Civilization, Western -- Fiction; France -- Civilization -- Fiction; Penguins -- Fiction; Satire
The ceremony took place on the fifteenth of June. General Caraguel,
surrounded by his staff, occupied the churchwarden’s pew. The
congregation was numerous and brilliant. According to M. Bigourd’s
expression it was both crowded and select. In the front rank was to be
seen M. de la Bertheoseille, Chamberlain to his Highness Prince Crucho.
Near the pulpit, which was to be ascended by the Reverend Father
Douillard, of the Order of St. Francis, were gathered, in an attitude
of attention with their hands crossed upon their wands of office, the
great dignitaries of the Anti-Pyrotist association, Viscount Olive, M.
de La Trumelle, Count Cléna, the Duke d’Ampoule, and Prince des
Boscénos. Father Agaric was in the apse with the teachers and pupils of
St. Maël College. The right-hand transept and aisle were reserved for
officers and soldiers in uniform, this side being thought the more
honourable, since the Lord leaned his head to the right when he died on
the Cross. The ladies of the aristocracy, and among them Countess
Cléna, Viscountess Olive, and Princess des Boscénos, occupied reserved
seats. In the immense building and in the square outside were gathered
twenty thousand clergy of all sorts, as well as thirty thousand of the
laity.
After the expiatory and propitiatory ceremony the Reverend Father
Douillard ascended the pulpit. The sermon had at first been entrusted
to the Reverend Father Agaric, but, in spite of his merits, he was
thought unequal to the occasion in zeal and doctrine, and the eloquent
Capuchin friar, who for six months had gone through the barracks
preaching against the enemies of God and authority, had been chosen in
his place.
The Reverend Father Douillard, taking as his text, “He hath put down
the mighty from their seat,” established that all temporal power has
God as its principle and its end, and that it is ruined and destroyed
when it turns aside from the path that Providence has traced out for it
and from the end to which He has directed it.
Applying these sacred rules to the government of Penguinia, he drew a
terrible picture of the evils that the country’s rulers had been unable
either to prevent or to foresee.
“The first author of all these miseries and degradations, my brethren,”
said he, “is only too well known to you. He is a monster whose destiny
is providentially proclaimed by his name, for it is derived from the
Greek word, _pyros_, which means fire. Eternal wisdom warns us by this
etymology that a Jew was to set ablaze the country that had welcomed
him.”
He depicted the country, persecuted by the persecutors of the Church,
and crying in its agony:
“O woe! O glory! Those who have crucified my God are crucifying me!”
At these words a prolonged shudder passed through the assembly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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