The most successful competitor was the robin. Instead of reciting his compliments, he read aloud an article, so clear and simple that even the Eagle fancied he understood. The robin said that people ought to live in happiness and prosperity; and the Eagle remarked, “Exactly so.” He said that if he could make his paper sell properly he would be quite indifferent to all other questions; and the Eagle repeated, “Exactly so.” He said that the life of a servant is preferable to that of a master; for the master has many responsibilities, whereas the servant lives under his master’s protection, free from care; and the Eagle again repeated, “Exactly so!” He said that, in the days when he kept a conscience, he could not get a pair of trousers to wear, but, now that he had got rid of his conscience, he was in the habit of putting on two pair at once; and the Eagle once more repeated, “Exactly so!”
At last the Eagle began to get bored, and snappishly commanded: “The next one.”
The woodpecker began by tracing the pedigree of the Eagle back to the Sun, and the Eagle confirmed his statements with the remark: “That’s just what I used to hear from poor papa.” According to the woodpecker, the Sun had three children: two sons, the Lion and the Eagle; and one daughter, the Shark. The Shark misconducted herself; and her father, as a punishment, sent her to rule the depths of ocean; the Lion turned aside from his father’s way, and the father made him ruler of the deserts; but the Eagle was a son after his father’s heart, and the father kept him nearest to himself and gave to him the realms of air for a kingdom. But before the poor woodpecker had got through even the prosy introduction to his history, the Eagle called out impatiently: “The next one! The next one!”
Then the nightingale began his song, and made a mess of it from the very first note. He sang of the joy of the flunkey hearing that God has sent him a master; he sang of the magnanimity of Eagles, and of their liberality in tipping flunkeys.... But, however desperately he tried to pitch his voice in the true flunkey tone, the art that dwelt within his breast somehow or other would not be controlled. He himself was a flunkey from beak to tail (he had even got hold, somehow, of a second-hand white cravat, and had ruffled up the feathers on his little head into a hairdresser’s curl), but his art refused to be confined within flunkeyish bounds, and kept on bursting forth in spite of all his efforts. It wasn’t any use for him to sing; he could not give satisfaction anyhow.
“What’s that booby droning about?” cried the Eagle; “call Trediakòvsky!”
Vasìli Kirìlych was quite in his element. He chose just the same toadyish subjects, but gave so clear an exposition of them that the Eagle kept on all the time repeating—
“Exactly so! Exactly so!”
When the competition was over, the Eagle hung upon Trediakòvsky’s neck a chain of ants’ eggs, and flashed his eyes at the nightingale, exclaiming—
“Take away that scoundrel!”