"In my youth the ardour of
my senses was such that in the shadow of the woods I experienced a
sensation of boiling in a pot rather than of breathing the fresh air. I
fled from women, but in vain, for every object recalled them to me."

While he was writing his chronicle, a terrible war, at once foreign and
domestic, laid waste the Penguin land. The soldiers of Crucha came to
defend the monastery of Beargarden against the Penguin barbarians and
established themselves strongly within its walls. In order to render it
impregnable they pierced loop-holes through the walls and they took the
lead off the church roof to make balls for their slings. At night they
lighted huge fires in the courts and cloisters and on them they roasted
whole oxen which they spitted upon the ancient pine-trees of the
mountain. Sitting around the flames, amid smoke filled with a mingled
odour of resin and fat, they broached huge casks of wine and beer. Their
songs, their blasphemies, and the noise of their quarrels drowned the
sound of the morning bells.

At last the Porpoises, having crossed the defiles, laid siege to the
monastery. They were warriors from the North, clad in copper armour.
They fastened ladders a hundred and fifty fathoms long to the sides of
the cliffs and sometimes in the darkness and storm these broke beneath
the weight of men and arms, and bunches of the besiegers were hurled
into the ravines and precipices. A prolonged wail would be heard going
down into the darkness, and the assault would begin again. The Penguins
poured streams of burning wax upon their assailants, which made them
blaze like torches. Sixty times the enraged Porpoises attempted to scale
the monastery and sixty times they were repulsed.

For six months they had closely invested the monastery, when, on the day
of the Epiphany, a shepherd of the valley showed them a hidden path
by which they climbed the mountain, penetrated into the vaults of the
abbey, ran through the cloisters, the kitchens, the church, the chapter
halls, the library, the laundry, the cells, the refectories, and the
dormitories, and burned the buildings, killing and violating without
distinction of age or sex. The Penguins, awakened unexpectedly, ran to
arms, but in the darkness and alarm they struck at one another, whilst
the Porpoises with blows of their axes disputed the sacred vessels, the
censers, the candlesticks, dalmatics, reliquaries, golden crosses, and
precious stones.

The air