“No, in truth,” said Agalonice.
“It’s something that it’s necessary to suspect,” said the Praetor. “Pythagoras thought that the moon is a world similar to ours, where there ought to be animals, the nature of which he could not determine.”
“That is true,” replied Bar-Cochébas, “and the necessary instrument that he lacked, I have devised. I will render sensible to you things even less probably that what was suspected by Pythagoras.”
“That may be,” replied Cornelius, whom these magnificent promises did not fail to inspire some interest. “You doubtless intend to talk about the stars, considered as so many suns, and the planetary bodies that are liberally placed around them? I’m a descendant of Anaximenes, who heard it said by Thales, who got it from Heraclitus, who had read it in the verses of Orpheus, that the stars are masses of fire, around which certain terrestrial bodies, which we cannot perceive, carry out periodic revolutions...”
“It is charming to listen to Lord Cornelius!” exclaimed Bar-Cochébas. “No one is more learned in Memphis or Babylon, and I’m tempted to believe...”
“In fact,” said Aglaonice, “those are compliments indeed, but many things have been announced, and we haven’t seen anything. Let’s stick to the moon, Sir Mechanician, and hurry up.”
Then the Israelite was seen to aim his long tube, composed of three sections devoid of lenses, whose unique property was that of directing the sight and rendering it clearer by separating the considered object from the surrounding objects.
“If the moon is inhabited,” said Bar-Cochébas, “the other planetary bodies are too; whoever proves one, proves the other. Such a discovery is of incontestable utility; in any case my lady, take note of one thing: that the parts of the moon that cast the brightest light toward our eyes are massive mountains of silver; so that if we succeed, as I hope, in convincing ourselves that the planet has inhabitants, it will only need a good loudhailer to inform them of our needs. Now, if that is so, and if my lady obtains some pleasure in convincing herself of it, my rivals have nothing more to expect; it is me who will triumph; it is me...”
“Well yes,” said Aglaonice, “that follows. Let’s see, then.”
“See, my lady.”
Aglaonice then drew near to the rather broad aperture of the long tube, which hid more than a quarter of her lovely face. Her left hand provided support for the body of the telescope, while her right lowered the eyelid of the other eye; her attention was entirely focused on the object of her consideration.
The Praetor, who had heard talk of mountains of gold and silver, was almost sorry to have had a serious conversation with a man who was, in the final analysis, making mock of the company, or proffering errors in good faith, which has happened to more than one scholar to whom statues have nevertheless been erected. He regarded it as possible that Bar-Cochébas had fallen into delirium, without being entirely exempt from reason in consequence.
The members of the company, including Cornelius, therefore awaited their turn impatiently to see the seas, the forests, the shiny masses, the rocks and precipices that Bar-Cochébas had advertised, and which Aglaonice had not succeeded in discovering. When each of them, one after another, had become weary of looking, someone wanted to speak to send the promise-maker away and advise him to go see whether, in all those supposed worlds, he could find a jewel similar to the one that he had dared to aspire, but they looked to the left and right and all the corners of the apartment in vain; the supposed inventor of the tube had disappeared. Aglaonice and the ladies found themselves, to their great astonishment, relieved of their purses and some of their jewelry.
The Praetor tried to catch up with the clever rogue and make sure that he never saw the pyramids again, but as his beard and cassock were found at the bottom of the stairs, it was thought that it would be a waste of time running after him. Aglaonice was not the woman of the company who had suffered most from that accident; Cornelius was not a man to let it go unrepaired.
IV. Apparent neglect on the part of physicians.
Serious conversation between the Praetor and old Cyaxare, former secretary of good King Hyeron.
Meanwhile, it seemed that the orphan beauty’s project had failed complete, for I count for little an heir of Euclid who talked to her about dioptrics and catoptrics and made her a long serious of propositions, the last of which—the only one that was intelligible to Aglaonice—was no more welcome than all the rest.
The days succeeded one another without any mention being heard of anything, and the beauty’s self-esteem was suffering a little therefrom. She had time to think that her charms had not put such a large number of artists to work, and that they had not had the effect that she had promised herself at all.
One consoles oneself as best one can. The windows of her apartment overlooked the flowery banks of the Arethuse;19 she frequently cast her eyes upon that spring, whose good fortune made her hope for another Alpheus. Prosperity came to her while she slept, she told herself, and she tried to go to sleep to the amorous murmur of its waves, surrendering herself to sweet thoughts and the void in her heart. She did not know that the appearances of inaction hide labor, most of it undertaken by skillful individuals, and that all of it was about to appear at once, one fine morning.
The Praetor, whose age and the sacred title of Protector had eliminated from the ranks, scarcely able to talk to Aglaonice about love, conversed with her about politics, and his grateful ward deigned to listen while waiting for something better.
The Senate had charged Cornelius with analyzing the character of the Syracusans in order to discover in what manner they could be managed without embittering minds so versatile and always less submissive than independent.
