mortally wounded seven, and dispersed all the rest. He died at
Paris in 1655, struck by a huge beam falling into the street.
As an author he was strangely underrated by his
fellow-countrymen. Molière was the only man who really
appreciated him. For some centuries his works have been more
esteemed in England than in France. Many English writers, from
Dean Swift to Samuel Butler, the author of "Erewhon," have
been inspired by his "Voyage to the Moon," the English
equivalent of the original title being, "Comic History of the
States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun." This entertaining
satire is as fresh as it was on the day it was written: flying
machines and gramophones, for instance, are curiously modern.
His inimitable inventiveness makes him the most delightful of
French writers between Montaigne and Molière.


_I.--Arrival on the Moon_


After many experiments I constructed a flying machine, and, sitting on
top of it, I boldly launched myself in the air from the crest of a
mountain. I had scarcely risen more than half a mile when something went
wrong with my machine, and it shot back to the earth. But, to my
astonishment and joy, instead of descending with it, I continued to rise
through the calm, moonlight air. For three-quarters of an hour I mounted
higher and higher. Then suddenly all the weight of my body seemed to
fall upon my head. I was no longer rising quietly from the Earth, but
tumbling headlong on to the Moon. At last I crashed through a tree, and,
breaking my fall among its leafy, yielding boughs, I landed gently on
the grass below.