Free The Dialogue of the Dogs by Miguel de Cervantes

beauty and blandishments they attracted men in the ways those men liked best, and before long enslaved them until they seemed like beasts.
    “But in you, my boy, experience tells me the opposite. I know you’re a rational person in the semblance of a dog, unless Camacha has contrived this illusion with the black art called
tropelía
, which makes one thing look like another. Come what may, the thing that weighs on me is that neither I nor your mother, though we both studied under the great Camacha, ever came to know as much as she did. And this wasn’t for want of ingenuity, or ability, or soul, which we had in spades, but because of her malice. She never wanted to teach us her best spells, but wanted to keep them for herself.
    “Your mother, my boy, went by Montiela, and she was second only to Camacha. My name is Canizares, and if not as wise as those two, my ambition was at leastas healthy. Truth is, your mother’s appetite for drawing a circle and stepping inside with a legion of demons, surpassed even Camacha’s. Me, I was always a bit shy, and contented myself with conjuring half a legion. But, taking nothing away from either of them, I had them both licked in preparing the ointments that we witches use to anoint ourselves, nor could those today who follow and keep our rules ever match me.
    “You have to understand, my boy, that since I see how swiftly my life is receding from me on the wings of time, I’ve wanted for a while now to leave behind all the vices of witchery that I reveled in for so many years. The only thing left me is the fascination of being a sorceress, which is a very difficult vice to kick. Your mother was the same way. She swore off many vices and did many good works in this life, but at the last she died a witch. She didn’t die of any illness, but from the sting of envy that Camacha, her teacher, bore her, either because of some other jealous rift, which I could never discover, or probably because Montiela was on her way to knowing as much as she did.
    “So when your mother entered her confinement and the hour of the birth arrived, it was your godmother Camacha who received with her own hands what she delivered, and showed her she had borne two puppies. The moment your mother saw them she cried to Camacha, ‘There is evil here, there is derangement!’
    ‘But sister Montiela, I am your friend. I will cover up this birth. You concentrate on getting healthy, and rest assured that this your disgrace will stay entombedin silence. Don’t worry about a thing, since we both know that, save your porter friend Rodríguez, you haven’t been near anyone for quite some time. So your canine litter must come from some other source, and herald some mystery.’
    “Your mother and I, since I was present the whole time, were dumbstruck. Camacha left and took the puppies. I stayed to help Montiela, and she just couldn’t believe what had happened to her.
    “Camacha’s last day arrived and, in the final hour of her life, she told your mother how she had changed her sons into dogs because of the grudge she bore. But she said to rest easy, because they would recapture their shapes when they least expected, only not before they’d seen the following with their own eyes:
    They’ll revert to their rightful guise
    When they descry with their own eyes
    The high and mighty dunked in suet
    And the humble lifted to the skies
    By a hand with strength enough to do it.
    “Camacha said this to your dying mother, as I say.
    “Your mother wrote these words down and committed them to memory, and I fixed them in mine against the day I’d be able to tell one of you. The better to recognize you, I’ve called every dog I see whose color matches yours by your mother’s name, just to see if one might respond to a name so unusual for a dog. This afternoon, when I saw you performingso many wonders and heard you called The Learned Dog, and when you raised your head to look at me after I called you in the corral, I came