I. LIFE OF SAINT MAËL
II. THE APOSTOLICAL VOCATION OF SAINT MAËL
III. THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT MAËL
IV. ST. MAËL’S NAVIGATION ON THE OCEAN OF ICE
V. THE BAPTISM OF THE PENGUINS
VI. AN ASSEMBLY IN PARADISE
VII. AN ASSEMBLY IN PARADISE (Continuation and End)
VIII. METAMORPHOSIS OF THE PENGUINS
BOOK II. THE ANCIENT TIMES
I. THE FIRST CLOTHES
II. THE FIRST CLOTHES (Continuation and End)
III. SETTING BOUNDS TO THE FIELDS AND THE ORIGIN OF PROPERTY
IV. THE FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE ESTATES OF PENGUINIA
V. THE MARRIAGE OF KRAKEN AND ORBEROSIA
VI. THE DRAGON OF ALCA
VII. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
VIII. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
IX. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
X. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
XI. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
XII. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)
XIII. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation and End)
BOOK III. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
I. BRIAN THE GOOD AND QUEEN GLAMORGAN
II. DRACO THE GREAT (Translation of the Relics of St. Orberosia)
III. QUEEN CRUCHA
IV. LETTERS: JOHANNES TALPA
V. THE ARTS: THE PRIMITIVES OF PENGUIN PAINTING
VI. MARBODIUS
VII. SIGNS IN THE MOON
BOOK IV. MODERN TIMES: TRINCO
I. MOTHER ROUQUIN
II. TRINCO
III. THE JOURNEY OF DOCTOR OBNUBILE
BOOK V. MODERN TIMES: CHATILLON
I. THE REVEREND FATHERS AGARIC AND CORNEMUSE
II. PRINCE CRUCHO
III. THE CABAL
IV. VISCOUNTESS OLIVE
V. THE PRINCE DES BOSCÉNOS
VI. THE EMIRAL’S FALL
VII. CONCLUSION
BOOK VI. MODERN TIMES.
I. GENERAL GREATAUK, DUKE OF SKULL
II. PYROT
III. COUNT DE MAUBEC DE LA DENTDULYNX
IV. COLOMBAN
V. THE REVEREND FATHERS AGARIC AND CORNEMUSE
VI. THE SEVEN HUNDRED PYROTISTS
VII. BIDAULT-COQUILLE AND MANIFLORE, THE SOCIALISTS
VIII. THE COLOMBAN TRIAL
IX. FATHER DOUILLARD
X. MR. JUSTICE CHAUSSEPIED
XI. CONCLUSION
BOOK VII. MODERN TIMES
I. MADAME CLARENCE’S DRAWING-ROOM
II. THE CHARITY OF ST. ORBEROSIA
III. HIPPOLYTE CÉRÈS
IV. A POLITICIAN’S MARRIAGE
V. THE VISIRE CABINET
VI. THE SOFA OF THE FAVOURITE
VII. THE FIRST CONSEQUENCES
VIII. FURTHER CONSEQUENCES
IX. THE FINAL CONSEQUENCES
BOOK VIII. FUTURE TIMES
BOOK I. THE BEGINNINGS
I. LIFE OF SAINT MAËL
Maël, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth year
to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred and
profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his patrimony and
took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided, according to the
rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of grammar, and the
meditation of eternal truths.
A celestial perfume soon disclosed the virtues of the monk throughout
the cloister, and when the blessed Gal, the Abbot of Yvern, departed
from this world into the next, young Maël succeeded him in the
government of the monastery. He established therein a school, an
infirmary, a guest-house, a forge, work-shops of all kinds, and sheds
for building ships, and he compelled the monks to till the lands in the
neighbourhood. With his own hands he cultivated the garden of the
Abbey, he worked in metals, he instructed the novices, and his life was
gently gliding along like a stream that reflects the heaven and
fertilizes the fields.
At the close of the day this servant of God was accustomed to seat
himself on the cliff, in the place that is to-day still called St.
Maël’s chair. At his feet the rocks bristling with green seaweed and
tawny wrack seemed like black dragons as they faced the foam of the
waves with their monstrous breasts. He watched the sun descending into
the ocean like a red Host whose glorious blood gave a purple tone to
the clouds and to the summits of the waves. And the holy man saw in
this the image of the mystery of the Cross, by which the divine blood
has clothed the earth with a royal purple. In the offing a line of dark
blue marked the shores of the island of Gad, where St. Bridget, who had
been given the veil by St. Malo, ruled over a convent of women.
Now Bridget, knowing the merits of the venerable Maël, begged from him
some work of his hands as a rich present. Maël cast a hand-bell of
bronze for her and, when it was finished, he blessed it and threw it
into the sea. And the bell went ringing towards the coast of Gad, where
St. Bridget, warned by the sound of the bell upon the waves, received
it piously, and carried it in solemn procession with singing of psalms
into the chapel of the convent.
Thus the holy Maël advanced from virtue to virtue. He had already
passed through two-thirds of the way of life, and he hoped peacefully
to reach his terrestrial end in the midst of his spiritual brethren,
when he knew by a certain sign that the Divine wisdom had decided
otherwise, and that the Lord was calling him to less peaceful but not
less meritorious labours.
II. THE APOSTOLICAL VOCATION OF SAINT MAËL
One day as he walked in meditation to the furthest point of a tranquil
beach, for which rocks jutting out into the sea formed a rugged dam, he
saw a trough of stone which floated like a boat upon the waters.
It was in a vessel similar to this that St. Guirec, the great St.
