The Archbishop--the royal Governor--said that the child had refused to
leave his solitude and the books which were the only things he loved.
The Emperor asked where he was to be found at the moment. The Governor
did not know exactly, but said they had better go and look for him
somewhere where it was dark. This they did.
When they had looked through a good number of rooms they came at last
to a kind of closet, unpaved and lit only by a skylight. There they
found a stake stuck into the ground, and a dear little monkey bound
to the stake by a cord round the waist. (Now this monkey had been
sent from the Indies as a present to His Highness to amuse him with
its youthful gambols).... Round the bottom of the stake were some
smoking sticks still glowing, and the closet was filled with a foul
smell as of burning hair.
The poor animal had suffered so much pain while being burnt to death
that its little body no longer looked the body of a living animal,
but seemed rather like the fragment of some root, all wrinkled and
distorted. And its mouth, still open with the death-cry, was filled
with froth mixed with blood; and the face was wet with tears.
"Who has done this?" said the Emperor.
The Governor did not dare to answer, and the two men stood there
silent, sad, and angry.
All at once, in the silence, there was heard a sound of feeble coughing
that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty turned
and beheld Philip, his son, dressed all in black, sucking an orange.
"Don Philip," he said, "come and greet your father."
The child did not move, but gazed at his father with timid eyes that
showed no spark of love.
"Is it you," asked the Emperor, "who have burnt alive in the fire
this little animal?"
The child bowed his head.
But the Emperor: "If you have been cruel enough to do such a deed,
at least be brave enough to own up to it."
The child made no answer.
His Majesty seized the orange from the child's hands, threw it to the
ground, and was about to beat his son, who was shaking with terror,
when the Archbishop restrained him, whispering in his ear:
"The day will surely come when His Highness shall prove a mighty
burner of heretics." The Emperor smiled, and the two of them went away,
leaving Philip alone with the monkey.
But others there were, not monkeys, that were destined to meet their
death in the flames....
XV
November was come, the month of hail-storms, when sufferers from cold
in the head abandon themselves freely to their concerts of coughing
and spitting. This also is the month when the turnip-fields are
filled with gangs of youths that there disport themselves and steal
whatever they can, to the mighty wrath of the peasants, who try in
vain to catch them, chasing after them with sticks and pitchforks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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