I did not give this man the opportunity of discoursing further, for I left him there and continued my walk. Although I cut it short, the time I spent on the peculiarities of the sights and in visiting certain districts of the town made me arrive more than two hours after dinner was ready. They asked me why I came so late.
"It is not my fault", I replied to the cook, who was complaining of it, "several times in the street I asked what time it was, but they only answered by opening the mouth, clenching the teeth and writhing the face askew."
"What!" cried everybody, "you did not know they were telling you the time that way?"
"Faith", I replied, "they might show their great noses to the Sun all they would before I should have learnt it."
"'Tis a convenience", said they, "which permits them to dispense with a watch. With their teeth they make so exact a dial that when they wish to tell someone the time they simply open their lips and the shadow of their nose falling upon them marks the hour as if upon a dial. Now, in order that you may know why every one in this land has a large nose, learn that as soon as a woman is delivered the midwife carries the child to the Prior of the Seminary. And, at the end of a year his nose is measured before the assembly of experts by the Syndic, and if by this measure it is found too short, the child is reputed a Snub-nose and handed over to the priests, who castrate him. You will perhaps ask the reason of this barbarity and how it happens that we, among whom virginity is a crime, establish continence by force? Learn then that we act in this way from thirty centuries of observation showing that a large nose is a sign over our door that says, 'Here lodges a witty, prudent, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man', and that a small nose is the sign-post of the opposite vices. That is why we make eunuchs of our snub-nosed children, for the Republic prefers to have no children from them than children like them."
He was still talking when a man came in completely naked. I immediately sat down and put on my hat to do him honour, for in that country these are marks of the greatest respect one can show a man.
"The Kingdom", said he, "desires that you will advertise the magistrates before leaving for your country because a mathematician has just promised the council that if, when you reach your world, you will construct a certain machine which he will show you corresponding to another which he will have ready here, he will draw your world to him and join it to our globe."
As soon as he was gone I asked the young host: "I beg you will tell me what is meant by that bronze, shaped like our parts of shame, which hung from that man's belt? During the time that I lived at the court in a cage I saw quantities of them, but as I was almost always surrounded by the Queen's waiting-women I feared I should be lacking in respect to their sex and rank if I directed the conversation to so homely a matter in their presence."
He replied: "Here the females no more than the males would be so ungrateful as to blush at the sight of that which made them; the virgins are not ashamed to respect upon us, in memory of their mother Nature, the one thing which bears her name. Know then that the scarf with which this man is honoured and upon which hangs like a medal the shape of a virile member, is the symbol of a gentleman and the mark which distinguishes a noble from a commoner."
I protest this paradox seemed to me so extravagant that I could not keep from laughing.