The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
One of the best examples of the characteristic aptness of the
book is Chapter vii.--"The Invisible Cloth." Count Lucanor's
quandary is all of a man who offered the count great advantages
if he would trust absolutely in him and in no one else. Three
impostors (we condense the good Patronio mercilessly) come to a
king as weavers of a peculiar cloth that no man but a legitimate
son of his father could see; to any one with even a secret taint
upon his authenticity it was utterly invisible. The king,
delighted with this test of so interesting and gossipable a
matter, shuts them up in his palace to make the cloth, furnishing
them rich raw material of all sorts. After some days the king is
invited alone to see the wonderful woof. King-like, the king
sends his chamberlain first. The chamberlain, trembling for his
pedigree, opens his mind's eye, sees the cloth distinctly, and
returns full of its praises. The king goes next, can't see it
either, is terrified for his title to his throne, and decides to
see it also; does see it, and admires it extravagantly. Finding
it still rather puzzling, he sends his Superintendent Kennedy
(_alguacil_) to work up the case. This functionary, likewise
failing to see it, and fearing supersedure by the senior
inspector of police, makes up his mind that the king's eyes are
good enough for him, and, through them, sees it too. Next a
councillor goes to report, and, like a true councilman as he is,
honors his father and mother by seeing it in the same light as
the powers that be. Finally, for some one of the three hundred
and sixty-five extraordinary feast-days of Spain, the king orders
a suit of the invisible cloth, doesn't dare not to see it, and
rides forth among his leal subjects in a costume strikingly like
that famous fatigue uniform of the Georgia cavalry, that we used
to hear so much of during the war. His people generally, out of
respect to their parents, submit to the optical illusion, till,
finally, a Spanish citizen of African descent, "having (says
Patronio--not we) nothing to lose, came to him and said: 'Sire,
to me it matters not whose son I am; therefore, I tell you that
you are riding without any clothes.'" The result is a general
opening of eyes, a sudden change of tailors, it is hoped, by the
king, and the disappearance of the weavers with the rich raw
material. Moral (slightly condensed from one page of
Patronio)--"Don't Trust."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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