In spite of the apparent diversity of the amusements that seem to attract me, my life has but one object. It is wholly bent upon the accomplishment of one great scheme. I am writing the history of the...

Maël, 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 patr...

Maël, 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 patr...

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 ...

The blessed Maël 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 return...

The Devil, having tucked his clothes up to his armpits, dragged the trough on the sand, and fitted the rigging in less than an hour. As soon as the holy Maël had embarked, the vessel, with all its sai...

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 insup...

When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself was embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and...

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 archangel, having gone down into the Island of the Penguins, found the holy man asleep in the hollow of a rock surrounded by his new disciples. He laid his hand on his shoulder and, having waked h...

One day St. Maël was sitting by the seashore on a warm stone that he found. He thought it had been warmed by the sun and he gave thanks to God for it, not knowing that the Devil had been resting on it...

One day St. Maël was sitting by the seashore on a warm stone that he found. He thought it had been warmed by the sun and he gave thanks to God for it, not knowing that the Devil had been resting on it...

The holy Maël felt a profound sadness that the first clothes put upon a daughter of Alca should have betrayed the penguin modesty instead of helping it. He persisted, nonetheless, in his design of giv...

The island did not preserve the rugged appearance that it had formerly, when, in the midst of floating icebergs it sheltered a population of birds within its rocky amphitheatre. Its snow-clad peak had...

“Bulloch, my son,” said old Maël, “we ought to make a census of the Penguins and inscribe each of their names in a book.” “It is a most urgent matter,” answered Bulloch, “there can be no good governme...

During these times there lived in the island of Alca a Penguin whose arm was strong and whose mind was subtle. He was called Kraken, and had his dwelling on the Beach of Shadows whither the inhabitant...

“We afterwards went to visit the cabinet of natural history.⁠ ⁠… The caretaker showed us a sort of packet bound in straw that he told us contained the skeleton of a dragon; a proof, added he, that the...

During all the month dedicated by the Romans to their false god Mars or Mavors, the dragon ravaged the farms of Dalles and Dombes. He carried off fifty sheep, twelve pigs, and three young boys. Every ...

Following the counsel of the holy Maël the inhabitants of Alca endeavoured to uproot the superstitions that had sprung up amongst them. They took care to prevent the girls from dancing with incantatio...

Orberosia loved her husband, but she did not love him alone. At the hour when Venus lightens in the pale sky, whilst Kraken scattered terror through the villages, she used to visit in his moving hut, ...

The days passed by and no maiden arose in the island to combat the monster. And in the wooden monastery old Maël, seated on a bench in the shade of an old fig tree, accompanied by a pious monk called ...

On that day Kraken came back to his cavern sooner than usual. He took from his head his sealskin helmet with its two bull’s horns and its visor trimmed with terrible hooks. He threw on the table his g...

Orberosia, having clothed herself in a robe made of coarse stuff and girt herself with a thick cord, went to the monastery and asked to speak to the blessed Maël. And because women were forbidden to e...

The people of the Penguins were assembled by Maël and they spent the night on the Coast of Shadows within the bounds which the holy man had prescribed in order that none among the Penguins should be p...

The kings of Alca were descended from Draco, the son of Kraken, and they wore on their heads a terrible dragon’s crest, as a sacred badge whose appearance alone inspired the people with veneration, te...

The kings of Alca were descended from Draco, the son of Kraken, and they wore on their heads a terrible dragon’s crest, as a sacred badge whose appearance alone inspired the people with veneration, te...

The direct posterity of Brian the Good was extinguished about the year 900 in the person of Collic of the Short Nose. A cousin of that prince, Bosco the Magnanimous, succeeded him, and took care, in o...

Terrible disorders followed the death of Draco the Great. That prince’s successors have often been accused of weakness, and it is true that none of them followed, even from afar, the example of their ...

During the minority of King Gun, Johannes Talpa, in the monastery of Beargarden, where at the age of fourteen he had made his profession and from which he never departed for a single day throughout hi...

The Penguin critics vie with one another in affirming that Penguin art has from its origin been distinguished by a powerful and pleasing originality, and that we may look elsewhere in vain for the qua...

Margaritone, full of years and labours, went one day to visit the studio of a young painter who had lately settled in the town. He noticed in the studio a freshly painted Madonna, which, although seve...

We possess a precious monument of the Penguin literature of the fifteenth century. It is a narrative of a journey to hell undertaken by the monk Marbodius, of the order of St. Benedict, who professed ...

In the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the incarnation of the Son of God, a few days before the enemies of the Cross entered the city of Helena and the great Constantine, it was given to me, ...

At that time, whilst Penguinia was still plunged in ignorance and barbarism, Giles Birdcatcher, a Franciscan monk, known by his writings under the name Aegidius Aucupis, devoted himself with indefatig...

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 f...

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 f...

The sovereign Nation had taken possession of the lands of the nobility and clergy to sell them at a low price to the middle classes and the peasants. The middle classes and the peasants thought that t...

After a voyage of ninety days I landed at the vast and deserted port of the Penguins and travelled over untilled fields to their ruined capital. Surrounded by ramparts and full of barracks and arsenal...

After a succession of amazing vicissitudes, the memory of which is in great part lost by the wrongs of time and the bad style of historians, the Penguins established the government of the Penguins by ...

Every system of government produces people who are dissatisfied. The Republic or Public Thing produced them at first from among the nobles who had been despoiled of their ancient privileges. These loo...

Every system of government produces people who are dissatisfied. The Republic or Public Thing produced them at first from among the nobles who had been despoiled of their ancient privileges. These loo...

Agaric resolved to proceed without delay to Prince Crucho, who honoured him with his familiarity. In the dusk of the evening he went out of his school by the side door, disguised as a cattle merchant ...

