authority as We enjoy appertains not only to His Most Scoundrelly Majesty but to the least canter among our select assembly, We are impelled by our scoundrelly nature to expatiate in this our speech on the pre-eminence and most condign worthiness of the Way of the Canters and all those who follow it.'
An ovation resounded through the amphitheatre.
At this point, Buvat was fortunately able to leave off consulting his glossary. The speech was continuing in ordinary language since no strangers could be present to follow it (we, of course, being secretly present): the introduction in the cant language had served mainly to warm up the spirits of those present.
Someone handed a bottle to the Maggiorengo-General, from which he drank voraciously, in great gulps, until he let it fall empty at his feet.
'For a start,' he continued, 'the society of the canters is more ancient than that of the Baronci, of which Boccaccio speaks, older than the Tower of Nembrotto, and indeed that of Babel. Being ancient, it is of necessity excellent and perfect, and consequently, every single canter is excellent and perfect, so that it follows that its Sovereign will be most excellent and most perfect and almost immortal!'
Waves of applause greeted the eulogy which the new Maggiorengo-General, laughing complacently, heaped upon himself and his subjects. Atto and I exchanged worried glances. We were in the midst of a host of madmen.
'And let us, then, begin from the beginning of this great horrible world,' continued the Maggiorengo. 'Let us speak of the Golden Age, when Master Saturn was the King of men. What a scoundrelly life was ours back then! All lived in peace, considering the Sovereign as a good father, and he treated them like good children. All lived in freedom and safety, 'midst all manner of contentments and pleasures, eating, drinking and dressing after the manner of good canters, knowing not wealth or possessions, so that this epoch was called by the authorities of the people of canters the Golden Age. Then there were only goodfellows, purloiners free from all malice. Everything was held in common, there was no division of lands, no carving up of things, no separation of houses, no fences around vineyards. No force had ever to be employed in dealings with anyone, there were no disputes, no one stole chickens, no one contended for harvests. Everyone could work the land he wanted to, planting whatever seed he would and training the vines as it pleased him. Every woman was everyman's wife and every male was every woman's husband and of every thing the valiant canters made one great bundle. What a wonderful stallion our good scoundrel Biello would have made in that Golden Age!'
The Maggiorengo-General spoke these last few words turning towards a cerretano seated near him on the podium and pointing him out to the multitude, who applauded him long and loud.
'But then came that beard-splitter Jove, who forgot that he too was a canter, seeing that he'd been raised like a beast and given suck by nanny goats. Greedy for power and no longer having the slightest respect for the people of canters, Jove drove his old father Saturn from the Golden Age. Thus, life and conditions changed for everyone, freedom was lost and enmity, wrath, disdain, fury, cruelty, arson and rapine arose among men. Then they began to divide all possessions and goods, to enclose vineyards, gardens and houses, to lock gates, doors and entrances, to be jealous of women, to question each other and to fight even to the death, and so many other evil things that one loses all count of them.'
One cerretano not far from us let out a great noisy fart, making all his neighbours laugh.
'Ah, Jove did plenty of damage,' Atto commented to himself in disgust.
'Nevertheless, the tyrant Jove was not powerful enough to cancel out and extinguish the holy people of canters,' continued the Maggiorengo-General, 'who, being divine and immortal, even given this change and setback, gave that proud upstart clearly to understand that, king though he was, he could not do without us. For not only Jove, but all his relatives — and he had masses of them — lived in comfort and contentment only because they ate and drank what they extorted from the canters…'
'Si-e-na! Si-e-na!' bawled dozens of cerretani in a chorus of approval.
Atto motioned that I was to follow him: we moved to the left, doing our best to avoid the attentions of the half-naked cerretano. To no avail; when I turned around, he was still looking at us.
'… And everything in which the gods took pleasure, they did using Canters'manners and tricks: dissimulating who they were, fooling and cheating everyone. Starting with Jove himself who, when he wanted to lay Europa, the maiden who looked after King Agenor's cows, had to get help from the Canters to dress up as chief cowherd. He'd never have had Europa if he hadn't fooled her with that disguise! And when he wanted to make the beast with two backs with Leda, he dressed up as a poultryman, and that's why, when she became pregnant, she laid eggs, ha!'
