If, like me, this question has been keeping you awake at night, wonder no more.
In the sixteenth century, the vineyards of Normandy were hit by a veritable plague of Egypt. Innumerable flocks of petrels, as dense as the hordes of locusts, arrived each autumn and fell upon the grape-laden vines. They devoured the fruits and left nothing on the vines but twigs and leaves. This plague returned several years in a row. The people were reduced to despair, and flung themselves into the churches, where they offered prayers, made pilgrimages, staged processions, and chanted psalms and litanies, just as in the old Days of Rogation.
It worked.
The plague came to an end, and those innumerable flocks of petrels, driven before the hand of God, were transported across the sea and banished to the banks of Newfoundland, where God still keeps them in reserve, so that He can send them forth anew to whatever people He wishes to punish.
And the proof?
Ask the sailors who have been fishing on the Grand Banks: they will tell you that the petrels are still there by the thousands, that they darken the sky….
