Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

The Prince said that in such a tone that it was difficult to say whether he was joking or talking seriously. Since he started to smile, however, the assembled company chose to regard it as a witticism & roared with laughter, while the Princess, with tears in her eyes, dug her nails in my hand under the table.

“In that too,” her husband said, “Greek mythology provides us with many examples of this zoophilia, of which I will only mention Pasiphae with her bull, Leda with her swan & Apuleius’s matron with her ass. Which is nothing compared with reality. Any of our shepherds will prefer his nanny goats to the fair sex & in the town of Mendes in Egypt, where the god Pan was revered, the billy goats commonly coupled with the women. It is so widespread in Muscovy that Cyril of Novgorod, when asked if one could drink the milk & eat the flesh of a cow that had been known by a man replied that everyone could, apart from the one who had had commerce with it. In the East Indies the Portuguese enjoy dugongs as if they were women & the negroes of Mozambique are said to find great relief in abusing them even when they are dead. One cannot say that such copulation is simply a result of human depravity, for other animals have the same feelings toward us & the same combinations among themselves. Remember what Pliny has to say about the gosling from Argos that conceived a passion for a girl called Glauce who played the guitar and who was at the same time wooed by a ram that had fallen in love with her. We could also mention the trouble caused by an elephant for the woman who kept a shop in Antioch & that caused by a great ape of Borneo for a priest. As for lions, being in season at the beginning of winter & at their most dangerous then, everyone knows they will spare a woman if she hitches up her skirt & shows them her private parts …”

There were more roars of laughter. Whipped up by the Prince, the badinage became a hubbub of erudite obscenities. Incest was added to the stories of illicit love & for a long time all they would talk about was the demands of Caligula, Nero or Chrysippus, who thought it did not matter if he lay with his mother, his sister or his daughter. Strabo was quoted, who insisted that the magi of Persia & the Egyptians did the same in their temples; Amerigo Vespucci, who maintained that in all the West Indies there was no degree of kinship that forbade fornication; the Emperor Claudius who, having married his niece Agrippina, made the senate authorize incest … Then they set about sullying lawful love & modesty itself, saying they were nothing but an invention of weary nations, since they did not exist in the New World or the Far North, where the tribes willingly lent their wives or daughters to visitors without showing the least shame & copulated in public, just as the Cynic Crates used to screw his Hipparchia right in the middle of the Agora …

Faced with this flood of filth, which made me blush as much as the Princess, I kept giving my master imploring looks, unable to understand how he could retain such regal calm. Not a muscle in his face moved; he wore a good-natured smile, as if he happened to be listening to mere childish prattle. The parish priest had not stayed that long & had made his excuses some time ago on the pretext of his great age & the lateness of the hour. Finally, when I was despairing of ever hearing Kircher speak out against this catalogue of loathsomeness, his voice was suddenly heard:

“I have myself read everything to which you have alluded but, while recognizing your knowledge, I am saddened that no voice has been raised against all these vices, which, even though they exist & continue to proliferate, are no less reprehensible. I would report you all to the Holy Inquisition, as is my duty”—he paused for a moment surveying the company with an icy look. The blue of his eyes had gone pale & I saw several of the guests among those who had previously been most voluble wipe their brows, filled with irrepressible fear—“if I thought for a moment you all held those opinions. But it is, perhaps, worth making certain points clear. The more I extend my knowledge of new things, the more I find confirmed what the wisest of mortals says in Ecclesiastes : ‘There is no new thing under the sun.’ What has happened? The same as will happen again. Persistence in evil, that is, the Fiend, is the cause of all this licentiousness because his sole aim is to fill the world with his vileness. The Evil Architect is still building the house of ancient wickedness. He uses all means, he tempts all persons & all ages. His principal way of deceiving souls & taking them for himself has always been to use their curiosity to attract them & to bring about their downfall with tricks full of superstition and lechery. What can be said is that if the Fiend has captured so many men, it is because he has always used the same means, since the very beginning of time: I am talking about magic & enchantment. Our experience shows that all the gods venerated by the Egyptians & their heirs are still those of the modern barbarians, among whom we can see the signs of the transformation of Isis & Osiris into the Sun & the Moon, & we can still find Bacchus, Hercules & Aesculapius, Serapis & Anubis & monsters similar to those of the Egyptians, although worshipped under other names. Even in China we see children burned alive as an offering to Moloch, blood spilt in disgusting sacrifices & that obscene part of the body the Greeks called the “—øαλλο” 1held in particular veneration. These barbarians of the Orient worship certain animals as if they were gods & the example of the Egyptians has been so important for the outlook of those people that they filled their lands with idols similar to theirs. All the examples you were discussing just now are the fruit of idolatry, the horrible product of the Enemy of human nature. The Fiend is God’s monkey, his serpent’s tail trailing everywhere his spirit of diabolical perversion appears. And although we should not close our eyes to the distorted reflections his mirrors permanently present to us, we must be careful not to take them for reality & to expose his evil snares, which lead straight to eternal damnation …”

ONCE MORE I admired the calm & simple manner in which my master defended our religion & its holy principles. I despaired of ever acquiring such moral strength, which, if truth be told, is that of the chosen ones of God.

Held in restraint for a while by Kircher’s speech, the guests soon let their tongues, loosened by the wine, run free once more. But since we had long since finished eating, the Prince invited us to rise from the table & the company dispersed in small groups in the salons while the servants cleared away.

Princess Alexandra took me to a sofa somewhat apart from the rest. After having discussed the evening’s conversation & expressed in words the disapproval we had conveyed to each other by gestures, we spoke once more of music & harmony. Unaccustomed as I was to drinking that amount of wine, my mind was confused & all I can remember of our conversation was a feeling of sweet communion & the perfect accord of our opinions. Later, when we were once more comparing the respective merits of William Byrd & Gesualdo, the Princess wanted to show me the score of a motet I was unacquainted with & which one could not read, she said, without hearing the most marvelous music there ever was. I therefore followed her eagerly to an alcove not far away, where she kept her music. Hardly were we there than she double-locked the door to stop us being disturbed. I acquiesced in this, flattered by her preference for my company. She quickly found the score & we sat down side by side.

The score did indeed have an extraordinary grace & ardor, so that I was soon humming in a low voice, conquered by the delightful emotion it stirred within me. After a few minutes I felt as if my cheek on the side where the Princess was sitting was on fire. I looked up at her & immediately stopped singing: it was the fixed look in her shining eyes, burning like a glowing ember, that had pierced my skin. Without taking this frighteningly adoring gaze off me, she slowly brought her hand to my face and caressed my lips tremblingly.