—A table! Sit down! Sit down, gentlemen!
—Waiter, do not serve us: as a last remembrance, take the place of Damocles.
The meal was more joyful than it is possible to say. The eagle was found to be delicious, and at dessert they all drank his health.
—Has he then been useless? asked one.
—Do not say that, Cocles!—his flesh has nourished us.—When I questioned him he answered nothing, but I eat him without bearing him a grudge: if he had made me suffer less, he would have been less fat; less fat, he would have been less delectable.
—Of his past beauty, what is there left.
—I have kept all his feathers.
It is with one of them that I write this little book. May you, rare friend, not find it too foolish.