ng yourself to believe it.
One night, the last but one of my sudation, I heard, and all but saw
with my eyes those two dogs, one of which is called Scipio, the other
Berganza, stretched on an old mat outside my room. In the middle of the
night, lying awake in the dark, thinking of my past adventures and my
present sorrows, I heard talking, and set myself to listen attentively,
to see if I could make out who were the speakers and what they said. By
degrees I did both, and ascertained that the speakers were the dogs
Scipio and Berganza.

The words were hardly out of Campuzano's mouth, when the licentiate
jumped up and said: "Saving your favour, Senor Campuzano, till this
moment I was in much doubt whether or not to believe what you have told
me about your marriage; but what you now tell me of your having heard
dogs talk, makes me decide upon not believing you at all. For God's
sake, Senor Alferez, do not relate such nonsense to any body, unless it
be to one who is as much your friend as I am."

Do not suppose I am so ignorant, replied Campuzano, as not to know that
brutes cannot talk unless by a miracle. I well know that if starlings,
jays, and parrots talk, it is only such words as they have learned by
rote, and because they have tongues adapted to pronounce them; but they
cannot, for all that, speak and reply with deliberate discourse as those
dogs did. Many times, indeed, since I heard them I have been disposed
not to believe myself, but to regard as a dream that which, being really
awake, with all the five senses which our Lord was pleased to give me, I
heard, marked, and finally wrote down without missing a word; whence you
may derive proof enough to move and persuade you to believe this verity
which I relate. The matters they talked of were various and weighty,
such as might rather have been discussed by learned men than by the
mouths of dogs; so that, since I could not have invented them out of my
own head, I am come, in spite of myself, to believe that I did not
dream, and that the dogs did talk.

"Body of me!" exclaimed the licentiate, "are the times of AEsop come back
to us, when the cock conversed with the fox, and one beast with
another?"

I should be one of them, and the greatest, replied the Alferez, if I
believed that time had returned; and so I should be, too, if I did not
believe what I have heard and seen, and what I am ready to swear to by
any form of oath that can constrain incredulity itself to be