“A poet, too,” said Don Pedro. “You have no notion what sweet sonnets—”
“Hush, Don Pedro—hush! If I, a mateless bird, have spent an idle hour in teaching lovers how to sing, why, what of that? I am a churchman, senors; but I am a man and I can feel, senors; I can sympathize; I can palliate; I can excuse. Who knows better than I how much human nature lurks in us fallen sons of Adam? Tita!”
“Um?” said the trembling girl, with a true Indian grunt.
“Fill his excellency the intendant's glass. Does much more treasure come down, illustrious senor? May the poor of Mary hope for a few more crumbs from their Mistress's table?”
“Not a pezo, I fear. The big white cow up there”—and he pointed to the Horqueta—“has been milked dry for this year.”
“Ah!” And he looked up at the magnificent snow peak. “Only good to cool wine with, eh? and as safe for the time being as Solomon's birds.”
“Solomon's birds? Explain your recondite allusion, my lord.”
“Enlighten us, your excellency, enlighten us.”
“Ah! thereby hangs a tale. You know the holy birds who run up and down on the Prado at Seville among the ladies' pretty feet,—eh? with hooked noses and cinnamon crests? Of course. Hoopoes—Upupa, as the classics have it. Well, senors, once on a time, the story goes, these hoopoes all had golden crowns on their heads; and, senors, they took the consequences—eh? But it befell on a day that all the birds and beasts came to do homage at the court of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon, and among them came these same hoopoes; and they had a little request to make, the poor rogues. And what do you think it was? Why, that King Solomon would pray for them that they might wear any sort of crowns but these same golden ones; for—listen, Tita, and see the snare of riches—mankind so hunted, and shot, and trapped, and snared them, for the sake of these same golden crowns, that life was a burden to bear. So Solomon prayed, and instead of golden crowns, they all received crowns of feathers; and ever since, senors, they live as merrily as crickets in an oven, and also have the honor of bearing the name of his most Catholic majesty King Solomon. Tita! fill the senor commandant's glass. Fray Gerundio, what are you whispering about down there, sir?”
Fray Gerundio had merely commented to his brother on the bishop's story of Solomon's birds with an—