Paul Orosius, the author of a universal history that Bossuet was to
imitate in later years, arose and prayed to the Lord:

"Lord, hear my prayer and Anthony's. Do not make any more monsters like
the Centaurs, Sirens, and Fauns, whom the Greeks, those collectors of
fables, loved. You will derive no satisfaction from them. Those species
of monsters have pagan inclinations and their double nature does not
dispose them to purity of morals."

The bland Lactantius replied in these terms:

"He who has just spoken is assuredly the best historian in Paradise, for
Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Cornelius
Nepos, Suetonius, Manetho, Diodorus Siculus, Dion Cassius, and
Lampridius are deprived of the sight of God, and Tacitus suffers in hell
the torments that are reserved for blasphemers. But Paul Orosius does
not know heaven as well as he knows the earth, for he does not seem to
bear in mind that the angels, who proceed from man and bird, are purity
itself."

"We are wandering," said the Eternal. "What have we to do with all those
centaurs, harpies, and angels? We have to deal with penguins."

"You have spoken to the point, Lord," said the chief of the fifty
doctors, who, during their mortal life had been confounded by the Virgin
of Alexandria, "and I dare express the opinion that, in order to put an
end to the scandal by which heaven is now stirred, old Mael's penguins
should, as St. Catherine who confounded us has proposed, be given half
of a human body with an eternal soul proportioned to that half."