Columba, and so many holy men from Scotland and from Ireland had gone
forth to evangelize Armorica. More recently still, St. Avoye having
come from England, ascended the river Auray in a mortar made of
rose-coloured granite into which children were afterwards placed in
order to make them strong; St. Vouga passed from Hibernia to Cornwall
on a rock whose fragments, preserved at Penmarch, will cure of fever
such pilgrims as place these splinters on their heads. St. Samson
entered the Bay of St. Michael’s Mount in a granite vessel which will
one day be called St. Samson’s basin. It is because of these facts that
when he saw the stone trough the holy Maël understood that the Lord
intended him for the apostolate of the pagans who still peopled the
coast and the Breton islands.
He handed his ashen staff to the holy Budoc, thus investing him with
the government of the monastery. Then, furnished with bread, a barrel
of fresh water, and the book of the Holy Gospels, he entered the stone
trough which carried him gently to the island of Hœdic.
This island is perpetually buffeted by the winds. In it some poor men
fished among the clefts of the rocks and labouriously cultivated
vegetables in gardens full of sand and pebbles that were sheltered from
the wind by walls of barren stone and hedges of tamarisk. A beautiful
fig-tree raised itself in a hollow of the island and thrust forth its
branches far and wide. The inhabitants of the island used to worship
it.
And the holy Maël said to them: “You worship this tree because it is
beautiful. Therefore you are capable of feeling beauty. Now I come to
reveal to you the hidden beauty.” And he taught them the Gospel. And
after having instructed them, he baptized them with salt and water.
The islands of Morbihan were more numerous in those times than they are
to-day. For since then many have been swallowed up by the sea. St. Maël
evangelized sixty of them. Then in his granite trough he ascended the
river Auray. And after sailing for three hours he landed before a Roman
house. A thin column of smoke went up from the roof. The holy man
crossed the threshold on which there was a mosaic representing a dog
with its hind legs outstretched and its lips drawn back. He was
welcomed by an old couple, Marcus Combabus and Valeria Moerens, who
lived there on the products of their lands. There was a portico round
the interior court the columns of which were painted red, half their
height upwards from the base. A fountain made of shells stood against
the wall and under the portico there rose an altar with a niche in
which the master of the house had placed some little idols made of
baked earth and whitened with whitewash. Some represented winged
children, others Apollo or Mercury, and several were in the form of a
naked woman twisting her hair. But the holy Maël, observing those
figures, discovered among them the image of a young mother holding a
child upon her knees.
Immediately pointing to that image he said:
“That is the Virgin, the mother of God. The poet Virgil foretold her in
Sibylline verses before she was born and, in angelical tones he sang
_Jam redit et virgo_. Throughout heathendom prophetic figures of her
have been made, like that which you, O Marcus, have placed upon this
altar. And without doubt it is she who has protected your modest
household. Thus it is that those who faithfully observe the natural law
prepare themselves for the knowledge of revealed truths.”
Marcus Combabus and Valeria Moerens, having been instructed by this
speech, were converted to the Christian faith. They received baptism
together with their young freedwoman, Caelia Avitella, who was dearer
to them than the light of their eyes. All their tenants renounced
paganism and were baptized on the same day.
Marcus Combabus, Valeria Moerens, and Caelia Avitella led thenceforth a
life full of merit. They died in the Lord and were admitted into the
canon of the saints.
For thirty-seven years longer the blessed Maël evangelized the pagans
of the inner lands. He built two hundred and eighteen chapels and
seventy-four abbeys.
Now on a certain day in the city of Vannes, when he was preaching the
Gospel, he learned that the monks of Yvern had in his absence declined
from the rule of St. Gal. Immediately, with the zeal of a hen who
gathers her brood, he repaired to his erring children. He was then
towards the end of his ninety-seventh year; his figure was bent, but
his arms were still strong, and his speech was poured forth abundantly
like winter snow in the depths of the valleys.
Abbot Budoc restored the ashen staff to St. Maël and informed him of
the unhappy state into which the Abbey had fallen. The monks were in
disagreement as to the date on which the festival of Easter ought to be
celebrated. Some held for the Roman calendar, others for the Greek
calendar, and the horrors of a chronological schism distracted the
monastery.
There also prevailed another cause of disorder. The nuns of the island
of Gad, sadly fallen from their former virtue, continually came in
boats to the coast of Yvern. The monks received them in the guesthouse
and from this there arose scandals which filled pious souls with
desolation.
Having finished his faithful report, Abbot Budoc concluded in these
terms:
“Since the coming of these nuns the innocence and peace of the monks
are at an end.”
“I readily believe it,” answered the blessed Maël. “For woman is a
cleverly constructed snare by which we are taken even before we suspect
the trap. Alas! the delightful attraction of these creatures is exerted
with even greater force from a distance than when they are close at
hand. The less they satisfy desire the more they inspire it. This is
the reason why a poet wrote this verse to one of them:
‘When present I avoid thee, but when away I find thee.’
“Thus we see, my son, that the blandishments of carnal love have more
power over hermits and monks than over men who live in the world. All
through my life the demon of lust has tempted me in various ways, but
his strongest temptations did not come to me from meeting a woman,
however beautiful and fragrant she was. They came to me from the image
of an absent woman. Even now, though full of days and approaching my
ninety-eighth year, I am often led by the Enemy to sin against
chastity, at least in thought. At night when I am cold in my bed and my
frozen old bones rattle together with a dull sound I hear voices
reciting the second verse of the third Book of the Kings: ‘Wherefore
his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a
young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish
him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat,’
and the devil shows me a girl in the bloom of youth who says to me: ‘I
am thy Abishag; I am thy Shunamite. Make, O my lord, room for me in thy
couch.’
“Believe me,” added the old man, “it is only by the special aid of
Heaven that a monk can keep his chastity in act and in intention.”
Applying himself immediately to restore innocence and peace to the
monastery, he corrected the calendar according to the calculations of
chronology and astronomy and he compelled all the monks to accept his
decision; he sent the women who had declined from St. Bridget’s rule
back to their convent; but far from driving them away brutally, he
caused them to be led to their boat with singing of psalms and
litanies.
