"Allow us introduce ourselves." "Mr. Barbicane, President of the Gun Club." "Captain Nicholl." "Michel Ardan." "And who am I?" "I am Cyrano, Cyrano de Bergerac, the poet." "What remains a puzzle to me, however, is your name." "And where do you come from?" "From Venus?" "From Mars?" "From Jupiter, perhaps?" "Going by his outfit, he's from the Moon." "Gentlemen, a real, actual Moonman!" "Then come, join us!" "With glasses charged, let us celebrate this rarest of moments!" "In this enchanted landscape - cursed by cold and silent as dust, where one can wait centuries for a single visitor!" "The Baron!" "The famed Baron Munchausen!" "One of my kind, another adventurer!" "The force that pulls him to the stars is pure imagination." "How I love that!" "Baron Munchausen, friends, is flattered that he may be the first to raise a cup to the health of the first Moonman!" " Let the goblets ring!" " To encounters new!" " Let the stars all bling!" " To encounters new!" "Our new friend is not enjoying it." "His lips have not touched the wine!" "Get him take off his helmet!" "What if he cannot?" "Worse still, what if he doesn't know what wine is?" "That very fear, my friend, gives me an idea." "Look see!" "The old, good Earth!" "Doesn't he deserve a taste of our great discovery?" "I will go there, now, and immediately!" "And nicely take our Lunatic with me!" "Let him know how we humans live!" "Let him see, how we dress!" "Let him feel what love is and how we love!" "Let him know the taste and smell of adventure!" "Let the Moonman know what it is to live on Earth!" "Well, my friends, on to adventures new!" "My wonderful travels with this Moonman are about to begin!" "Once my new friend at last put on some proper clothes, the creature looked quite human." "Nearly a man - almost." "He had a strange name" ""Tony" or some such." "Quite a likeable fellow, but unfortunately had something... something of the schoolmaster about him." "So my whole manner, and our (I admit) somewhat unusual mode of transport, must have seemed outrageous to him." "In short, bizarre." "He would keep going on about science and technical things..." "I must stress once and for all that I am not interested in such trifles, my Moonfriend!" "But I am not from the Moon!" "I'm from Earth." "Out of the question!" "Why out of the question?" "Never seen you there!" "Behold, the first signs of the approaching Earth." "So this is your world." "Witches!" "Yes, but are they not wonderful?" "You know, I don't put much store by the idea of magic." "That one doesn't put much faith in it either, she's trying your ideas of science just in case!" "And down there!" "That's what I call flying your way!" "Following the laws of science ...exactly!" "The Bosporus, the Golden Horn!" "We'll land directly under the windows of the Sultan's palace!" "Thus I shall address the Great Sultan." "Musical, but difficult to follow." "The language of high diplomacy!" "Why did I decide to land in Turkey of all places?" "Why, it's the Land of the Crescent Moon!" "I had no doubt that my Moonman would appreciate this small, delicate gesture." "No one would believe this modest study was the heart and brain of a great empire." "But so it was." "Here is where the Great Sultan tirelessly entertains the obligations of rule." "I was convinced a flash of amazement would lighten his noble brow as I presented a real live Moonman!" "I felt at home in all that splendor." "So be it, let my Moonboy see how finely we earthlings dwell!" "I've just introduced you." "He fears for the throne." "I have excused you that you do not know what a throne is." "A throne is... is... simply the throne." "It needs oiling..." " Look!" " You are playing with fire." "I suspect today's audience is ended." "Our ship got lost in a storm and was captured by pirates, who sold me, as was their way, to the Sultan." "I saw you yesterday." "You are a true knight." "You are not afraid, even of the terrible Sultan!" "So it occurred to me that I might turn to you with a plea to rescue me." "You are my only hope and I remain, yours truly, Princess Bianca di Castello Nero." "She is appeals to you?" "Congratulations..." "He's holding her here against her will." "How is that possible?" "Such injustice?" "I'll get that Sultan!" "The Sultan?" "You are from the Moon!" "It must be kidnapping ...a regulation kidnapping!" "That's just as a violent!" "Not at all!" "It is a work of art!" "The art of winning the lady of one's dreams." "A true knight never uses any means more peaceful than the sword, the dagger and a rope!" "Tonight we turn the palace upside down!" "The ducks die too." "Streams of blood, oaths, fire!" "Such is the mise-en-scene for the drama of love!" "The road to our first adventure was not the easiest." "It did not bother me, but the Moonman fared worse than a sleepwalker." "And this clumsy oaf wanted to save the princess!" "You whistle like a boy." " What else should I do?" " Act like a man!" " Will that help?" " No, but it's more appropriate!" "We don't whistle when we're in love, we fight!" "In love in love we float on air." "Check!" "Mate!" "Well, Well, the Moonman shows his true colours!" "True enough, he's not doing badly, but why should I slice through ten thousand bashibazouks just so he can snatch the sweet spoils of my victory