The Dialogue of the Dogs by Miguel de Cervantes Read Free Book Online

the cost of many things the slave girl pilfered for me. Some days my conscience tormented me over her gifts, but without them my flanks would’ve pinched my ribs, and I’d’ve looked more like a greyhound than a mastiff. Still, owing to my good nature, I wanted to do right by my master, since I was accepting his hospitality and eating his bread. This is always the right thing to do, not just for our famously loyal kind, but for all who serve.
    Scipio
: Now that’s what I call philosophy, Berganza, because its logic derives from plain truth and clear understanding. But go on, and don’t spin out your yarn—you don’t want me to say tale—so endlessly.
    Berganza
: But first I beg you to tell me, if you know,what philosophy is. Though I use the word, I don’t know what it means. I only know that it’s supposed to be good.
    Scipio
: Here it is in a nutshell—the expression has two Greek roots,
philos
and
sophia. Philos
means love, and
sophia
means science, so that philosophy means “love of science,” and a philosopher, a lover of science.
    Berganza
: How wise you are, Scipio. Who the devil taught you Greek?
    Scipio
: Berganza, you really are an idiot if you make a big deal out of this. These are things that any schoolchild knows, and just as many people fake their way through Greek as they do Latin.
    Berganza
: That’s what I’m saying, and I only wish somebody would put those people under a winepress and squeeze out the meager trickle of their erudition. That way they wouldn’t keep dazzling the world with the glitter of their broken Greek and false Latin, as the Portuguese dazzle the Guinea men.
    Scipio
: Now Berganza, bite your tongue—and I should make a meal of mine—because all we’re doing is gossiping again.
    Berganza
: Yes, but at least I’m not obliged to do whatI’ve heard that somebody called Corondas did, a Tyrian who made a law that, on penalty of death, nobody should enter his city’s forum armed. Forgetting this, one day he entered the council chambers wearing his broadsword. Alerted to his crime, and remembering the sentence decreed for it, he promptly unsheathed his sword and ran himself through—the first to make the law, to break it, and to pay the penalty.
    What I said was never intended as law, just a pledge that I’d bite my tongue whenever you found me guilty of gossiping. Nowadays, though, nobody behaves with the legality and rigor of old. Today they make a law and tomorrow they break it, and maybe it’s better that way. After all, no sooner does somebody promise to change his habits than he immediately falls into worse ones. It’s one thing to extol discipline and another to exercise it, and there’s a vast chasm between the saying and the doing. So let the devil bite his tongue, but I’m not about to bite mine here, where nobody can see me or praise my fine character.
    Scipio
: To go by that, Berganza, if you were a man you’d be a hypocrite. Everything you do would be for show, feigned, false, put on only to puff yourself up like all the hypocrites do.
    Berganza
: I don’t know what I’d do as a man. I only know what I want to do now—not hold myself back, bottling up so many remarks that I don’t know when I’ll get around to them. On top of that, I’m afraid that sundownwill plunge us back into darkness, with our tongues tied again.
    Scipio
: That’s in God’s hands. On with your story, and don’t swerve from the straight and narrow with irrelevant detours. That way, however long you take, you’ll get there faster.
    Berganza
: As I was saying, once I saw the insolence, thievery, and dishonesty of those slaves, I determined, like any good servant, to hinder them as best I could. I was good at this, and before I left I succeeded. The slave girl would come down, as I said, to disport with the African, confident that the meat or bread or cheese they threw me would make me mute. Gifts can do a lot, Scipio.
    Scipio
: Plenty. Don’t dawdle, and get on with