Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

1. Portrait of Cyrano 2. Signature of Cyrano 3. Title-page to Lovell's Translation 4. Cyrano's First Attempt 5. Frontispiece to Lovell's Translation 6. Cyrano's Flight to the Su...

From this wild cabaret life Cyrano was rescued by Le Bret just about the time when Abel de Cyrano threatened seriously to cut off supplies. At nineteen Cyrano entered the compan...

The other theory regards the libertins as expressing more or less coherently a great trend of thought in French intellectual life, as the heterodox tradition of France, as an ex...

But though I showed them that Pythagoras, Epicurus, Democritus and, in our own age, Copernicus and Kepler had been of this opinion, I did but cause them to strain their throats...

As you shall know very soon, this place was happily the Earthly Paradise and the tree I fell on precisely the Tree of Life. You may well suppose that without this miraculous cha...

"I had not yet recovered from this adventure when I saw a fair young man before me. 'I am', said he, 'the Archangel you are seeking and I have just read in God that He had sugge...

He would have told me more but they came to fetch us for supper. My conductor led me into a magnificently furnished room but I saw nothing prepared to eat. Such a lack of meat w...

"But let us look at the fate of the other elements which compose this log. The air retreats to its quarters still confused with the vapour because the angry fire sharply drove t...

"As to judgment he has just as little, although the common opinion of your world makes it a prerogative of old age. To remove this error, it must be known that what in an old ma...

"It remains for me to prove to you that there are infinite worlds in an infinite world. Conceive, then, the Universe as a large animal, the stars (which are Worlds) as other ani...

"I was greatly edified", he continued, "when I found that the principal motive for her journey was directed towards making herself a Christian. I have promised to help her desig...

"And I", said he, "will prove to you the contrary. To begin with, suppose that you ate a Mohammedan; you convert him consequently into your own substance! Is it not true that wh...

The poor gentleman was indeed almost out of breath, and as soon as he had recovered it we begged him to get rid of a thing, which, however light in one sense, does not fail to w...

Hag-ridden by this panic terror I resolved to beg once more, in order to pass through the remainder of the town to the posting station without suspicion, but as I feared my voic...

I remember that as I reflected on this adventure I reasoned once in this way: "Hunger no doubt cannot attack me, because this pain is simply Nature's instinct, warning animals t...

I began to feel I should remain enshrined there, but the horror which overwhelmed me at the strangeness of this accident was increased by those which followed; for, as my sight...

"We passed twenty-four hours in this exercise and I think we should never have been tired of making love if our throats had not refused us voices. This was the only obstacle whi...

The day and the night were passed in these trifles until the prescribed hour arrived next day; I was carried back at once to appear before my judges and, when the Syndics were b...

They were to remain a long time in this position; for I heard orders given to the cormorants who had lifted me to catch fish for the herons and to slide their food into their be...

"A very accomplished young man called Narcissus had deserved by his love the affection of a very beautiful girl, whom the poets have celebrated under the name of Echo. But, as y...

Some time after the Remora had retired we approached the field of battle and the old man, having covered his hands with the earth on which it had walked as a preservative agains...

Death only happens in this way. When he has expired, or rather, is extinguished, the small igneous bodies which composed his substance enter the gross matter of this lighted wor...

"There are exhaled from all bodies elements, that is to say, corporeal images which fly in the air. Now, in spite of their movement, these images always preserve the shape, the...