from under my very nose?" "Well, never matter, beardless boy!" "When Baron Munchausen enters the arena of love, he'll trim your coxcomb!" "The wild Turks screeched like devils and no doubt their fury raised the hairs of the Princess and the Moonboy." "perturbed by this game of catch-can." "My concerns for the Princess were of a different order." "I saw how the charms of a Venetian rose could fatally attract the Moon." "And worse, how she was now enthralled to him." "No!" "The pale seducer shall not steal her from my world." "As long as I am Baron Munchausen, he shall not take her!" "Three days and three nights persisted that infernal hunt, the path behind us bleached with the bones of exhausted steeds while dark scavengers celebrated upon the foul feast!" "My friend, the ocean!" "What a truly fantastic sight it is!" "And that ship... isn't it Turkish?" "The ship is Dutch, carrying Turkish tobacco." " A merchant ship." " Excellent!" "He can take us on board and back to Venice!" "AHOJ!" "AHOJ THERE!" " It's no good, they can't hear us." " They're too far out at sea." "Then we'll have to catch up." "Beg pardon!" "Horse and man overboard!" "Of course, who else but Baron Munchausen!" "Two horses and three men overboard!" "Two horses and two men, the third man is a woman!" "A skip in the water, a cabin for the lady, hay for horses and burgundy for the men." "...for a happy voyage to Venice!" "And now, friends, let me offer you the precious thing I have." "Karsiyakan..?" "Tramapasmatan..?" " Javan..?" " Ladokeyech!" " What?" " La-do-key-ech." "Heavenly!" "The Turkish navy!" "All hands on deck!" "Well, that's it!" "What does this mean, Baron?" "You've stolen the Sultan's treasure, have you?" "A single pearl!" "But quite the finest!" "One, two, three, four, five... one thousand four hundred twenty-seven guns directed at us!" "And about to fire!" "I might have known!" "And the sharks will smoke my tobacco!" "But the captain had forgot that on board was a man who always had a plan!" "As a veil of tobacco smoke gradually engulfed our ship, the pincers of the Turkish fleet continued to tighten their deadly grip." "Five hundred guns to our left, five hundred guns to our right." "One famous admiral to the left, one famous admiral to the right." "No sooner had our Turkish tobacco rendered our ship invisible to Turkish eyes, than the impetuous Admiral Hasan gave the order to fire!" "The Great Eunuch couldn't be seen to hesitate." "Wanting to prove himself a true man, he unhesitatingly threw himself into the fight." "As you can judge, I was the one actually in control of this battle of the colossi!" "To make a long story short, the Turks blew each other to shreds and my fabulous wit celebrated another triumphant victory." "In truth, a few stray bullets did sink our ship, but that was to be expected." "After all, what are lifeboats for?" "When the pungent curtain of pungent smoke finally lifted, we beheld a theatre of destruction, a stage littered with the pitiful relics of the once magnificent fleet." "The final act of this tragedy was a pas-de-deux." "Both admirals, as soloists, played their parts with admirable feeling." "Bravo!" "Heroes!" "In truth, I could have nothing against the fact that we were saved on two boats." "In one of them sat the captain and Tony, in the second my humble self and the princess." "Night overcame us, the Moon rose over the salt waters and I had the princess all to myself." "Tony's boat got lost." "Baron, are there lovers on the Moon?" "The Moon, my dear, is by nature a curious place." "It's completely..." "Covered in silver lilies, forever sweetly chiming!" "She made it sound so beautiful." "Damn her Moonman!" "Still on her mind, if only she knew that the true face of the Moon was just as unimaginative as its residents." "Such a pity she does not understand my magic world." "It swallowed us whole like a cherry." "In its belly was a lagoon larger than Lake Geneva." "Our only light came from the lanterns of a shipwreck that the monster has swallowed long ago." "What a beautiful sight!" "Alas, the ventilation was not the best, and so I preferred to let the princess sleep on." "I am Baron Munchausen." "You are very welcome to stay with us." "Kindly enter, distinguished guests." "My presence on board, was a compelling reason to celebrate!" "The sorry castaways willingly opened the last remnants of their liquid reserves." "I could see that under their bony chests lay hearts of gold." "It was truly a burdensome task to explain to this noble and gentle creature that we are trapped in a whale's stomach." "But I have to admit that to travel twenty thousand miles under the sea and alongside my beauty, was a welcome adventure for me." "The monster sailed a goodly piece of the World with us." "First it went to the North Sea." "During its sojourn in the realm of eternal ice, it sailed right under the North Pole." "We knew this for sure as conditions in the fishy darkness chilled appreciably." "Our whale was quite the tireless traveler!" "It scoured the seven seas with us aboard." "The Red Sea!" "The Yellow Sea!" "The Black Sea!" "How insightful such judgment!" "And how deep such geographical knowledge!" "What would we do without our admiral?" "But once, when we sailed into muddy waters, his wit failed." "But mine