“Let us respect in them,” he said, “the daughters of Bridget and the
betrothed of the Lord. Let us beware lest we imitate the Pharisees who
affect to despise sinners. The sin of these women and not their persons
should be abased, and they should be made ashamed of what they have
done and not of what they are, for they are all creatures of God.”
And the holy man exhorted his monks to obey faithfully the rule of
their order.
“When it does not yield to the rudder,” said he to them, “the ship
yields to the rock.”
III. THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT MAËL
The blessed Maël had scarcely restored order in the Abbey of Yvern
before he learned that the inhabitants of the island of Hœdic, his
first catechumens and the dearest of all to his heart, had returned to
paganism, and that they were hanging crowns of flowers and fillets of
wool to the branches of the sacred fig-tree.
The boatman who brought this sad news expressed a fear that soon those
misguided men might violently destroy the chapel that had been built on
the shore of their island.
The holy man resolved forthwith to visit his faithless children, so
that he might lead them back to the faith and prevent them from
yielding to such sacrilege. As he went down to the bay where his stone
trough was moored, he turned his eyes to the sheds, then filled with
the noise of saws and of hammers, which, thirty years before, he had
erected on the fringe of that bay for the purpose of building ships.
At that moment, the Devil, who never tires, went out from the sheds
and, under the appearance of a monk called Samson, he approached the
holy man and tempted him thus:
“Father, the inhabitants of the island of Hœdic commit sins
unceasingly. Every moment that passes removes them farther from God.
They are soon going to use violence towards the chapel that you have
raised with your own venerable hands on the shore of their island. Time
is pressing. Do you not think that your stone trough would carry you
more quickly towards them if it were rigged like a boat and furnished
with a rudder, a mast, and a sail, for then you would be driven by the
wind? Your arms are still strong and able to steer a small craft. It
would be a good thing, too, to put a sharp stem in front of your
apostolic trough. You are much too clear-sighted not to have thought of
it already.”
“Truly time is pressing,” answered the holy man. “But to do as you say,
Samson, my son, would it not be to make myself like those men of little
faith who do not trust the Lord? Would it not be to despise the gifts
of Him who has sent me this stone vessel without rigging or sail?”
This question, the Devil, who is a great theologian, answered by
another.
“Father, is it praiseworthy to wait, with our arms folded, until help
comes from on high, and to ask everything from Him who can do all
things, instead of acting by human prudence and helping ourselves?
“It certainly is not,” answered the holy Maël, “and to neglect to act
by human prudence is tempting God.”
“Well,” urged the Devil, “is it not prudence in this case to rig the
vessel?”
“It would be prudence if we could not attain our end in any other way.”
“Is your vessel then so very speedy?”
“It is as speedy as God pleases.”
“What do you know about it? It goes like Abbot Budoc’s mule. It is a
regular old tub. Are you forbidden to make it speedier?”
“My son, clearness adorns your words, but they are unduly
over-confident. Remember that this vessel is miraculous.”
“It is, father. A granite trough that floats on the water like a cork
is a miraculous trough. There is not the slightest doubt about it. What
conclusion do you draw from that?”
“I am greatly perplexed. Is it right to perfect so miraculous a machine
by human and natural means?”
“Father, if you lost your right foot and God restored it to you, would
not that foot be miraculous?”
“Without doubt, my son.”
“Would you put a shoe on it?”
“Assuredly.”
“Well, then, if you believe that one may cover a miraculous foot with a
natural shoe, you should also believe that we can put natural rigging
on a miraculous boat. That is clear. Alas! Why must the holiest persons
have their moments of weakness and despondency? The most illustrious of
the apostles of Brittany could accomplish works worthy of eternal glory
. . . But his spirit is tardy and his hand is slothful. Farewell then,
father! Travel by short and slow stages and when at last you approach
the coast of Hœdic you will see the smoking ruins of the chapel that
was built and consecrated by your own hands. The pagans will have
burned it and with it the deacon you left there. He will be as
thoroughly roasted as a black pudding.”
“My trouble is extreme,” said the servant of God, drying with his
sleeve the sweat that gathered upon his brow. “But tell me, Samson, my
son, would not rigging this stone trough be a difficult piece of work?
And if we undertook it might we not lose time instead of gaining it?”
“Ah! father,” exclaimed the Devil, “in one turning of the hour-glass
the thing would be done. We shall find the necessary rigging in this
shed that you have formerly built here on the coast and in those
store-houses abundantly stocked through your care. I will myself
regulate all the ship’s fittings. Before being a monk I was a sailor
and a carpenter and I have worked at many other trades as well. Let us
to work.”
Immediately he drew the holy man into an outhouse filled with all
things needful for fitting out a boat.
“That for you, father!”
And he placed on his shoulders the sail, the mast, the gaff, and the
boom.
Then, himself bearing a stem and a rudder with its screw and tiller,
and seizing a carpenter’s bag full of tools, he ran to the shore,
dragging the holy man after him by his habit. The latter was bent,
sweating, and breathless, under the burden of canvas and wood.
IV. ST. MAËL’S NAVIGATION ON THE OCEAN OF ICE
The Devil, having tucked his clothes up to his arm-pits, dragged the
trough on the sand, and fitted the rigging in less than an hour.
As soon as the holy Maël had embarked, the vessel, with all its sails
set, cleft through the waters with such speed that the coast was almost
immediately out of sight. The old man steered to the south so as to
double the Land’s End, but an irresistible current carried him to the
south-west. He went along the southern coast of Ireland and turned
sharply towards the north. In the evening the wind freshened. In vain
did Maël attempt to furl the sail. The vessel flew distractedly towards
the fabulous seas.
By the light of the moon the immodest sirens of the North came around
him with their hempen-coloured hair, raising their white throats and
their rose-tinted limbs out of the sea; and beating the water into foam
with their emerald tails, they sang in cadence:
Whither go’st thou, gentle Maël,
In thy trough distracted?
