It was not the first time that he had set his pupil such problems; but on this occasion the tone in which the question was asked struck the Eagle as quite intolerable. All his blood boiled at the thought that, when he said “all,” his slave should dare to answer “not all.” Now, it is a well-known peculiarity of Eagles that, when their blood begins to boil, they become incapable of distinguishing pedagogical disquisitions from revolution. The Eagle acted accordingly.
Nevertheless, after finishing up the falcon, the Eagle announced—
“The Scientific ’Cademy is to stop as it is.”
The choir of starlings once more repeated their hymn, “Let our youth be fed with science.” But it was already plain to every one that the “Golden Age” was drawing to its close. In the near future darkness and ignorance were at hand, with their inevitable train—civil war and general confusion.
The disturbances began with the competition of two candidates for the post of the defunct falcon—the vulture and the kite. As the attention of the two rivals was absorbed exclusively in their personal interest, the affairs of the establishment were to some extent shoved aside and gradually fell into a neglected condition. In a month there remained not a trace of the “Golden Age.” The starlings had grown lazy; the corn-crakes played all out of tune; the white-feathered magpie took to stealing right and left; and the rooks got so hopelessly behindhand with the taxes that there was nothing for it but an “execution.”[[62]] Matters went so far that the servants began to bring the Eagle and his mate bad meat for dinner.
In order to exculpate themselves from responsibility in all this mismanagement, the vulture and the kite, for the moment, played into each other’s claws, and threw all the blame upon education.
“Science,” said they, “is undoubtedly a useful thing, but only under the right conditions. Our ancestors,” said they, “managed to live without any science; and we can do the same.”
And, to prove that all the troubles came from science, they set to work to hunt up conspiracies, and particularly conspiracies in which some book, if only a prayer-book, was concerned. There began a perfect rain of searches, police-investigations, and trials.
“Drop it!” suddenly rang through the aerial heights.
It was the Eagle who said that. The process of education broke off short. Throughout the whole establishment there reigned such dead silence that one could even hear the whispers of slander creeping along the earth.