Cyaxare, a former secretary of the good King Hyeron20 came to see the Praetor from time to time. That former servant had displeased the young Hyeronimus, the unworthy son of the best of princes, an insolent dissipater of the treasure destined for the embellishment of the city and to pay the defenders of the fatherland, a violator of old treaties and, in sum, a declared enemy of public wellbeing. The young insensate had perished not long before under the vengeful swords of citizens in revolt one day when he had left Syracuse to go to the land of the Leontines.
Cyaxare was no more satisfied with Hippocrates and Epycides, enterprising Praetors,21 usurpers of limitless power, maladroit politicians whose seditious maneuvers had been the cause of the siege, because both had openly declared themselves for the Carthaginians.
The old servant spoke as an eye-witness of everything that had happened for many years; he also knew by tradition the mind and heart of the Syracusans, and, in more than one conversation with Cornelius he put his mind to giving the Senate an accurate idea of it.
“The Syracusans need a King,” he told him. “They’re capable of an extreme fidelity and a limitless attachment. This city has, at all times, been exposed to strange scenes. It can be compared to a sea, more often agitated by stormy winds than refreshed by the breath of zephyrs. Exposed to the most terrible revolutions, it has passed from liberty to slavery. It has groaned under the iron scepter of Denis,22 and has breathed easy under the mild reign of the immortal Hyeron. It has sometimes been seen surrendered to the caprices of an unbridled populace and sometimes submissive to the authority of laws.
“Such opposite extremes could be attributed to the Syracusans themselves, whose levity was their dominant character, but the primary cause of so many evils is the form of government, composed of two ever-militant powers and deprived of a third whose counterweight might have established equilibrium; with the result that liberty, too often groaning under the hand of aristocrats, rose up more than once, and rendered Sicily witness to the bloodiest scenes.
“What also renders the government of the city less easy is that its citizens, bellicose although frivolous, have not forgotten the signal victories won in Africa by their ancestors and their advantages over the Athenians, too proud of a maritime power that our people successfully disputed
more than once with those rivals jealous of their glory.
“Although one has the right to say that wealth has softened the heart of the Syracusans and given them a kind of distance from all that has no affinity with games and pleasures, it must be admitted that they are nevertheless resistant on occasions to the voice of their orators, and then become capable of the greatest enterprises. The same men who went to sleep in the bosom of confidence wake up terrible and threatening, with the most superb heads, and, in their frenetic transports, massacre everything that has contributed to harming them.
“I regard them, therefore, as men inappropriate to enjoy a complete liberty or to accustom themselves to an entire servitude. They need a King, and I want that; but it is also appropriate that they should always be the masters of their own revolutions, when the utility if it is generally recognized by the most sound minds. The Prince will then enjoy the fine advantage of facilitating its execution, and everyone will be happy; otherwise, Rome will probably not have in the Syracusans a people on whom they can reliably count.”
That idea of Cyaxare, of giving them another King, did not please Cornelius; he tried to make that honest man, misled by the memory of the great virtues of Hyeron—as if such sovereigns were not phenomena, to whom nature took centuries to give birth!—abandon it.
“The Roman Senate does not think as you do,” he told him. “I don’t know who you would designate today to reign, but you, who scarcely think of it, would be on the throne now if Rome, which makes Kings, had judged it appropriate to its own interests and those of Syracuse that the constitution of the city should be other than that of a Republic.
“Sicily conserves its ancient rights and customs, as you know, and Rome does not extend that distinction to many its conquered lands. You are more her friends and confederates than a submissive people, as you also know, since it is true that Rome does not levy and tribute from you by the entitlement of monument and the price of victory.23
Sicily is Italy’s neighbor; you regard yourselves as being part of it. Kings, Cyaxare, too often affect an absolute power; their procedures, stripped of the forms of justice, then become violent actions rather than. Do you count for nothing the advantage of only obeying laws that you have made yourself, and of choosing your magistrates annually? No more judges henceforth that the parties cannot remove; and it is the advantage of the Valerian law, which ought to have all its force here as it does among us, that the people now have the right to pronounce the death penalty against the enemies of the state.”
Cyaxare was not without a reply to those observations.
“As all Kings,” he said, “do not resemble Hyeron, all Praetors do not resemble Cornelius, and Rome will only leave you here for a short time…but I do not want to anticipate the evils that your successors might occasion here subsequently. Let us enjoy the present; I yield to your arguments.”
Thus reasoned the good Cornelius and old Cyaxare, and at those moments the Praetor scarcely thought about the annoyances of the beautiful Aglaonice, which were increasing every day, by virtue of the silence of the mechanicians on whom she had founded her hopes, and by the nature of those grave conversation, by which she was somewhat embarrassed. But Cyaxare had no sooner left the apartment than the keenest interest in favor of the lovely orphan was reborn in Cornelius’ heart. He begged her pardon so obligingly for having talked in her presence about anything other than what might please her that the most passionate of men would have seemed less expressive and less amiable.
V. The Flying Chariot and the Conspirators
Thirty days had gone by since the adroit thief who made people read the stars in order to rummage in their pockets had dared, in the magistrate’s own house and before his very eyes, to obtain such a good result from his villainous métier. Amour and the arts seemed to be sleeping lethargically, and the good Praetor was secretly laughing at the thought that the beauty might perhaps not succeed in finding an abode other than his own house.