never!" "This journey will never end!" "A storm!" "Luckily we are protected by tons of whale blubber." "Storm on Oceanus!" "Do your worst!" "Well I'll be, Princess, but that is no storm!" "Those are sixteen-pounders!" "Do you know what that means?" "You hear the cannons." "We are approaching the civilised shores of our own dear Europa!" "The shy whale foolishly turned its back on the achievements of our civilization." "So much the better!" "At least I will have enough time to winkle the Moonman from the heart of the princess." "How do you like me, Captain?" "Harpoon!" "I think it time one changed into one's travel gear!" "You dance like the breeze." "This floor is dancing with me." "And what about me?" "And you!" "My arm you will always hold you firm." "We are saved!" "We've landed!" "The whale has dropped anchor!" " Hey, you there on the rock!" " Wake-up!" " Hey, hey!" " You there!" "What are you doing there?" "I'm on dry land and I end up here." "Down on the island it's nothing but madness." "Do you hear that?" "He's lit that infernal cauldron right on the ship." "The witch!" "That Moonman!" "Tony?" "Go down to the bay and see!" "He's trying to power the vessel on steam!" "How foolish is the heart of a woman!" "It was enough to hear that ridiculous name Tony and instantly she forgets the wonderful times spent at my side." "I saw that my efforts of the past weeks had been all in vane." "Where am I?" "You're with me." "My steamer." "But for a single screw the steamship would have been born a hundred years earlier." "I just needed that screw." "A single screw, can you believe it?" "I understood the boy." "He wanted to be a second Munchausen." "To travel in a boat driven by steam, mon Dieu, for such nonsense you need a fair share of imagination." "But whenever two people do the same thing, it's never quite the same." "I love a good roust, but on Earth, I follow the rule:" "stay on terra firma and never go gadding about in the clouds." "I was quite enjoying my air-trip, but a terrible thought flashed through his mind;" "I had left the princess to the mercy of the lunatic fantasist!" "Back at once!" "And the shortest way possible!" "Heavens above!" "I barely wet my lips, and I wish you could taste it!" "It was wine!" "A sea of Melnik white and beautifully chilled!" "What a pity Bianca was not there!" "She would be bound to feel just a little jealous!" "The mermaids swam right past me, a wonder they didn't scratch their scales!" "But their aquatic charms tempted me not." "And as it is with womankind when a man pays them no notice, they just show their teeth." "This did not disturb me." "I had seen many times how an innocent fish can turn into a predator." "No monster has grown the teeth that will gobble up Baron Munchausen!" "Suddenly, my heart started pounding like a bell." "This could only mean that my beloved was near." "I listened to the sound of my heart that brought me ever closer to our boat and to Princess Bianca." "Would that I would not arrive too late!" "Long into the night I told of my undersea adventures." "Everyone listened electrified." "All but these two." "They were not interested." "I failed to see how a princess could be so interested in fairytales of machines and suchlike!" " Can you read the stars?" " A little." "I wonder what he will see there!" "They say your eyes are deeper than the heavens!" "Really, my dear inventor!" "That isn't even original!" "Every young man says exactly that to his girl, under a starry sky." "For a thousand years, the same old thing!" "The stars are no longer a mystery to us." "There are no secrets anymore, except the secret of love." "...The horse that I rode did not gallop, but swam." "What seemed maybe million different kinds of fish constantly raced along the seabed ahead of me, at unbelievable velocities!" "What seemed maybe a million... maybe a million..." "This is supposed to be a ship's log, Baron!" "I see!" "One million two hundred fifty-six fish, to be exact..." "Fifty-seven!" "And, gentlemen, I didn't just pull that number out of my sleeve!" "And as we sailed ever on, I could see with my own eyes that the Princess preferred to listen to the story-teller from another world." "Why did the romance of adventure not affect her?" "The romance of war, duels and chivalric manners?" "Fortune then smiled on me." "The commander of the fort was my old friend, General Elemele, a soldier to the core." "A volley of champagne was loosed to mark our meeting." "Unfortunately, the enemy did not spare the volleys either, so our host was forced to return to his everyday day job." "Splendid!" "Your strategy is quite admirable!" "If only I knew where the enemy was!" "Would you allow me find out?" "If it's not an inconvenience..." "A mere trifle!" "Look!" "Bravo!" "Bravissimo!" "How fast!" "How daring!" "How uncomfortable!" "When I had plotted the position of the enemy in great detail," "I said to myself I had no more business there." "And since enemy shot was whistling past me fast and thick, it was child's play to catch one back into our citadel!" "As a young boy, I used loved fairy tales." "And I know you love them still." "Here, I have drawn one for you." "Take a look!" "This is an old castle somewhere and anywhere on Earth." "In the middle of the castle yard is a dry well, above