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When Micromegas, ah inhabitant of Sirius, whose adventures were evidently suggested by those of Gulliver, accompanied by an inhabitant of Saturn, leaves the latter planet, they are, in the first place, made to leap upon the Ring of Saturn, which they find tolerably flat, "comme l'a fort bien devine un illustre habitant de notre petit globe:" thence they go from moon to moon, and a comet passing close to one of these, they throw themselves upon it, with their attendants and instruments.
There are bon mots, like many of Charles Lamb’s, which are a sort of facetious hybrids, we hardly know whether to call them witty or humorous; there are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives, which, like Voltaire’s “Micromégas,” would be more humorous if they were not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire, that we are obliged to call them witty.
There it lay, deep sunk in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire's tale of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw their shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellersdrove through the one long street, composed entirely of hotels and lodging-houses.
This is the notion which Voltaire himself three years afterwards illustrated in the witty fancies of Micromégas. The little animalcule in the square cap, who makes the giant laugh in a Homeric manner by its inflated account of itself as the final cause of the universe, is the type of the philosophy on which Catholicism is based.
"The best person," said Vivian, "to decide upon your Highness consenting to this interview is yourself." "That is not the point on which I wish to have the benefit of your opinion; for I have already consented. I rode over this morning to my cousin, the Duke of Micromegas, and despatched from his residence a trusty messenger to Beckendorff.
'Favour's all very well, only you mind what I say, Micromegas! don't you dare touch the peasants, my subjects, out of my sight! If they come to complain ... I've a cane, you see, not far off! 'Your cane, your honour, Alexey Sergeitch, I always keep well in mind, Antip Micromegas would respond, stroking his beard.
And if any one of them was harsh and oppressive to his subjects, that man was guilty in the sight of God, and culpable in the sight of men! Yes; the house-serfs led an easy life in the old man's house; the "subjects behind his back" were less well off, as a matter of course, despite the cane wherewith he threatened Micromegas. And how many there were of them of those house-serfs in his manor!
He was reduced to the condition of an insect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividly illustrated in Micromegas.
Kepler interpreted Galileo's anagram of the "triple" Saturn in this sense; they were perceived by Micromégas on his long voyage through space; and the Laputan astronomers had even arrived at a knowledge, curiously accurate under the circumstances, of their distances and periods. But terrestrial observers could see nothing of them until the night of August 11, 1877.
There was no piece of furniture adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long wooden coffer; and its cover was carved, to boot; which afforded Gringoire, when he stretched himself out upon it, a sensation somewhat similar to that which Micromegas would feel if he were to lie down on the Alps. "Come!" said he, adjusting himself as well as possible, "I must resign myself.
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