As he was yielding to the deceptive charms of that pleasant reverie, however, a great ardelion arrived, a hasty valet dressed up to the nines. He came on behalf of Lord Lycaon-agrios-kai tyrannos akeirotos-kai apenès-kai polémios-Brogli-Lam-Beden-Mail-Aristos,24 and begged Cornelius to permit that a machine be brought into the largest and most open of his gardens, the marvelous effect of which Aglaonice would see in a few days’ time. The emissary added that the public might enjoy the spectacle, because the machine surpassed the clouds.
The lord in question was a direct descendant of a Spartan, one of those who, having acquired so much glory a hundred years before under the leadership of Gylippus, has ended up, like the miser Polemarchus,25 by tarnishing the reputation of Sparta. A considerable number of those Lacedemonians, obliged to flee, had taken refuge in Sicily.
Aristos, born in the country, had no lack of castles and fine lands. He was one of those who could not bear the idea of a perfect equality, and had not yet despaired of the success of a tyrannical plot. It did not seem credible to him that nature had given the people the same organs as patricians; he could not imagine that they were capable of governing without their help, and even less of forcing themselves to obey.
That identity of constitution with the Roman Republic did not appear to him, in any case, to be so well-established or so strongly supported that the Syracusans could not be recalled to their former regime. A daughter of the people, a poor young woman like Aglaonice, would surely not refuse to accept a sum of money or some other advantageous proposition to favor the project he had formed of entering Ortygia by night and slaughtering the garrison. However, the dangers of the project sometimes enfeebled his hope. Then his sad joy was that of the guilty; he only laughed bitterly.
It will be remembered that the Praetor had said to Aglaonice that no one would speak to her except in his presence. That mark of attention, which only had beneficence for its objective, did not worry Aristos to the extent that he regarded it as impossible to replace Cornelius by some woman in Aglaonice’s confidence. As he excelled in the art of composing his exterior, and the perfection of his hypocrisy shielded him from all suspicion, it was not difficult for him to make Cornelius understand that it was very embarrassing for a man when he had to talk about love before his fellow; that the resultant constraint made the suitor seem so awkward that it was not astonishing that no one had succeeded thus far with Aglaonice; otherwise, it was more than probable that someone would even have made her forget the conditions she had imposed.
“Oh, let that not be an obstacle,” said the Praetor. “I know that she has a sister to whom she’s very attached. I’ll cede my place to her. I don’t intend to embarrass either you or Aglaonice. If you think it advantageous to talk to her before showing her your discoveries, come tomorrow; you can chat entirely at your ease.”
Aristos did not fail. The machine followed, guided by a Cantabrian, a worthy confidant of such a great lord. He too was a lord, an aristocrat of the low Pyrenees, a land of dancing where the humanity of his fellows had rendered a great many things utterly problematic. Neighbors were not neighbors. Brothers were not brothers. Fire and water only belonged to a small number of men more powerful than the rest, and although everything was common in the land, brothers and neighbors ate grass and died of thirst if they did not have the wherewithal to pay.26 At any rate, that lord was merely the valet of the other. Delegated to look after the machine, he had remained in the garden, accompanied by eight or ten Cyclopes, while Aristos tried to convert the two sisters to his opinions.
I cannot deny that Aristos was a man to fear in the art of tactics; he had given proof of it. As for mechanics, that was another matter; circumstance alone had made him a mechanician. One would, however, be forced to admit that he also possessed, to a certain degree, a knowledge of motive forces and equilibrium; but one would see at the same time that he was as reckless as he was vain, two great faults against which it is often good to guard.
Aglaonice, therefore, alerted to his visit, was awaiting him with no
other witness than Bazilide, her sister. Aristos was introduced. It would have been stupid to open up straight away, so he adopted a light tone and only spoke at first about a discovery that promised him the advantage of meriting the hand of Aglaonice—whom he regarded as fundamentally impertinent, since she was nothing but a peasant.
“My ladies,” he said, “I have learned that a rogue who aspired less to the honor of espousing you than to the profit he could obtain from his skill has robbed you of your jewels while amusing you with a telescope that he had stolen from the King of Egypt’s museum,27 which would have merited that Lord Cornelius have him whipped by his lictors. In truth, ladies, I find the Praetor and you possessed of a confidence and generosity of soul…you have not heard the history, then, of these refugees from the land of the Pharaohs?
“Anyway, the thievery of Bar-Cochébas and the trouble he must have taken are foreign to my object; let us only speak of his imposture—I mean the hope that he falsely gave you of revealing to you that which he was sure that you would never see. Yes, my ladies, his talisman is devoid of virtue; its mechanism is imperfect; he knew that very well; and believe that, as for his loudhailer, if he had had one, he would only have used it for himself.
“But even if you had read the stars distinctly, you would still have the regret of being separated from them by a distance that no man has thus far been able to cross. Consider the moon, and see there…what? Light and shadow; it is not of any interest from which any great satisfaction might result. The beautiful, the marvelous thing, would be to transport oneself to the very heart of this planet, to see there with one’s own eyes and touch with one’s hands that which reason gives us the right to presume is there.”
The Mirror of Present Events Page 3