the well a large gilded tower." "A beautiful Princess is held prisoner within." "A young pilgrim falls in love with the Princess." "He wants to rescue her from the old castle." "So he gets rid of the guard, enters the armoury and throws all the gunpowder down into the well." "He waits until the moon is directly above the castle, then strikes a light, and the well turns into a fiery missile that flies straight to the moon!" "You tell a beautiful story." "What a pity it's just a fairy tale!" "And why should love and beauty be just fairy tales?" "Traveling to the moon, throwing gunpowder into that well, need not be a dream either!" " To the future battles!" " To the future adventures!" " May you never see defeat!" " May you never be beaten!" "I?" "Baron Munchausen will never be beaten, because the name of Baron Munchausen is unbeatable." "It is immortal!" "Nothing can prevail against it!" "Such is the nature of my fate." "Oh, what fate would that be?" "It is not true in love." "The Princess Bianca and you..." "That naive girl cannot interest a cavalier like me, who has known the rare lace of the most renowned beauties of the world." "Lace with royal monograms." "Queen Margareta of Estremadura, her sister Maria-Luisa of Australia, and the third one!" "Why, they all offered me their hand and bed from their high thrones!" "And of course, a considerable number of court ladies, to whom it was enough just to signal with my little finger and they would fall into my arms!" "They have not always found the way into my heart easily." "The Marquisa di Rimini, for example, employed a much more subtle means to win my affections." "I was ravenous, busy both by day and by night..." "One beauty after another fell passionately under the spell of my manly eloquence!" "There was the most beautiful woman in the world, once celebrated by an unknown artist." "Secretly, I also painted her portrait, and, certainly to greater effect!" "But which of all was the most passionate, excuse me, the discretion of a cavalier of refined manners prevents me from recounting further." "I indulged in recalling scores of women, so as not to think more of Princess Bianca." "The one beauty in the fortress, surrounded by so many dashing cavaliers." "And then again, the enemy began his infernal concert." "General, there isn't a peck of gunpowder in the whole fortress." "The deadly machines of war had been turned overnight into harmless toys." "And I had as yet no idea that this cunning action was the work of our very own Moonman, who looked on as if butter wouldn't melt." "Certified Turkish tobacco!" "Yet again my intervention proved decisive." "The generals had disappeared and the soldiers without their generals simply went home in peace." "A true, if strange, victory, but a victory nonetheless." "And therefore worthy of a dignified, formal celebration!" "The festive harmony was unfortunately disturbed by a sharp tone, as the General informed the Princess that Tony had been arrested as it was he who had made the gunpowder vanish." "A court martial awaited him, and then the firing squad!" "Mesdames, Messieurs, s'il vous plaît!" "Excuse me, Baron, but you brought him here!" "Excuse me, General, but we won the battle!" "Excuse me, Baron, what do you mean by battle?" "No artillery, no cannonfire?" "That battle has short changed history!" "His crime!" "The man will be judged and sentenced!" "He's a dangerous fantasist." "You said a dangerous fantasist?" "I've heard that somewhere." "A dangerous fantasist!" "That reminds me of..." "Tony!" "Tony!" "The young man is from the Moon, from another world..." "He fell from the sky?" "So, we'll send him back." "A point, General, where is your evidence?" "Remember like in the fairy tale, it's full moon!" "When the Moon is directly above the fortress, we can begin..." "Interesting instructions on how to blow a fortress into the air!" "The castle-well is full of gunpowder." "Just one spark and..." "The Baron is an excellent gunner, he'll certainly help us." "She thinks I cannot see her, the Princess." "Fair Princess, the Officer of the Fortress Guard, at your service, to take you safely to the General!" "Fortress regulations are clear, emotions must yield to duty!" "Stop it now, young man!" "Stop!" "Don't you understand an order?" "You won't play games with me!" "Tony." "Be grateful that I rid you of this rogue." "He wanted to outdo you in everything." "He boasts that he has sailed not one, but all the seas." "Maybe he came from a world where that is no longer anything special." "And he says that he flew faster than a cannonball." "Why not?" "Doubtless in a hurry!" "The boy is, you say, a fantasist." "If he has any fantasy at all, let him use it now!" "Greetings, friends!" "Old Cyrano welcomes you!" "Back!" "To me!" "You come in time, but just, the hour is set to strike!" "Luna till now belonged but to the poets, to the dreamers, to daring fantasists and adventurers in powdered wigs." "To fantasists in frock coats, and to those in bizarre helmets from the pages of the newest novels." "And of course to the lovers, to them Luna was always most dear!" "I gayly doff my slouch hat and let it fly to the stars!" "Let it welcome, on our behalf, all you brave ones already on your way into the welcoming arms of the universe!" "THE END"