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 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 Mael'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 Mael," said he to him; "inform him of his mistake and
tell him, armed with my Name, to change these penguins into men."
Read next: BOOK I - THE BEGINNINGS#CHAPTER VIII - METAMORPHOSIS OF THE PENGUINS
Read previous: BOOK I - THE BEGINNINGS#CHAPTER VI - AN ASSEMBLY IN PARADISE
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