After his return to the capital of Penguinia, the Reverend Father Agaric disclosed his projects to Prince Adélestan des Boscénos, of whose Draconian sentiments he was well aware. The prince belonged t...

The Penguins had the finest army in the world. So had the Porpoises. And it was the same with the other nations of Europe. The smallest amount of thought will prevent any surprise at this. For all arm...

Morning and evening the newspapers that had been bought by the Dracophils proclaimed Chatillon’s praises and hurled shame and opprobrium upon the Ministers of the Republic. Chatillon’s portrait was so...

That night marked the culmination of the Dracophil movement. The Royalists had no longer any doubt of its triumph. Their chiefs sent congratulations to Prince Crucho by wireless telegraphy. Their ladi...

Nunc est bibendum. Delivered from its fears and pleased at having escaped from so great a danger, the government resolved to celebrate the anniversary of the Penguin regeneration and the establishment...

Ζεῦ πάτερ ἀλλὰ σὺ ρῦσαι ὑπ’ ἠέρος υἷας Αχαιῶν, ποίησον δ’αἴθρην, δὸς δ’ὀφθαλμοῖ σιν ἰδέσθαι· ἐν δὲ φάιει καὶ ὄλεσσον ἐπεί νύ τοι εὔαδεν οὕτως.12 (Iliad xvii 645 et seq.) A short time after the flight ...

A short time after the flight of the Emiral, a middle-class Jew called Pyrot, desirous of associating with the aristocracy and wishing to serve his country, entered the Penguin army. The Minister of W...

All Penguinia heard with horror of Pyrot’s crime; at the same time there was a sort of satisfaction that this embezzlement combined with treachery and even bordering on sacrilege, had been committed b...

The morals of the Jews were not always pure; in most cases they were averse from none of the vices of Christian civilization, but they retained from the Patriarchal age a recognition of family, ties a...

Some weeks after the conviction of the seven hundred Pyrotists, a little, gruff, hairy, shortsighted man left his house one morning with a pastepot, a ladder, and a bundle of posters and went about th...

Colomban bore with meekness and surprise the weight of the general reprobation. He could not go out without being stoned, so he did not go out. He remained in his study with a superb obstinacy, writin...

The seven hundred Pyrotists inspired the public with an increasing aversion. Every day two or three of them were beaten to death in the streets. One of them was publicly whipped, another thrown into t...

Whilst the wind of anger and hatred blew in Alca, Eugine Bidault-Coquille, poorest and happiest of astronomers, installed in an old steam engine of the time of the Draconides, was observing the heaven...

When the Colomban trial began, the Pyrotists were not many more than thirty thousand, but they were everywhere and might be found even among the priests and millionaires. What injured them most was th...

In their infinite gentleness and at the suggestion of the common father of the faithful, the bishops, canons, vicars, curates, abbots, and friars of Penguinia resolved to hold a solemn service in the ...

Hitherto blinded by fear, incautious and stupid before the bands of Friar Douillard and the partisans of Prince Crucho, the Republicans at last opened their eyes and grasped the real meaning of the Py...

The appeal was allowed, and Pyrot was brought down from his cage. But the Anti-Pyrotists did not regard themselves as beaten. The military judges retried Pyrot. Greatauk, in this second affair, surpas...

“Only extreme things are tolerable.” Count Robert de Montesquiou Madame Clarence, the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic, loved to entertain. Every Thursday she collected together some fr...

Madame Clarence, the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic, loved to entertain. Every Thursday she collected together some friends of modest condition who took pleasure in conversation. The ...

Every Friday evening at nine o’clock the choicest of Alcan society assembled in the aristocratic church of St. Maël for the Reverend Father Douillard’s retreat. Prince and Princess des Boscénos, Visco...

In Madame Clarence’s drawing room the conversation turned upon love, and many charming things were said about it. “Love is a sacrifice,” sighed Madame Crémeur. “I agree with you,” replied M. Boutourlé...

She was not quite in love with him, but she wished him to be in love with her. She was, moreover, very reserved with him, and that not solely from any want of inclination to be otherwise, since in aff...

The Cérès household was established with modest decency in a pretty flat situated in a new building. Cérès loved his wife in a calm and tranquil fashion. He was often kept late from home by the Commis...

The Prime Minister invited Monsieur and Madame Cérès to spend a couple of weeks of the holidays in a little villa that he had taken in the mountains, and in which he lived alone. The deplorable health...

When Eveline confided to Paul Visire that she had never experienced anything similar, he did not believe her. He had had a good deal to do with women and knew that they readily say these things to men...

The session ended calmly, and the Ministry saw no dangerous signs upon the benches where the majority sat. It was visible, however, from certain articles in the Moderate journals, that the demands of ...

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants. Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key. For a year his domination over the beauteous Madame Cérès had been know...

Half a century after the events we have just related, Madame Cérès died surrounded with respect and veneration, in the eighty-ninth year of her age. She had long been the widow of a statesman whose na...

Alca is becoming Americanised. M. Daniset And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. Genesis 19:25 τῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲ...

The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug ce...

In the southwestern district of the city, on an eminence which had preserved its ancient name of Fort Saint-Michel, there stretched a square where some old trees still spread their exhausted arms abov...

From that day onward, anarchist attempts followed one another every week without interruption. The victims were numerous, and almost all of them belonged to the poorer classes. These crimes roused pub...

The other towns of the federation also suffered from disturbances and outbreaks, and then order was restored. Reforms were introduced into institutions and great changes took place in habits and custo...

G. Lecointe, Au Pays de manchots. Brussels, 1904. 8vo. ↩ J. B. Charcot, Journal de l’expédition antartique française. 1903⁠–⁠1905. Paris. 8vo. ↩ “Orb, poetically, a globe when speaking of the heavenly...