All distended is thy sail
Like the breast of Juno
When from it gushed the Milky Way.
For a moment their harmonious laughter followed him beneath the stars,
but the vessel fled on, a hundred times more swiftly than the red ship
of a Viking. And the petrels, surprised in their flight, clung with
their feet to the hair of the holy man.
Soon a tempest arose full of darkness and groanings, and the trough,
driven by a furious wind, flew like a sea-mew through the mist and the
surge.
After a night of three times twenty-four hours the darkness was
suddenly rent and the holy man discovered on the horizon a shore more
dazzling than diamond. The coast rapidly grew larger, and soon by the
glacial light of a torpid and sunken sun, Maël saw, rising above the
waves, the silent streets of a white city, which, vaster than Thebes
with its hundred gates, extended as far as the eye could see the ruins
of its forum built of snow, its palaces of frost, its crystal arches,
and its iridescent obelisks.
The ocean was covered with floating ice-bergs around which swam men of
the sea of a wild yet gentle appearance. And Leviathan passed by
hurling a column of water up to the clouds.
Moreover, on a block of ice which floated at the same rate as the stone
trough there was seated a white bear holding her little one in her
arms, and Maël heard her murmuring in a low voice this verse of Virgil,
_Incipe parve puer_.
And full of sadness and trouble, the old man wept.
The fresh water had frozen and burst the barrel that contained it. And
Maël was sucking pieces of ice to quench his thirst, and his food was
bread dipped in dirty water. His beard and his hair were broken like
glass. His habit was covered with a layer of ice and cut into him at
every movement of his limbs. Huge waves rose up and opened their
foaming jaws at the old man. Twenty times the boat was filled by masses
of sea. And the ocean swallowed up the book of the Holy Gospels which
the apostle guarded with extreme care in a purple cover marked with a
golden cross.
Now on the thirtieth day the sea calmed. And lo! with a frightful
clamour of sky and waters a mountain of dazzling whiteness advanced
towards the stone vessel. Maël steered to avoid it, but the tiller
broke in his hands. To lessen the speed of his progress towards the
rock he attempted to reef the sails, but when he tried to knot the
reef-points the wind pulled them away from him and the rope seared his
hands. He saw three demons with wings of black skin having hooks at
their ends, who, hanging from the rigging, were puffing with their
breath against the sails.
Understanding from this sight that the Enemy had governed him in all
these things, he guarded himself by making the sign of the Cross.
Immediately a furious gust of wind filled with the noise of sobs and
howls struck the stone trough, carried off the mast with all the sails,
and tore away the rudder and the stem.
The trough was drifting on the sea, which had now grown calm. The holy
man knelt and gave thanks to the Lord who had delivered him from the
snares of the demon. Then he recognised, sitting on a block of ice, the
mother bear who had spoken during the storm. She pressed her beloved
child to her bosom, and in her hand she held a purple book marked with
a golden cross. Hailing the granite trough, she saluted the holy man
with these words:
_“Pax tibi Maël.”_
And she held out the book to him.
The holy man recognised his evangelistary, and, full of astonishment,
he sang in the tepid air a hymn to the Creator and His creation.
V. THE BAPTISM OF THE PENGUINS
After having drifted for an hour the holy man approached a narrow
strand, shut in by steep mountains. He went along the coast for a whole
day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an insuperable
barrier. He discovered in this way that it was a round island in the
middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds. He joyfully
breathed the fresh breath of the moist air. Rain fell, and this rain
was so pleasant that the holy man said to the Lord:
“Lord, this is the island of tears, the island of contrition.”
The strand was deserted. Worn out with fatigue and hunger, he sat down
on a rock in the hollow of which there lay some yellow eggs, marked
with black spots, and about as large as those of a swan. But he did not
touch them, saying:
“Birds are the living praises of God. I should not like a single one of
these praises to be lacking through me.”
And he munched the lichens which he tore from the crannies of the
rocks.
The holy man had gone almost entirely round the island without meeting
any inhabitants, when he came to a vast amphitheatre formed of black
and red rocks whose summits became tinged with blue as they rose
towards the clouds, and they were filled with sonorous cascades.
The reflection from the polar ice had hurt the old man’s eyes, but a
feeble gleam of light still shone through his swollen eyelids. He
distinguished animated forms which filled the rocks, in stages, like a
crowd of men on the tiers of an amphitheatre. And at the same time, his
ears, deafened by the continual noises of the sea, heard a feeble sound
of voices. Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural
law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he
preached the gospel to them.
Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus:
“Inhabitants of this island,” said he, “although you be of small
stature, you look less like a band of fishermen and mariners than like
the senate of a judicious republic. By your gravity, your silence, your
tranquil deportment, you form on this wild rock an assembly comparable
to the Conscript Fathers at Rome deliberating in the temple of Victory,
or rather, to the philosophers of Athens disputing on the benches of
the Areopagus. Doubtless you possess neither their science nor their
genius, but perhaps in the sight of God you are their superiors. I
believe that you are simple and good. As I went round your island I saw
no image of murder, no sign of carnage, no enemies’ heads or scalps
hung from a lofty pole or nailed to the doors of your villages. You
appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts
are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter
into your souls.”
Now what he had taken for men of small stature but of grave bearing
were penguins whom the spring had gathered together, and who were
ranged in couples on the natural steps of the rock, erect in the
majesty of their large white bellies. From moment to moment they moved
their winglets like arms, and uttered peaceful cries. They did not fear
men, for they did not know them, and had never received any harm from
them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that reassured the
most timid animals and that pleased these penguins extremely. With a
friendly curiosity they turned towards him their little round eyes
lengthened in front by a white oval spot that gave something odd and
human to their appearance.
