Penguin Island - Anatole France

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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 Mael, 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 Mael 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.

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      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 Mael’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 ‘Aeneid.’ 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

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