Read The Dialogue of the Dogs for Free Online Page B

just constructive criticism, meant to be helpful. And there’s no backbiter, if you really dig into his background, who isn’t toxic with venom and bile. But hey, knowing this, philosophize all you want.
    Berganza
: You can be sure, Scipio, that I’m through gossiping, because I made that vow not to. As I was saying, since I spent all day sitting around, and since idleness leads to woolgathering, I went back over some Latin that had stayed with me from what I’d heard while I was still in class with my masters.
    When I found my comprehension somewhat improved by this habit, I determined, as if I already knew how to talk even then, to take advantage of this exercise whenever I could—but not as some ignoramuses do. There are those who interlard their conversations from time to time with some brief, pithy Latin phrase, giving strangers to understand that they’re great Latinists when they hardly know how to decline a noun or conjugate a verb.
    Scipio
: That’s not as bad as those who actually knowLatin. Some of them are so oblivious that they’ll spray it around like spit, even when they’re talking with a shoemaker or a seamstress.
    Berganza
: It just shows you that anyone who speaks Latin before the clueless sins as much as those who speak it cluelessly themselves.
    Scipio
: Another thing you ought to know is that speaking Latin doesn’t keep you from being an ass.
    Berganza
: Well, who doubts that? The reason is clear. In Roman times everybody spoke Latin as their mother tongue, yet there must’ve been some morons even then. Speaking Latin didn’t absolve them of stupidity.
    Scipio
: Berganza old sport, it takes brains to know when to shut up in your own language
and
when to speak in Latin.
    Berganza
: So it does, since you can sound like an idiot as easily in Latin as in your own language. I’ve known erudite boneheads and tiresome grammarians, and Latin-spewing dilettantes who can effortlessly exasperate anybody not just once, but repeatedly.
    Scipio
: Enough already. Get on with your philosophizing.
    Berganza
: That was it—what I just got through saying.
    Scipio
: What?
    Berganza
: All that about Latin and the vernacular, which I started and you helped me finish.
    Scipio
: You call all that negativity philosophizing? So that’s how it is! