“After the sun, then, will have turned another two hundred and forty times round the earth, there will not be a single cleric left in Rome who knows Latin. When they sing their litanies in the churches people will invoke Orichel, Roguel, and Totichel, and, as you know, these are devils and not angels. Many robbers desiring to make their communions, but fearing that before obtaining pardon they would be forced to give up the things they had robbed to the Church, will make their confessions to travelling priests, who, ignorant of both Italian and Latin, and only speaking the _patois_ of their village, will go through cities and towns selling the remission of sins for a base price, often for a bottle of wine. Probably we shall not be inconvenienced by those absolutions as they will want contrition to make them valid, but it may be that their baptisms will cause us some embarrassment. The priests will become so ignorant that they will baptize children _in nomine patria et filia et spirita sancta_, as Louis de Potter will take a pleasure in relating in the third volume of his ‘Philosophical, Political, and Critical History of Christianity.’ It will be an arduous question to decide on the validity of such baptisms; for even if in my sacred writings I tolerate a Greek less elegant than Plato’s and a scarcely Ciceronian Latin, I cannot possibly admit a piece of pure _patois_ as a liturgical formula. And one shudders when one thinks that millions of new-born babes will be baptized by this method. But let us return to our penguins.” “Your divine words, Lord, have already led us back to them,” said St. Gal. “In the signs of religion and the laws of salvation form necessarily prevails over essence, and the validity of a sacrament solely depends upon its form. The whole question is whether the penguins have been baptized with the proper forms. Now there is no doubt about the answer.” The fathers and the doctors agreed, and their perplexity became only the more cruel. “The Christian state,” said St. Cornelius, “is not without serious inconveniences for a penguin. In it the birds are obliged to work out their own salvation. How can they succeed? The habits of birds are, in many points, contrary to the commandments of the Church, and the penguins have no reason for changing theirs. I mean that they are not intelligent enough to give up their present habits and assume better.” “They cannot,” said the Lord; “my decrees prevent them.” “Nevertheless,” resumed St. Cornelius, “in virtue of their baptism their actions no longer remain indifferent. Henceforth they will be good or bad, susceptible of merit or of demerit.” “That is precisely the question we have to deal with,” said the Lord. “I see only one solution,” said St. Augustine. “The penguins will go to hell.” “But they have no soul,” observed St. Irenaeus. “It is a pity,” sighed Tertullian.