, clumps of myrtle and oranges.
“One breathed the sweetest perfume there, and the travelers, hastening from other planets, did not know what to attribute the disturbance by which they were surprised when they set foot on Venus.
“They were on an enchanted and enchanting planet. Venus seemed to be uninhabited. In fact, it was, but the flowers that grew on the branches of the rose-bushes, the myrtles and the orange-trees were seductive sirens that had all the charms, all the seduction, all the grace and all the voluptuousness of womankind.
“They were created purely for amour, they only lived in order to be loved.
“They had ravishing voices, celestial eyes and divine bodies.
“But everything that is intoxicating is ephemeral.
“They only lived for the day when the mouth animated them with a kiss, and when the amour that one experienced for them weakened, they immediately lost their perfume and their color, and their beautiful, melancholy, languid heads suddenly wilted on their beautiful stems, and never recovered.
“To love and to die, such was the fate of the flowers of Venus.
Thirty-One
“The voyage to the planets had lasted six days.
“On returning to Earth, the scientists perceived that many changes had been accomplished in their mores. What was the point, with the new discoveries, of the barriers that separated nations? What was the significance of names, ranks and titles? Even the kings understood and the final congress was held in Paris.
“France was adopted as the Fatherland, for the unique worship of the Supreme Being, and the Musée de Cluny received in deposit, along with the scepters and crowns of empires and monarchies, all the coins, all the banknotes, al the title-deeds, share certificates, bonds and incomes that interest and cupidity had created.
“There were no more stock exchanges, or barracks, or palaces; nor were there any more prisons, hospitals or cemeteries.
“And now, if you would care to cast an eye over Paris…look!
Thirty-Two
“Paris extends, to the north, as far as Amiens; to the south, as far as Fontainebleau; to the east, as far as Meaux; to the west, as far as Chartres. Great cities are the same everywhere.
“They have let out their belts; the world has become the abode of pleasures and joy.
“Everywhere you see boulevards bordered by fruit trees, fountains, cascades, and flowers in every widow.
“Velocipedes with two, four or six wheels, boats, balloons and omnibuses of all sorts are stationed everywhere.
“Every house is a palace containing all the luxuries and comforts of existence. There are no more stairways, no more steps to climb; convenient elevators exist everywhere. In the evening, electric beams of all colors illuminate the cities, where musicians of every land often wander.
“That is the approximate aspect of big cities.
“Newspapers continue to appear, but are given away free.
“The newspapers report news of all the planets.
“Have I told you that there are no more soldiers, or bailiffs, or concierges? That salespeople and waiters have been replaced by elegant and obliging apes?
Everything everywhere is free.
Equality reigns over the entire Earth, and with the most perfect happiness.
Thirty-Three
“There are no more atheists.
“From time to time, some dreamer thinks of denying the existence of God. He is sent to travel on the other planets, and when he has contemplated everything, admired everything, and visited all the works of the Creator, if he is still in doubt, he is transported for five years to some inhabited star and his wings are taken away; after a short while, cured, he asks to come back among human beings.
Thirty-Four
“The science of the Kabbalah has made immense progress.
“People no longer have any great difficulty with its language, once so challenging, and there is no ten-year-old child who does not know the parable of Jehovah, or How Humans Came to Speak, which was once not taught until the age of thirty....”
I expressed to my guide the desire to know that parable.
Smiling, he said to me: “You shall see where humans came from, and I shall tell it to you gladly; you will be able to judge the progress accomplished through the ages.”
Thirty-Five
How Humans Came to Speak: A Cabalistic Tale
At the commencement of the world, a very long time before the deluge, the children of Adam lived like brutes in the forests and the fields, in the midst of other animals, which they resembled in the their passions. That lasted for a long time.
A few groups emerged from that human rabble and sensed that there was something superhuman in creation.
Was it the sun? Was it the sky? No matter; they believed in a species of divinity and, involuntarily, they rendered it a kind of homage.
But in that very distant epoch, humans did not speak.
They had neither the hiss of the serpent, nor the roar of the lion, nor the bellowing of bulls. They made guttural sounds, sometimes profound and sometimes shrill. Tears, screams and smiles were their most eloquent languages.
One man among the new believers was cruelly tested by God.
He adored his father, his mother, his wife and his children, and all of them, in turn, betrayed him and deceived him. He had a thirst for honors and glory, and in that epoch, already, there was a certain rivalry, a certain pride, and he was dishonored publicly for a crime he had not committed.
Throughout his misfortunes, through all his disasters, that man never murmured against fate. So God sent an angel to him, who told him: “The name of the creator of all things is Ieoua—Jehovah. I am telling you that because you have been great in all ordeals; but anyone who pronounces that name will perish.”