Touched by their attention, the holy man taught them the Gospel.
“Inhabitants of this island, the earthly day that has just risen over
your rocks is the image of the heavenly day that rises in your souls.
For I bring you the inner light; I bring you the light and heat of the
soul. Just as the sun melts the ice of your mountains so Jesus Christ
will melt the ice of your hearts.”
Thus the old man spoke. As everywhere throughout nature voice calls to
voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves alternate
strains, these penguins answered the old man by the sounds of their
throats. And their voices were soft, for it was the season of their
loves.
The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people
and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian
faith, invited them to receive baptism.
“I think,” said he to them, “that you bathe often, for all the hollows
of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your assembly I
saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now purity of
body is the image of spiritual purity.”
And he taught them the origin, the nature, and the effects of baptism.
“Baptism,” said he to them, “is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration,
Illumination.”
And he explained each of these points to them in succession.
Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the cascades
and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just taught,
pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and pronouncing the
sacred words.
And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds.
VI. AN ASSEMBLY IN PARADISE
When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused
neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself was
embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and asked
them whether they regarded the baptism as valid.
“It is void,” said St. Patrick.
“Why is it void?” asked St. Gal, who had evangelized the people of
Cornwall and had trained the holy Maël for his apostolical labours.
“The sacrament of baptism,” answered St. Patrick, “is void when it is
given to birds, just as the sacrament of marriage is void when it is
given to a eunuch.”
But St. Gal replied:
“What relation do you claim to establish between the baptism of a bird
and the marriage of a eunuch? There is none at all. Marriage is, if I
may say so, a conditional, a contingent sacrament. The priest blesses
an event beforehand; it is evident that if the act is not consummated
the benediction remains without effect. That is obvious. I have known
on earth, in the town of Antrim, a rich man named Sadoc, who, living in
concubinage with a woman, caused her to be the mother of nine children.
In his old age, yielding to my reproofs, he consented to marry her, and
I blessed their union. Unfortunately Sadoc’s great age prevented him
from consummating the marriage. A short time afterwards he lost all his
property, and Germaine (that was the name of the woman), not feeling
herself able to endure poverty, asked for the annulment of a marriage
which was no reality. The Pope granted her request, for it was just. So
much for marriage. But baptism is conferred without restrictions or
reserves of any kind. There is no doubt about it, what the penguins
have received is a sacrament.”
Called to give his opinion, Pope St. Damascus expressed himself in
these terms:
“In order to know if a baptism is valid and will produce its result,
that is to say, sanctification, it is necessary to consider who gives
it and not who receives it. In truth, the sanctifying virtue of this
sacrament results from the exterior act by which it is conferred,
without the baptized person cooperating in his own sanctification by
any personal act; if it were otherwise it would not be administered to
the newly born. And there is no need, in order to baptize, to fulfil
any special condition; it is not necessary to be in a state of grace;
it is sufficient to have the intention of doing what the Church does,
to pronounce the consecrated words and to observe the prescribed forms.
Now we cannot doubt that the venerable Maël has observed these
conditions. Therefore the penguins are baptized.”
“Do you think so?” asked St. Guénolé. “And what then do you believe
that baptism really is? Baptism is the process of regeneration by which
man is born of water and of the spirit, for having entered the water
covered with crimes, he goes out of it a neophyte, a new creature,
abounding in the fruits of righteousness; baptism is the seed of
immortality; baptism is the pledge of the resurrection; baptism is the
burying with Christ in His death and participation in His departure
from the sepulchre. That is not a gift to bestow upon birds. Reverend
Fathers, let us consider. Baptism washes away original sin; now the
penguins were not conceived in sin. It removes the penalty of sin; now
the penguins have not sinned. It produces grace and the gift of
virtues, uniting Christians to Jesus Christ, as the members to the
body, and it is obvious to the senses that penguins cannot acquire the
virtues of confessors, of virgins, and of widows, or receive grace and
be united to—”
St. Damascus did not allow him to finish.
“That proves,” said he warmly, “that the baptism was useless; it does
not prove that it was not effective.”
“But by this reasoning,” said St. Guénolé, “one might baptize in the
name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by aspersion or
immersion, not only a bird or a quadruped, but also an inanimate
object, a statue, a table, a chair, etc. That animal would be
Christian, that idol, that table would be Christian! It is absurd!”
St. Augustine began to speak. There was a great silence.
“I am going,” said the ardent bishop of Hippo, “to show you, by an
example, the power of formulas. It deals, it is true, with a diabolical
operation. But if it be established that formulas taught by the Devil
have effect upon unintelligent animals or even on inanimate objects,
how can we longer doubt that the effect of the sacramental formulas
extends to the minds of beasts and even to inert matter?
“This is the example. There was during my lifetime in the town of
Madaura, the birthplace of the philosopher Apuleius, a witch who was
able to attract men to her chamber by burning a few of their hairs
along with certain herbs upon her tripod, pronouncing at the same time
certain words. Now one day when she wished by this means to gain the
love of a young man, she was deceived by her maid, and instead of the
young man’s hairs, she burned some hairs pulled from a leather bottle,
made out of a goatskin that hung in a tavern. During the night the
leather bottle, full of wine, capered through the town up to the
witch’s door. This fact is undoubted. And in sacraments as in
enchantments it is the form which operates. The effect of a divine
formula cannot be less in power and extent than the effect of an
infernal formula.”
Having spoken in this fashion the great St. Augustine sat down amidst
applause.
One of the blessed, of an advanced age and having a melancholy
appearance, asked permission to speak. No one knew him. His name was
Probus, and he was not enrolled in the canon of the saints.
