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Penguin Island-Part13_Anatole France_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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remained during the night on the bridge of the ship, he saw beneath the waters

two sturgeons swimming side by side. He had very good hearing and he knew the



language of fishes. Now he heard one of the sturgeons say to the other:

"The man in the moon, whom we have often seen carrying fagots on his



shoulders, has fallen into the sea.

And the other sturgeon said in its turn:



"And in the silver disc there will be seen the image of two lovers kissing

each other on the mouth."



Some years later, having returned to his native country, Aegidius Aucupis

found that ancient learning had been restored. Manners had softened. Men no



longer pursued the nymphs of the fountains, of the woods, and of the mountains

with their insults. They placed images of the Muses and of the modest Graces



in their gardens, and they rendered her former honours to the Goddess with

ambrosial lips, the joy of men and gods. They were becoming reconciled to



nature. They trampled vain terrors beneath their feet and raised their eyes to

heaven without fearing, as they formerly did, to read signs of anger and



threats of damnation in the skies.

At this spectacle Aegidius Aucupis remembered what the two sturgeons of the



sea of Erin had foretold.

BOOK IV. MODERN TIMES: TRINCO



I. MOTHER ROUQUIN

Aegidius Aucupis, the Erasmus of the Penguins, was not mistaken; his age was



an age of free inquiry. But that great man mistook the elegances of the

humanists for softness of manners, and he did not foresee the effects that the



awaking of intelligence would have amongst the Penguins. It brought about the

religious Reformation; Catholics massacred Protestants and Protestants



massacred Catholics. Such were the first results of liberty of thought. The

Catholics prevailed in Penguinia. But the spirit of inquiry had penetrated



among them without their knowing it. They joined reason to faith, and claimed

that religion had been divested of the superstitious practices that



dishonoured it, just as in later days the booths that the cobblers, hucksters,

and dealers in old clothes had built against the walls of the cathedrals were



cleared away. The word, legend, which at first indicated what the faithful

ought to read, soon suggested the idea of pious fables and childish tales.



The saints had to suffer from this state of mind. An obscure canon called

Princeteau, a very austere and crabbed man, designated so great a number of



them as not worthy of having their days observed, that he was surnamed the

exposer of the saints. He did not think, for instance, that if St. Margaret's



prayer were applied as a poultice to a woman in travail that the pains of

childbirth would be softened.



Even the venerablepatron saint of Penguinia did not escape his rigid

criticism. This is what he says of her in his "Antiquities of Alca":



"Nothing is more uncertain than the history, or even the existence, of St.

Orberosia. An ancient anonymous annalist, a monk of Dombes, relates that a



woman called Orberosia was possessed by the devil in a cavern where, even down

to his own days, the little boys and girls of the village used to play at a



sort of game representing the devil and the fair Orberosia. He adds that this

woman became the concubine of a horribledragon, who ravaged the country. Such



a statement is hardly credible, but the history of Orberosia, as it has since

been related, seems hardly more worthy of belief. The life of that saint by



the Abbot Simplicissimus is three hundred years later than the pretended

events which it relates and that author shows himself excessively credulous



and devoid of all critical faculty."

Suspicion attacked even the supernatural origin of the Penguins. The historian






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