The adepts responded to the Maggiorengo's joke with a chorus of laughter.
'To do his dirty little things with Antiope, Jove dressed up as a goatherd; and when he wanted to screw Alcmene, he got himself up like a boatman to look like her husband, who plied that nasty trade. When he coupled with Danae, he dressed as a stonemason and with that huge prick of his drilled a hole in her roof, and once he'd got into her house, he reverently fut- tered her. When he wanted to piss into Aegeria, he dressed as a chimney-sweep. And to debauch Calisto, he had to dress up as a washerwoman, which was easy enough for him because in those days he was still as imberb as any nancy-boy of an ephebe, or as my dear old rascal Biagio, who sits here before me.'
Biagio was the nickname of a beardless fatty with a bald, shiny pate who responded to the Maggiorengo's call with hoarse and hearty laughter, echoed by the uncontrollable screeches of the cerretano multitude.
'Although Jove's relatives were privileged, being his cousins, nephews and nieces, to get up to their dirty tricks, they all ended up embracing the Canters' way. How? They were gods, you tell me? Yet everyone knows that Vulcan was the lousiest failed blacksmith of all time — worse even than Bratti Old-Iron!'
Bratti was a toothless old man standing a few yards away from us who had been nicknamed after the well- known Tuscan popular figure of fun. I saw him snigger proudly when he was pointed out as an example to the rest of the company.
The Maggiorengo-General's harangue was really most effective and perfectly suited to that kind of gathering. Citing all manner of examples of mythical iniquity, adapted to meet the needs of the cerretani, he galvanised his listeners incomparably. I looked once more: this time, I could not see the half-naked canter.
'I've lost sight of him,' I told Atto.
'That's a bad sign. Let's hope he hasn't gone off to spy on us.'
'And Apollo? He was an even lousier hunter after other people's business than our arch-canter Olgiato,' said the orator, winking at another fellow lost in the crowd. 'Mars, when he was young, was a great bandit and assassinated thousands. Mercury was a sturdy, baby-minding steward, courier and ambassador or squire or summoner; meaning that he was in the business of extortion. Pluto was a baker and his Proserpine looked after the ovens. Neptune was a fishmonger, Bacchus, a wine merchant, Cupid, a little pimp. As for their womenfolk, some looked after the hen run, like Juno, some were washerwomen, like Mistress Diana. Of Venus, everyone knows she was an even bigger whore than that Pullica from Florence, and she'd let any man sow and plough her fields.'
The vile mass of cerretani roared with boorish laughter, tickled by their new leader's obscenities.
'Plato, the granddad of all scribblers, lived and died a canter. Aristotle was born the son of a common-or- garden physician and never strayed from the Way of the Canters. Pythagoras came from the codpiece of a bankrupt merchant; that oid tramp Diogenes slept in a barrel without any straw. But let's move on now from the Greek and barbarian kingdoms and talk of the Latins. Was not Romulus, the glorious founder of Rome, the wretched son of a common soldier who extorted his pay from the rich? His mother, as is public knowledge, was a nun who'd been thrown out of her order, and he himself was nothing but a lousy bricklayer who did a job or two on the walls of Rome. As long as he lived by the Canters' code, he was a great man and highly esteemed; when he betrayed it, as we all know, he ended up badly. A long, long time after Romulus, the Roman people became the masters of the world. But what does 'people' mean? The people are the Canters, the plebs and the ne'er-do-wells! And who were the captains of the Roman armies?'
'The canters!' the assembly thundered.
'And so, who fought, who smashed and subjugated the world?'
'The Canters!'
A burst of acclamations and applause followed the last exclamation. Calm returned only a while later. The Maggiorengo skilfully chose exactly the right moment to resume his harangue.
'Virgil, the imitator of Homer, was born in a shack near Mantua from the finest canters who ever lived in Piedmont; when he came to Rome, his only desire was to stay a Canter till he died, so he worked in the imperial