“I beg the company’s pardon,” said he, “I have no halo, and I gained
eternal blessedness without any eminent distinction. But after what the
great St. Augustine has just told you I believe it right to impart a
cruel experience, which I had, relative to the conditions necessary for
the validity of a sacrament. The bishop of Hippo is indeed right in
what he said. A sacrament depends on the form; its virtue is in its
form; its vice is in its form. Listen, confessors and pontiffs, to my
woeful story. I was a priest in Rome under the rule of the Emperor
Gordianus. Without desiring to recommend myself to you for any special
merit, I may say that I exercised my priesthood with piety and zeal.
For forty years I served the church of St. Modestus-beyond-the-Walls.
My habits were regular. Every Saturday I went to a tavern-keeper called
Barjas, who dwelt with his wine-jars under the Porta Capena, and from
him I bought the wine that I consecrated daily throughout the week.
During that long space of time I never failed for a single morning to
consecrate the holy sacrifice of the mass. However, I had no joy, and
it was with a heart oppressed by sorrow that, on the steps of the altar
I used to ask, ‘Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so
disquieted within me?’ The faithful whom I invited to the holy table
gave me cause for affliction, for having, so to speak, the Host that I
administered still upon their tongues, they fell again into sin just as
if the sacrament had been without power or efficacy. At last I reached
the end of my earthly trials, and failing asleep in the Lord, I awoke
in this abode of the elect. I learned then from the mouth of the angel
who brought me here, that Barjas, the tavern-keeper of the Porta
Capena, had sold for wine a decoction of roots and barks in which there
was not a single drop of the juice of the grape. I had been unable to
transmute this vile brew into blood, for it was not wine, and wine
alone is changed into the blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore all my
consecrations were invalid, and unknown to us, my faithful and myself
had for forty years been deprived of the sacrament and were in fact in
a state of excommunication. This revelation threw me into a stupor
which overwhelms me even to-day in this abode of bliss. I go all
through Paradise without ever meeting a single one of those Christians
whom formerly I admitted to the holy table in the basilica of the
blessed Modestus. Deprived of the bread of angels, they easily gave way
to the most abominable vices, and they have all gone to hell. It gives
me some satisfaction to think that Barjas, the tavern-keeper, is
damned. There is in these things a logic worthy of the author of all
logic. Nevertheless my unhappy example proves that it is sometimes
inconvenient that form should prevail over essence in the sacraments,
and I humbly ask, Could not, eternal wisdom remedy this?”
“No,” answered the Lord. “The remedy would be worse than the disease.
It would be the ruin of the priesthood if essence prevailed over form
in the laws of salvation.”
“Alas! Lord,” sighed the humble Probus. “Be persuaded by my humble
experience; as long as you reduce your sacraments to formulas your
justice will meet with terrible obstacles.”
“I know that better than you do,” replied the Lord. “I see in a single
glance both the actual problems which are difficult, and the future
problems which will not be less difficult. Thus I can foretell that
when the sun will have turned round the earth two hundred and forty
times more.
“Sublime language,” exclaimed the angels.
“And worthy of the creator of the world,” answered the pontiffs.
“It is,” resumed the Lord, “a manner of speaking in accordance with my
old cosmogony and one which I cannot give up without losing my
immutability. . . .
“After the sun, then, will have turned another two hundred and forty
times round the earth, there will not be a single cleric left in Rome
who knows Latin. When they sing their litanies in the churches people
will invoke Orichel, Roguel, and Totichel, and, as you know, these are
devils and not angels. Many robbers desiring to make their communions,
but fearing that before obtaining pardon they would be forced to give
up the things they had robbed to the Church, will make their
confessions to travelling priests, who, ignorant of both Italian and
Latin, and only speaking the _patois_ of their village, will go through
cities and towns selling the remission of sins for a base price, often
for a bottle of wine. Probably we shall not be inconvenienced by those
absolutions as they will want contrition to make them valid, but it may
be that their baptisms will cause us some embarrassment. The priests
will become so ignorant that they will baptize children _in nomine
patria et filia et spirita sancta_, as Louis de Potter will take a
pleasure in relating in the third volume of his ‘Philosophical,
Political, and Critical History of Christianity.’ It will be an arduous
question to decide on the validity of such baptisms; for even if in my
sacred writings I tolerate a Greek less elegant than Plato’s and a
scarcely Ciceronian Latin, I cannot possibly admit a piece of pure
_patois_ as a liturgical formula. And one shudders when one thinks that
millions of new-born babes will be baptized by this method. But let us
return to our penguins.”
“Your divine words, Lord, have already led us back to them,” said St.
Gal. “In the signs of religion and the laws of salvation form
necessarily prevails over essence, and the validity of a sacrament
solely depends upon its form. The whole question is whether the
penguins have been baptized with the proper forms. Now there is no
doubt about the answer.”
The fathers and the doctors agreed, and their perplexity became only
the more cruel.
“The Christian state,” said St. Cornelius, “is not without serious
inconveniences for a penguin. In it the birds are obliged to work out
their own salvation. How can they succeed? The habits of birds are, in
many points, contrary to the commandments of the Church, and the
penguins have no reason for changing theirs. I mean that they are not
intelligent enough to give up their present habits and assume better.”
“They cannot,” said the Lord; “my decrees prevent them.”
“Nevertheless,” resumed St. Cornelius, “in virtue of their baptism
their actions no longer remain indifferent. Henceforth they will be
good or bad, susceptible of merit or of demerit.”
“That is precisely the question we have to deal with,” said the Lord.
“I see only one solution,” said St. Augustine. “The penguins will go to
hell.”
“But they have no soul,” observed St. Irenaeus.
“It is a pity,” sighed Tertullian.
“It is indeed,” resumed St. Gal. “And I admit that my disciple, the
holy Maël, has, in his blind zeal, created great theological
difficulties for the Holy Spirit and introduced disorder into the
economy of mysteries.”
“He is an old blunderer,” cried St. Adjutor of Alsace, shrugging his
shoulders.
