Truly, this little Spaniard had a fine mind. We could only speak at night, since great crowds came to watch us from six o'clock in the morning until night fall. Some of them threw rocks at us; others threw nuts or grass. No one talked of anything except the new beasts belonging to the king. We were fed every day and the king and queen themselves took pleasure in feeling my belly to see if it was expanding. For they were very eager to have an entire family of little animals like us. I don't know if it was because I was more attentive than was my male to their grimaces and sounds, but I learned to understand their language and even to speak it a bit. Immediately the news flew throughout the kingdom that there had been found two savage men, smaller than others because of the bad food that solitude had forced upon us, and who, because of a deficiency in the semen of their fathers, had never grown their front legs long enough to use them for walking.
This belief eventually took root by being circulated from mouth to mouth-even without the help of the priests of the country who opposed it by saying that it was a terrible impiety to believe that not only beasts but monsters might be of their species. "It seems more probable," said some of the less vehement among them, "that our own domestic animals might participate in the privilege of humanity-and thus of immortality-since they are born in our country, than would be the case for some monstrous beast born who knows where on the Moon. Moreover, consider the obvious difference between us and them. We walk on four legs because God did not want to entrust such a precious vessel to a less firm foundation. He feared that something bad might befall mankind. This is why He himself took the trouble to place us on four pillars, so that we might not fall. But He did not deign to become involved in the construction of brutes such as these. He abandoned them to the caprices of Nature, which, not fearing the loss of such a minimal thing, only placed them on two paws."
"Even birds," they went on, "have not been so badly treated as these beasts. For at least they have been given feathers to supplement the weakness of their feet, so that they might leap into the air when we chase them from our territory. By contrast, Nature, which removed two feet from these monsters, made it certain that they could not even escape our police."
"Furthermore, look at how they have their heads turned toward the heavens. This is the disadvantage which God has inflicted on all things that He has put in this position. For their suppliant posture is evidence that they search the heavens in order to complain to their Creator, and to ask Him if they can pick up what we leave behind. The rest of us have our heads bent downward, in order to contemplate the goods of which we are masters, as if nothing in Heaven could envy us our condition."
Every day at my cell I heard priests telling stories such as these. So successful were they in directing the conscience of the people that it was decreed that I should be treated as nothing more than a feathered parrot. Their proof of this point was that like a bird I only had two legs. Thus was I put in a cage, on the express order of the Privy Council.
Every day the queen's bird keeper came and whistled at me, as we do to starlings. I was happy in that my feed box never lacked for victuals. Moreover, from listening to the nonsense with which those who came to watch me used to burden my ears I learned to speak like them. When I was accomplished enough in their idiom to express most of my thoughts, I came out with some of them. And already people spoke of nothing more than the gentility of my wise sayings. The general respect for my mind came to the attention of the clergy, which felt compelled to publish a mandate by which everyone was forbidden from believing that I possessed reason-along with an express command to all people of any estate or quality to believe that everything I might say or do that seemed intelligent was merely the effect of instinct.
Nevertheless, the question of how to define me divided the city into two factions. The party which took my side began to increase daily in numbers. Finally, in the face of the threat of excommunication (raised by the prophets to terrify the people) my supporters demanded a meeting of the Estates General, in order to resolve this religious controversy.
Page
view 