Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

The governor thrust into my hands the almanac written by Father Simeon Delmas, of Taiohae, and published by the mission. It was in hektograph, neatly and beautifully written, and contained the religious calendar of the year, and sermons, admonitions, and anecdotes, in Marquesan, with a small minority in French; a photograph of Monseigneur Etienne Rouchouze, former vicar apostolic to Oceanica, with praise for his career; an anecdote of Bernadette of Lourdes, the famous peasant girl to whom the Virgin Mary appeared, together with a list of the apparitions of the Virgin in France, beginning in 1830, the other dates being ’46, ’58, ’71, and ’76; a prayer to Joan of Arc, with an attack on Protestantism (Porotetane) for burning her, and something about the Duke of Guise; a stirring article on Nero’s persecution of the Christians; an account of the Fall of the Bastille; a comparison between Clovis, king of France, and Napoleon; a tale of Charles V; and a table showing that the Catholic church had established missions in all the inhabited islands of this group since 1858, and giving the number of children in the schools when they were closed by the government as clerical.

“The mountain groaned and brought forth a mouse, a soldier,” said the almanac.

“That is treason,” said the governor, looking over my shoulder, “and what has all that foolishness to do with a dying race that does not know what it means? The church has done nothing for these people. They are not changed except for the worse. What has the church done for their health? Nothing. My predecessor wanted to stop the eating of popoi. He knew that it is dirty, not healthful, and the promiscuous way of eating it spreads disease. The church fought him and said popoi was all right. France! Have we not suffered enough by that church since the Edict of Nantes? Since time immemorial? The church is a corporation, selfish, scheming, always against any government it does not control. It has been the evil genius of France. Only Napoleon harnessed the beast and made it do his work, but it saw his humbling. The priests tell the canaques the Government is against the church, and that the church is in the right; that it is the duty of every Catholic to love the church first, because the church is Christ. They do not preach disaffection. Peut-être, non. But they do not preach affection.

I. But you must admit that these priests lead lives of self-sacrifice; that personally they gain nothing. A meager fare and hard work. They visit the sick——

Governor. Visit the sick? They do that, and they bury the dead. But they do nothing to better conditions. We teach sanitation. The priests are themselves either ignorant or neglectful of sanitation. Their calendars, their tracts, their preaching, say not a word about health, cleanliness; nothing about the body, but all about the soul, about duties to the church. I am here primarily to study and aid the lepers, the consumptives and the other sick. To try and halt the disease which has killed thousands of unborn children, and the tuberculosis which takes most of the Marquesans in youth. I am a soldier, experienced in Africa, used to leprosy, and the care of natives. In Africa the church gives nothing to the people but its ritual. What has the church done here after seventy years?

I. Ah, governor, that is the very question Père David asked me as to the Government. He says they looked after the lepers when they had a free hand here.

Governor. Looked after them. They were not physicians. Those men are peasants crammed with a pitiful theology. They shall have nothing from me but the law.

He attacked the intermezzo of “Cavalleria Rusticana” on his flute, as Many Daughters arrived. Over her ear was a sprig of fern, and about her neck a string of fragrant nuts. Her very large eyes were singularly brilliant.

“C’est toi qui pousse le pu me metai.” she complimented and tutoyed. “C’est toi qui n’a pas la pake? It is thou who playest the flute wonderfully. It is thou who has not any tobacco?”

“Ah, ma fille, you are well? You will have a drop of absinthe?” said the governor.