“Here is one coming towards us.  She is neither more beautiful nor uglier than the others; she is young.  No one looks at her.  She strolls indolently along the shore, scratching her back and with her finger at her nose as she walks.  You cannot help seeing, father, that she has narrow shoulders, clumsy breasts, a stout figure, and short legs.  Her reddish knees pucker at every step she takes, and there is, at each of her joints, what looks like a little monkey’s head.  Her broad and sinewy feet cling to the rock with their four crooked toes, while the great toes stick up like the heads of two cunning serpents.  She begins to walk, all her muscles are engaged in the task, and, when we see them working, we think of her as a machine intended for walking rather than as a machine intended for making love, although visibly she is both, and contains within herself several other pieces of machinery, besides.  Well, venerable apostle, you will see what I am going to make of her.”

With these words the monk, Magis, reached the female penguin in three bounds, lifted her up, carried her in his arms with her hair trailing behind her, and threw her, overcome with fright, at the feet of the holy Mael.

And whilst she wept and begged him to do her no harm, he took a pair of sandals out of his chest and commanded her to put them on.

“Her feet,” observed the old man, “will appear smaller when squeezed in by the woollen cords.  The soles, being two fingers high, will give an elegant length to her legs and the weight they bear will seem magnified.”

As the penguin tied on her sandals she threw a curious look towards the open coffer, and seeing that it was full of jewels and finery, she smiled through her tears.

The monk twisted her hair on the back of her head and covered it with a chaplet of flowers.  He encircled her wrist with golden bracelets and making her stand upright, he passed a large linen band beneath her breasts, alleging that her bosom would thereby derive a new dignity and that her sides would be compressed to the greater glory of her hips.

He fixed this band with pins, taking them one by one out of his mouth.

“You can tighten it still more,” said the penguin.

When he had, with much care and study, enclosed the soft parts of her bust in this way, he covered her whole body with a rose-coloured tunic which gently followed the lines of her figure.

“Does it hang well?” asked the penguin.

And bending forward with her head on one side and her chin on her shoulder, she kept looking attentively at the appearance of her toilet.

Magis asked her if she did not think the dress a little long, but she answered with assurance that it was not—­she would hold it up.

Immediately, taking the back of her skirt in her left hand, she drew it obliquely across her hips, taking care to disclose a glimpse of her heels.  Then she went away, walking with short steps and swinging her hips.