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 Penguins.
I labour sedulously
at this task
without allowing myself
to be
repelled by its frequent difficulties
although at times these
seem insuperable.
I have
delved into the ground
in order
to discover the buried
remains of that people.
Men's first books were stones,
and I
have studied the stones
that can be regarded
as the primitive annals
of the Penguins.
On the shore
of the ocean
I have ransacked
a previously untouched tumulus,
and in it I found,
as usually happens,
flint axes,
bronze swords,
Roman coins,
and a twenty-sou piece
bearing the effigy
of Louis-Philippe I.,
King of the French.
For historical times,
the chronicle of Johannes Talpa,
a monk
of the monastery of Beargarden,
has been
of great assistance to me.
I steeped myself the more
thoroughly in this author
as no other source
for the Penguin history
of the Early Middle Ages
has yet been discovered.
We are richer
for the period
that begins
with the thirteenth century,
richer but not better off.
It is extremely difficult
to write history.
We do not know exactly
how things have happened,
and the historian's
embarrassment
increases
with the abundance of documents
at his disposal.
When a fact
is known
through the evidence
of a single person,
it is admitted
without much hesitation.
Our perplexities begin
when events
are related by two
or by several witnesses,
for their evidence
is always contradictory
and always irreconcilable.
It is true
that the scientific
reasons for
preferring one piece of evidence
to another
are sometimes very strong,
but they
are never strong enough
to outweigh our passions,
our prejudices,
our interests,
or to overcome
that levity of mind common
to all grave men.
It follows
that we continually
present the facts
in a prejudiced
or frivolous manner.
I have confided the difficulties
that I experienced
in writing the history
of the Penguins to
several learned archaeologists
and palaeographers
both of my own
and foreign countries.
I endured their contempt.
They looked
at me
with a pitying smile
which seemed to say:
"Do we write history?
Do you imagine
that we attempt
to extract the least parcel
of life
or truth from a text
or a document?
We publish texts
purely and simply.
We keep
to their exact letter.
The letter alone
is definite and perceptible.
It is not so
with the spirit;
ideas are crotchets.
A man
must be very vain
to write history,
for to do so
requires imagination."
All this
was in the glances
and smiles of our masters
in palaeography,
and their behaviour
discouraged me deeply.
One day
after a conversation
with an eminent sigillographer,
I was
even more depressed than usual,
when I suddenly thought:
"After all,
there are historians;
the race
has not entirely disappeared.
Some five
or six of them
have been
preserved at the Academy
of Moral Sciences.
They do not publish texts;
they write history.
They will not tell me
that one
must be a vain fellow
to take up