But the Lord cast a reproachful look on Adjutor.
“Allow me to speak,” said he; “the holy Maël has not intuitive
knowledge like you, my blessed ones. He does not see me. He is an old
man burdened by infirmities; he is half deaf and three parts blind. You
are too severe on him. However, I recognise that the situation is an
embarrassing one.”
“Luckily it is but a passing disorder,” said St. Irenaeus. “The
penguins are baptized, but their eggs are not, and the evil will stop
with the present generation.”
“Do not speak thus, Irenaeus my son,” said the Lord. “There are
exceptions to the laws that men of science lay down on the earth
because they are imperfect and have not an exact application to nature.
But the laws that I establish are perfect and suffer no exception. We
must decide the fate of the baptized penguins without violating any
divine law, and in a manner conformable to the decalogue as well as to
the commandments of my Church.”
“Lord,” said St. Gregory Nazianzen, “give them an immortal soul.”
“Alas! Lord, what would they do with it,” sighed Lactantius. “They have
not tuneful voices to sing your praises. They would not be able to
celebrate your mysteries.”
“Without doubt,” said St. Augustine, “they would not observe the divine
law.”
“They could not,” said the Lord.
“They could not,” continued St. Augustine. “And if, Lord, in your
wisdom, you pour an immortal soul into them, they will burn eternally
in hell in virtue of your adorable decrees. Thus will the transcendent
order, that this old Welshman has disturbed, be re-established.”
“You propose a correct solution to me, son of Monica,” said the Lord,
“and one that accords with my wisdom. But it does not satisfy my mercy.
And, although in my essence I am immutable, the longer I endure, the
more I incline to mildness. This change of character is evident to
anyone who reads my two Testaments.”
As the discussion continued without much light being thrown upon the
matter and as the blessed showed a disposition to keep repeating the
same thing, it was decided to consult St. Catherine of Alexandria. This
is what was usually done in such cases. St. Catherine while on earth
had confounded fifty very learned doctors. She knew Plato’s philosophy
in addition to the Holy Scriptures, and she also possessed a knowledge
of rhetoric.
VII. AN ASSEMBLY IN PARADISE
(_Continuation and End_)
St. Catherine entered the assembly, her head encircled by a crown of
emeralds, sapphires, and pearls, and she was clad in a robe of cloth of
gold. She carried at her side a blazing wheel, the image of the one
whose fragments had struck her persecutors.
The Lord having invited her to speak, she expressed herself in these
terms:
“Lord, in order to solve the problem you deign to submit to me I shall
not study the habits of animals in general nor those of birds in
particular. I shall only remark to the doctors, confessors, and
pontiffs gathered in this assembly that the separation between man and
animal is not complete since there are monsters who proceed from both.
Such are chimeras—half nymphs and half serpents; such are the three
Gorgons and the Capripeds; such are the Scyllas and the Sirens who sing
in the sea. These have a woman’s breast and a fish’s tail. Such also
are the Centaurs, men down to the waist and the remainder horses. They
are a noble race of monsters. One of them, as you know, was able,
guided by the light of reason alone, to direct his steps towards
eternal blessedness, and you sometimes see his heroic bosom prancing on
the clouds. Chiron, the Centaur, deserved for his works on the earth to
share the abode of the blessed; he it was who gave Achilles his
education; and that young hero, when he left the Centaur’s hands, lived
for two years, dressed as a young girl, among the daughters of King
Lycomedes. He shared their games and their bed without allowing any
suspicion to arise that he was not a young virgin like them. Chiron,
who taught him such good morals, is, with the Emperor Trajan, the only
righteous man who obtained celestial glory by following the law of
nature. And yet he was but half human.
“I think I have proved by this example that, to reach eternal
blessedness, it is enough to possess some parts of humanity, always on
the condition that they are noble. And what Chiron, the Centaur, could
obtain without having been regenerated by baptism, would not the
penguins deserve too, if they became half penguins and half men? That
is why, Lord, I entreat you to give old Maël’s penguins a human head
and breast so that they can praise you worthily. And grant them also an
immortal soul—but one of small size.”
Thus Catherine spoke, and the fathers, doctors, confessors, and
pontiffs heard her with a murmur of approbation.
But St. Anthony, the Hermit, arose and stretching two red and knotty
arms towards the Most High:
“Do not so, O Lord God,” he cried, “in the name of your holy Paraclete,
do not so!”
He spoke with such vehemence that his long white beard shook on his
chin like the empty nose-bag of a hungry horse.
“Lord, do not so. Birds with human heads exist already. St. Catherine
has told us nothing new.”
“The imagination groups and compares; it never creates,” replied St.
Catherine drily.
“They exist already,” continued St. Antony, who would listen to
nothing. “They are called harpies, and they are the most obscene
animals in creation. One day as I was having supper in the desert with
the Abbot St. Paul, I placed the table outside my cabin under an old
sycamore tree. The harpies came and sat in its branches; they deafened
us with their shrill cries and cast their excrement over all our food.
The clamour of the monsters prevented me from listening to the teaching
of the Abbot St. Paul, and we ate birds’ dung with our bread and
lettuces. Lord, it is impossible to believe that harpies could give
thee worthy praise.
“Truly in my temptations I have seen many hybrid beings, not only
women-serpents and women-fishes, but beings still more confusedly
formed such as men whose bodies were made out of a pot, a bell, a
clock, a cupboard full of food and crockery, or even out of a house
with doors and windows through which people engaged in their domestic
tasks could be seen. Eternity would not suffice were I to describe all
the monsters that assailed me in my solitude, from whales rigged like
ships to a shower of red insects which changed the water of my fountain
into blood. But none were as disgusting as the harpies whose offal
polluted the leaves of my sycamore.”
