Penguin Island

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PENGUIN ISLAND

by ANATOLE FRANCE




CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE BEGINNINGS
BOOK II. THE ANCIENT TIMES
BOOK III. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
BOOK IV. MODERN TIMES: TRINCO
BOOK V. MODERN TIMES: CHATILLON
BOOK VI. MODERN TIMES
BOOK VII. MODERN TIMES
BOOK VIII. FUTURE TIMES





BOOK I. THE BEGINNINGS




I. LIFE OF SAINT MAEL

Mael, 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 Mael 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.
Mael'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 Mael, begged from
him some work of his hands as a rich present. Mael 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 Mael 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 MAEL

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 Mael 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 Hoedic.

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 Mael 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. Mael
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 Mael, 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 Mael 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. Mael and informed him of
the unhappy state into which the Abbey had fallen. The monks were in
disagreement as to the date an 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 Mael. "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 MAEL

The blessed Mael had scarcely restored order in the Abbey of Yvern
before he learned that the inhabitants of the island of Hoedic, 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 Samsok, he approached the holy man
and tempted him thus:

"Father, the inhabitants of the island of Hoedic 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 Mael, "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 Hoedic 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. MAEL'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 Mael 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 Mael 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 Mael,
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, Mael 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 Mael 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
Mael 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. Mael 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 Mael."

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.