Read Online Once & Future King 05 - The Book of Merlyn by T. H. White - Free Book Online

is the most marvellous creature anywhere, quite the best there is."
    And they turned upon Merlyn crossly, saying "Now look what you have done! This is the result of all your jibber and jabber! The poor king is perfectly miserable, and all because you throw your weight about, and exaggerate, and prattle like a poop!"
    Merlyn only replied: "Even the Greek definition anthropos, He Who Looks Up, is inaccurate. Man seldom looks above his own height after adolescence."
    THE NEW ARTHUR, the oiled bolt, was cosseted back to good humour; but he immediately committed the blunder of opening the subject once again.
    "Surely," he said, "the affections of men, their love and heroism and patience: surely these are respectable things?"
    His tutor was not abashed by the scolding which he had received. He accepted the gage with pleasure.
    "Do you suppose that the other animals," he asked, "have no love or heroism or patience—or, which is the more important, no co-operative affection? The love-lives of ravens, the heroism of a pack of weasels, the patience of small birds nursing a cuckoo, the co-operative love of bees— all these things are shewn much more perfectly on every side in nature, than they have ever been shewn in man."
    "Surely," asked the king, "man must have some respectable feature?"
    At this his magician relented.
    "I am inclined to think," he said, "that there may be one. This, insignificant and childish as it must seem, I mention in spite of ail the lucubrations of that fellow Chalmers-Mitchell. I refer to man's relation with his pets. In certain households there are dogs which are of no use as hunters or as watchmen, and cats which refuse to go mousing, but which are treated with a kind of vicarious affection by their human fellows, in spite of uselessness or even trouble. I cannot help thinking that any traffic in love, which is platonic and not given in exchange for other commodities, must be remarkable. I knew a donkey once, who lived in the same field with a horse of the same sex. They were deeply attached to one another, although nobody could see that either of them was able to confer a material benefit on the other. This relationship does, it seems to me, exist to a respectable extent between Homoferox and his hounds in certain cases. But it also exists among the ants, so we must not put too much store upon it,"
    Goat observed slyly: "Parasites."
    At this, Cavall got off his master's lap, and he and the new king walked over to the goat on stiff legs. Cavall spoke in human speech for the first and last time in his long life, in unison with his master. His voice sounded like a teuton's speaking through a trumpet.
    "Did you say Parasites?" they asked. "Just say that once again, will you, until we punch your head?"
    The goat regarded them with amused affection, but refused to have a row.
    "If you punched my head," he said, "you would get a pair of bloody knuckles. Besides, I take it back."
    They sat down again, while the king congratulated himself on having something nice in his heart at any rate. Cavall evidently thought the same thing, for he licked his nose.
    "What I cannot understand," said Arthur, "is why you should take the trouble to think about man and his problems, or to sit in committee on them, if the only respectable thing about him is the way he treats a few pets. Why not let him extinguish himself without fuss?"
    This set the committee a problem: they remained still to think it over, holding the mahogany fans between their faces and the firelight, and watching the inverted flames in the smoky brown of the madeira.
    "It is because we love you, king, yourself," said Archimedes eventually,
    This was the most wonderful compliment which he had ever received.
    "It is because the creature is young," said the goat. "Young and helpless creatures make you want to aid them, instinctively,"
    "It is because helping is a good thing anyway," said T. natrix.
    "There is something important in humanity," said Balin. "I cannot