From that moment on, the man’s heart became even more noble and he marched through life smiling. Other men, jealous of him, said to themselves in their mute language: “He knows something that we do not know; he must reveal it to us, or we will kill him.”
They took possession of him and, under torture, he confessed that he knew the name of the Supreme Being, but that he was not permitted to reveal it to other humans.
Instead of showing him mercy, they lit a pyre to which they had attached him, and the flames were soon licking at the martyr’s limbs.
For a long time he suffered in silence, but twisted and broken, half-consumed, when his soul flew away toward his creator he uttered, in his supreme suffering:
“Ieoua! Ieoua!”
When that name resounded for the first time on Earth, a great miracle was accomplished. The man who was burning emerged safe and sound from the furnace and the torturers fell, struck down, at his feet.
But he asked for mercy for them, and God granted that their lives would be spared this time. And in the name of Ieoua, the human who, until then, had had no knowledge of vowels, learned to know them, and speech was given to humankind. But in order not to invoke in vain the name of the Lord, they cha
nged the order of the vowels, and instead of Ieoua they classified them a e i o u.
My guide stopped speaking, and as I raised my eyes, I saw him grow in size and disappear into the clouds.
Thirty-Six
I woke up.
My father, who was praying next to my bed, shed abundant tears of joy on learning from my mouth all that I have just written to you.
He embraced me tenderly and said: “Mardochée, it is necessary to write your dream.”
And that is why, my dear friend, I have sent you this long letter, authorizing you to publish it in France, to which we shall soon return. It is too cold here for us; there is only one sun, and it is that of our dear France; there is only one Fatherland, that of liberty.
And now, dear readers, that you know the voyage of my friend Mardochée through the planets, can you guess the one that I would like to inhabit if it were necessary for me to quit the Earth?
It is, however, not very difficult, and I would like each of you to make a brief stay there, if not in reality, at least in dream.
Is not dreaming, for human beings, half of happiness?
1 The pioneering aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard was killed in March 1809, so Mosneron’s text was presumably written prior to that date.
2 The references are to the Pyrenean explorers Louis Ramond de Carbonnières (1755-1827), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799).
3 The quotation comes from Jean de La Fontaine’s fable “Le Statuaire et la statue de Jupiter” (tr. as “The Sculptor and the Statue of Jupiter”).
4 Prior to 1812, a toise was six feet; it as redefined at two meters when France adopt the metric system, but that was after the publication of the present text.
5 Author’s note: “The inhabitants of the Pyrenees, very different from the Swiss, the Auvergnats and the Savoyards, are constantly attached to their ingrate mountains. One does not see them, like other mountain folk, emigrating at certain times of year to procure a more abundant substance. Accustomed to a meager and hard life, they prefer the deprivation of poverty to the ease that they might obtain by excursions outside their territory. Whence comes that character peculiar to the inhabitant of the Pyrenees? It seems to me that it is the result of its isolation. For eight months of the year, the greater part of the mountains is devoid of communication with Spain for want of practicable roads, and with no other relation to France that that which its mineral waters can procure, so that the mountain folk are almost perpetually separated from the whole world. The means of putting the region in society with France would be to give birth to a branch of commerce, and I think a rich one might be found in the establishment of a few factories. Running water falls everywhere, and several mountainsides contain mines of different metals that were once exploited successfully. Recently, the Germans have established at Bagnères de Luchon a cobalt factory that might have become very precious; it was directed by the Comte de Beust, now ambassador to a German court. The Revolution wrecked that establishment, but it would be all the easier to reactivate it because some of the necessary buildings still survive. Communication with Spain would be practical all year round if a few of the gaps in the mountains that serve as limits to France, which are usually closed by snow and ice for eight or nine months, were flattened. The construction of a few roads in that part of our frontier might be obtained without it costing the public treasury a sou. It would only require the income from the mountain forests and mineral water to be applied to it for a few years, and the taxation of the privilege of gaming casinos that are established during the watering season, if the Government sees fit to let those sources of corruption and death subsist near the salutary springs of the Pyrenees. The use that would be made of them would then serve as an antidote to the poison of gaming.” The cobalt mine to which the author refers was established in 1784.
6 Author’s note: “It is quite probable that after the threat issued by the chief of the colony, which will be found at the end of this account, no other aeronaut will expose himself to the risk of a voyage into the Aerial Valley.”
