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After that day the magpie was altogether mute, not so much as uttering her usual notes by which she called for what she wanted, insomuch that they who before admired as they passed to and fro at the chattering and prating of the bird now much more wondered at her sudden silence; and many suspected her to have been poisoned by some that affected peculiar skill in teaching this kind of birds. But the greatest number were of opinion, that the noise of the trumpets had stupefied her hearing, and that by the loss of her hearing the use of her voice was likewise extinguished. But her unusual silence proceeded from neither of these causes, but from her retiring to privacy, by herself to exercise the imitation of what she had heard, and to fit and prepare her voice as the instrument to express what she had learned. For soon after she came of a sudden to sight again, but had quitted all her former customary imitations, and sounded only the music of the trumpets, observing all the changes and cadences of the harmony, with such exactness of time as was not to be imagined; an argument, as I have said before, that the aptness in those creatures to learn of themselves is more rational than readiness to be taught by others. Nor do I think it proper to pass by in silence one wonderful example of the docility of a dog, of which I myself was a spectator at Rome. This dog belonged to a certain mimic, who at that time had the management of a farce wherein there was great variety of parts, which he undertook to instruct the actors to perform, with several imitations proper for the matters and passions therein represented. Among the rest there was one who was to drink a sleepy potion, and after he had drunk it, to fall into a deadly drowsiness and counterfeit the actions of a dying person. The dog, who had studied several of the other gestures and postures, more diligently observing this, took a piece of bread that was sopped in the potion, and after he had ate it, in a short time counterfeited a trembling, then a staggering, and afterwards a drowsiness in his head. Then stretching out himself, he lay as if he had been dead, and seemed to proffer himself to be dragged out of the place and carried to burial, as the plot of the play required. Afterwards understanding the time from what was said and acted, in the first place he began gently to stir, as it were waking out of a profound sleep, and lifting up his head, he gazed about him. Afterwards to the amazement of the beholders, he rose up, and went to his master to whom he belonged, with all the signs of gladness and fawning kindness, insomuch that all the spectators, and even Caesar himself (for old Vespasian was present in Marcellus’s theatre) were taken with the sight.
