III.
My uncle, a very old and experienced animal, taught me universal history.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
At the beginning of things, when he was born, the master being dead, the children at the funeral and the servants at a dance, all the animals found themselves free. It was a frightful hubbub; a turkey, whose feathers were too fine, was stripped by his comrades. In the evening, a ferret, which had slipped in, sucked the jugular vein of three-quarters of the combatants, who, naturally, made no further outcry. The spectacle in the farmyard was fine; here and there was a dog swallowing a duck; the horses in pure sportiveness were breaking the backs of the dogs; my uncle himself crunched a half-dozen little chickens. That was the golden age, said he.
In the evening, when the people came home, the whipping began. Uncle received a lash which took off a strip of his fur. The dogs, well flogged and tied up, howled with repentance and licked the hands of their new master. The horses resumed their burden with administrative zeal. The fowls, protected, clucked their benedictions; only, six months after, when the dealer passed, they killed fifty at once. The geese, among whose number was my late kind friend, flapped their wings, saying that everything was in good order, and praising the farmer, the public benefactor.