7 Author’s note: “I doubt that there has ever been a time when humans existed in isolation, wandering the earth without family, domicile of fatherland. A celebrated Writer has made the history or romance of the human species in the first period of its creation; he found many virtues therein that were really only the absence of vices, and said: ‘Man is good, only men are wicked,’ As no monument exists that establishes that humans such as he conceives them ever existed, one can neither affirm not deny that presumed bounty; but that men are wicked, that passions, vices and crimes are born in the bosom of societies, nothing is more certain; and I also think, like J.-J., that those passions and vices become more energetic as societies become more civilized. An admirable problem, therefore, would be to find a social organization such that humans enjoy the advantages of a perfectly civilized society without experiencing its inconveniences. Now, it is that problem that I find completely resolved in The Aerial Valley. The great passion that kills the societies of the world, ambition, is not found in that one. All the individuals are perfectly equal and have no motive to aspire to any distinction, for there are no riches, no honors and no powers to distribute. All are equal and always will be, whatever the difference in personal merit might be; the governor is the only one who enjoys any authority. Consequent to J.’J.’s principle, all men here, like his man par excellence, are good and excellent. [Note by M. de Montagnac]” “J.-J.” is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
8 Author’s note: “That work would certainly be very curious to know, but Monsieur de Montagnac must be mistaken, for it was not found among his papers. [Note by the Editor]”
9 Author’s note: “These annals are printed here in the order that Monsieur de Montagnac designed, but only in fragments. A few notes will explain why the work has not been printed in its entirety. I have divided it into chapters in order to render the reading easier. [Note by the Editor]”
10 The smallpox vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner in 1798; the discovery was publicized throughout Europe by 1800 but remained controversial for some years thereafter.
11 We subsequently learn that the valley was settled after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, so this figure of 140 years is clearly mistaken. The chronology of the story contains several other significant anomalies.
12 Although both names are misrendered in the original the intended references are obviously to the watchmakers Ferdinand Berthoud (1727-1807) and Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823).
13 The Scottish historian William Robertson (1721-1793).
14 The names of Jacques (or Nicolas) Pradon (1632-1698) and Charles Cotin or Cottin (1604-1681) were frequently grouped together for the purposes of collective denigration in this plural form during the 18th century, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau among many others
15 Author’s note: “No one, in the situation in which the author of these annals found himself, would have thought differently. It required a discovery as marvellous as that of balloons to belie his prediction, and for the Aerial Valley, its inhabitants and their mores to be known outside its bounds. The author is equally mistaken about the duration of enlightenment in this corner of the Pyrenees; that enlightenment has spread there more generally than in his time, and if it has not made progress in the same proportion, at least it has not declined. Our conjectures regarding the ulterior future might have no more solid basis than those of the Author of the Annals. Who can assign limits to the human mind? Who can foresee to what extent a perfectly organized society will take the development of its mental faculties? The mind has a power that is presently only directed by ambition; who knows of what progress it might be capable, if it were under the jurisdiction of wisdom? [Note by M. de Montagnac]”
16 The Duc de Maine’s first visit to the Barèges spa, in the company of Madame de Maintenon and other members of Louis XIV’s court, took place in 1675.
17 Author’s note: “Times have certainly changed; there are
no longer any but slight differences between the Court, the Capital and the Provinces. Communications having become more frequent, the inhabitants of France have almost the same physiognomy; it would be difficult at present to distinguish a provincial from a Parisian, except for the time of dinner and a few other customs of similar importance. But the provinces will doubtless not take long to raise themselves to the level of the capital with regard to those grave matters, and it is necessary to expect that their inhabitants will soon have, like Parisians, high collars, bulging bellies, good stomachs and strong lungs. [Note by the Editor]”
18 Author’s note: “I believe that the lack of renewal of air is the cause of goiters in the Pyrenees. I have always observed that the inhabitants afflicted with those excrescences have dwellings sheltered from the wind and the sun, in the depths of some mountain gorge where a humidity reigns that is never expelled and an air that is constantly calm and stagnant. I will cite, among other villages, that of St. Mamé, backed up against the north of the mountain at he very end of the valley of Luchon, of which almost all the inhabitants are goiterous, while half a league away, Bagnères de Luchon, more advanced in the plain and exposed to the rays of the rising and midday sun, is exempt from that malady. What fortifies my opinion is that all the goiterous are completely cured after a sojourn of some while on the mountain. [Note by the Editor]”
19 Charles Le Tellier (1603-1685) became Chancellor of France in 1677, and played a leading role in persuading Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes, which protected Protestants from persecution, but died a fortnight after putting his signature to the document. His son, the Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), was the Secretary of State for War, and the architect of the plan made in 1681 to billet dragoons in Protestant homes, with a tacit licence to abuse them in every way possible in order to terrorize them into conversion or exile. Once the Edict was revoked these “dragonnades” became increasingly violent, and frequently murderous.
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