With these words the noble fellow drew his sword, severed his head from his body and laid it before us.
"Did you eat any of him?"
"I was starving, your honor."
"That establishes your crime. The punishment for eating a body endowed with a human soul is death at the stake, you—"
"Hold," interposed the prince. "What portion of the Spaniard's body did you consume, prisoner?"
"His foot, your highness."
"Has the human foot a soul?"
"Why, certainly," answered the chair. "How frequently do we hear: 'His sense or his courage are in his knees'—sense and courage cannot exist without a soul. And, don't we say: 'Honest from his crown to his toes'—whereby we establish that even the toes possess a soul.'"
"These are merely phrases—maxims," returned the prince. "If the soul extends to the extremities, then the man who has a foot amputated loses a portion of his soul also; and it might happen, that one-quarter of a human soul would go to paradise, and the other three-quarters to hades—which it is absurd to suppose could be the case. To my thinking this is so important a question, that only the faculty of theology is capable of deciding it. Until those learned gentlemen have delivered an opinion on the subject, we cannot go on with this case. Therefore, the prisoner is remanded to his cell until such decision shall arrive."
A week was the time required by the learned faculty to discuss the questions: "Does the soul extend to the extremities of the human body?"