“Harpies,” observed Lactantius, “are female Monsters with birds’
bodies. They have a woman’s head and breast. Their forwardness, their
shamelessness, and their obscenity proceed from their female nature as
the poet Virgil demonstrated in his ‘Æneid.’ They share the curse of
Eve.”
“Let us not speak of the curse of Eve,” said the Lord. “The second Eve
has redeemed the first.”
Paul Orosius, the author of a universal history that Bossuet was to
imitate in later years, arose and prayed to the Lord:
“Lord, hear my prayer and Anthony’s. Do not make any more monsters like
the Centaurs, Sirens, and Fauns, whom the Greeks, those collectors of
fables, loved. You will derive no satisfaction from them. Those species
of monsters have pagan inclinations and their double nature does not
dispose them to purity of morals.”
The bland Lactantius replied in these terms:
“He who has just spoken is assuredly the best historian in Paradise,
for Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Velleius Paterculus,
Cornelius Nepos, Suetonius, Manetho, Diodorus Siculus, Dion Cassius,
and Lampridius are deprived of the sight of God, and Tacitus suffers in
hell the torments that are reserved for blasphemers. But Paul Orosius
does not know heaven as well as he knows the earth, for he does not
seem to bear in mind that the angels, who proceed from man and bird,
are purity itself.”
“We are wandering,” said the Eternal. “What have we to do with all
those centaurs, harpies, and angels? We have to deal with penguins.”
“You have spoken to the point, Lord,” said the chief of the fifty
doctors, who, during their mortal life had been confounded by the
Virgin of Alexandria, “and I dare express the opinion that, in order to
put an end to the scandal by which heaven is now stirred, old Maël’s
penguins should, as St. Catherine who confounded us has proposed, be
given half of a human body with an eternal soul proportioned to that
half.”
At this speech there arose in the assembly a great noise of private
conversations and disputes of the doctors. The Greek fathers argued
with the Latins concerning the substance, nature, and dimensions of the
soul that should be given to the penguins.
“Confessors and pontiffs,” exclaimed the Lord, “do not imitate the
conclaves and synods of the earth. And do not bring into the Church
Triumphant those violences that trouble the Church Militant. For it is
but too true that in all the councils held under the inspiration of my
spirit, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, fathers have torn the beards
and scratched the eyes of other fathers. Nevertheless they were
infallible, for I was with them.”
Order being restored, old Hermas arose and slowly uttered these words:
“I will praise you, Lord, for that you caused my mother, Saphira, to be
born amidst your people, in the days when the dew of heaven refreshed
the earth which was in travail with its Saviour. And will praise you,
Lord, for having granted to me to see with my mortal eyes the Apostles
of your divine Son. And I will speak in this illustrious assembly
because you have willed that truth should proceed out of the mouths of
the humble, and I will say: ‘Change these penguins to men. It is the
only determination conformable to your justice and your mercy.’”
Several doctors asked permission to speak, others began to do so. No
one listened, and all the confessors were tumultuously shaking their
palms and their crowns.
The Lord, by a gesture of his right hand, appeased the quarrels of his
elect.
“Let us not deliberate any longer,” said he. “The opinion broached by
gentle old Hermas is the only one conformable to my eternal designs.
These birds will be changed into men. I foresee in this several
disadvantages. Many of those men will commit sins they would not have
committed as penguins. Truly their fate through this change will be far
less enviable than if they had been without this baptism and this
incorporation into the family of Abraham. But my foreknowledge must not
encroach upon their free will.
“In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I
know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my
blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have
foreseen.”
And immediately calling the archangel Raphael:
“Go and find the holy Maël,” said he to him; “inform him of his mistake
and tell him, armed with my Name, to change these penguins into men.”
VIII. METAMORPHOSIS OF THE PENGUINS
The archangel, having gone down into the Island of the Penguins, found
the holy man asleep in the hollow of a rock surrounded by his new
disciples. He laid his hand on his shoulder and, having waked him, said
in a gentle voice:
“Maël, fear not!”
The holy man, dazzled by a vivid light, inebriated by a delicious
odour, recognised the angel of the Lord, and prostrated himself with
his forehead on the ground.
The angel continued:
“Maël, know thy error, believing that thou wert baptizing children of
Adam thou hast baptized birds; and it is, through thee that penguins
have entered into the Church of God.”
At these words the old man remained stupefied.
And the angel resumed:
“Arise, Maël, arm thyself with the mighty Name of the Lord, and say to
these birds, ‘Be ye men!’”
And the holy Maël, having wept and prayed, armed himself with the
mighty Name of the Lord and said to the birds:
“Be ye men!”
Immediately the penguins were transformed. Their foreheads enlarged and
their heads grew round like the dome of St. Maria Rotunda in Rome.
Their oval eyes opened more widely on the universe; a fleshy nose
clothed the two clefts of their nostrils; their beaks were changed into
mouths, and from their mouths went forth speech; their necks grew short
and thick; their wings became arms and their claws legs; a restless
soul dwelt within the breast of each of them.
However, there remained with them some traces of their first nature.
They were inclined to look sideways; they balanced themselves on their
short thighs; their bodies were covered with fine down.
And Maël gave thanks to the Lord, because he had incorporated these
penguins into the family of Abraham.
But he grieved at the thought that he would soon leave the island to
come back no more, and that perhaps when he was far away the faith of
the penguins would perish for want of care like a young and tender
plant.
And he formed the idea of transporting their island to the coasts of
Armorica.
“I know not the designs of eternal Wisdom,” said he to himself. “But if
God wills that this island be transported, who could prevent it?”
And the holy man made a very fine cord about forty feet long out of the
flax of his stole. He fastened one end of the cord round a point of
rock that jutted up through the sand of the shore and, holding the
other end of the cord in his hand, he entered the stone trough.
The trough glided over the sea and towed Penguin Island behind it;
after nine days’ sailing it approached the Breton coast, bringing the
island with it.