M. Anatole France is a great magician, yet there seem to be
tasks which he dare not face. For he is also a sage.
It is a book of ocean travel--not, however, as understood by Herr Ballin
of Hamburg, the Machiavel of the Atlantic. It is a book of exploration
and discovery--not, however, as conceived by an enterprising journal and
a shrewdly philanthropic king of the nineteenth century. It is nothing
so recent as that. It dates much further back; long, long before the
dark age when Krupp of Essen wrought at his steel plates and a German
Emperor condescendingly suggested the last improvements in ships' dining-
tables. The best idea of the inconceivable antiquity of that enterprise
I can give you is by stating the nature of the explorer's ship. It was a
trough of stone, a vessel of hollowed granite.
The explorer was St. Mael, a saint of Armorica. I had never heard of him
before, but I believe now in his arduous existence with a faith which is
a tribute to M. Anatole France's pious earnestness and delicate irony.
St. Mael existed. It is distinctly stated of him that his life was a
progress in virtue. Thus it seems that there may be saints that are not
progressively virtuous.
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