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 a