When the parrot was brought into the room where the prince was sitting, in company with several Dutchmen, it at once cried out in the Brazilian language, “What a company of white men are here!” They asked it, “Who is that man?” (pointing to the prince). The parrot answered, “Some general or other.” When the attendants carried it up to him, he asked it, through the aid of an interpreter (for he did not understand its language), “Whence do you come?” The parrot answered, “From Marignan.”
The prince asked, “To whom do you belong?” It answered, “To a Portuguese.” He asked again, “What do you there?” The parrot answered, “I look after chickens.” The prince laughing, exclaimed, “You look after chickens!” The parrot in reply said, “Yes, I do; and I know well how to do it;” clucking at the same time in imitation of the noise made by the hen to call her little chicks together.
The prince afterward said that although the parrot spoke in a language he did not understand, yet he could not be deceived, for he had in the room at the time both a Dutchman who spoke Brazilian, and a Brazilian who spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both agreed exactly in their account of the parrot's conversation.
LXXV
A CHARITABLE CANARY
A pair of goldfinches who had had the misfortune to be captured with their nest and six young ones, were placed in a double cage, with a pair of canaries, which had a brood of little ones also; there being a partition of wire netting between the cages.
At first the goldfinches seemed careless about their young ones. The father canary, attracted by the cries of the baby goldfinches, forced himself through a flaw in the wire, and began to feed them. This it did regularly, until the goldfinches undertook the work themselves, and rendered the kindness of the canary no longer necessary.