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Article A FRENCH NOVELIST OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ← Page 7 of 12 →
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A French Novelist Of The Seventeenth Century.
and the mature philosopher rose from his couch of leaves a lad of fourteen . Conscious that he hacl attained the end and aim of his existence , cured of his contusions , ancl regardless of his past perils , the' intrepid Bergerac felt no inclination to waste the precious opportunity which he had purchased at so great an
expense of time ancl toil ; but wiping away the remains of his frugal repast , and disembarrassing himself of the clinging branches , he set forth towards a wood of jasmin ancl myrtles ; and had walked about half a league amidst its odorous recesses , when he saw , lying extended in the shade , a handsome youth whom he at first supposed to be one of the lunar divinitiesbut
, who he soon discovered to be a mere mortal like himself , who hacl reached the moon in a car of highly-polished steel , which he had caused to ascend by perpetually flinging into the air in the direction which he wished to follow , a ball of calcined loadstone .
The conversation that ensued betAveen the tAvo aeronauts is too long and too mystical to be inflicted upon my readers ; but a portion of it must not be overlooked ; nor must it be forgotten that the author wrote at a period long antecedent to the invention of balloons and parachutes , which were not discovered until the end of the succeeding century .
The hero of the steel car reA'ealed to his new friend all the details of the creation both of earth and moon ; and in the course of his narration he informed him that tivo of the inhabitants of the lunar Avorld once descended to our OAVU , and alighted between Mesopotamia and Arabia ; that one of these was known as Prometheus : the name of the second is not
stated . That—but how or why , the author does not explainby their migration the moon became untenanted and desolate ; until the All Wise permitted that , a feAV centuries subsequently , one of their descendants , wearied of the society of unjust men , became anxious to end his clays in the happy land of which his ancestor hacl often spoken , but toAvards which no one knew
the Avay . Engrossed by this one idea , the aspirant taxed his imagination unAveariedly until he had discovered a means of effecting his purpose ; and to this end "he filled two large brazen vessels with smoke , caused them to be hermetically sealed , and secured them beneath his armpits ; the smoke ivhich sought to ascendbut which coulcl not penetrate the
, metal , immediately forced the vessels upward , while they , in their turn , carried the man with them ; who , when he had risen four-and-twenty feet above the moon , unfastened the vessels ; but , as he fell from a great height , he must have been sorely
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A French Novelist Of The Seventeenth Century.
and the mature philosopher rose from his couch of leaves a lad of fourteen . Conscious that he hacl attained the end and aim of his existence , cured of his contusions , ancl regardless of his past perils , the' intrepid Bergerac felt no inclination to waste the precious opportunity which he had purchased at so great an
expense of time ancl toil ; but wiping away the remains of his frugal repast , and disembarrassing himself of the clinging branches , he set forth towards a wood of jasmin ancl myrtles ; and had walked about half a league amidst its odorous recesses , when he saw , lying extended in the shade , a handsome youth whom he at first supposed to be one of the lunar divinitiesbut
, who he soon discovered to be a mere mortal like himself , who hacl reached the moon in a car of highly-polished steel , which he had caused to ascend by perpetually flinging into the air in the direction which he wished to follow , a ball of calcined loadstone .
The conversation that ensued betAveen the tAvo aeronauts is too long and too mystical to be inflicted upon my readers ; but a portion of it must not be overlooked ; nor must it be forgotten that the author wrote at a period long antecedent to the invention of balloons and parachutes , which were not discovered until the end of the succeeding century .
The hero of the steel car reA'ealed to his new friend all the details of the creation both of earth and moon ; and in the course of his narration he informed him that tivo of the inhabitants of the lunar Avorld once descended to our OAVU , and alighted between Mesopotamia and Arabia ; that one of these was known as Prometheus : the name of the second is not
stated . That—but how or why , the author does not explainby their migration the moon became untenanted and desolate ; until the All Wise permitted that , a feAV centuries subsequently , one of their descendants , wearied of the society of unjust men , became anxious to end his clays in the happy land of which his ancestor hacl often spoken , but toAvards which no one knew
the Avay . Engrossed by this one idea , the aspirant taxed his imagination unAveariedly until he had discovered a means of effecting his purpose ; and to this end "he filled two large brazen vessels with smoke , caused them to be hermetically sealed , and secured them beneath his armpits ; the smoke ivhich sought to ascendbut which coulcl not penetrate the
, metal , immediately forced the vessels upward , while they , in their turn , carried the man with them ; who , when he had risen four-and-twenty feet above the moon , unfastened the vessels ; but , as he fell from a great height , he must have been sorely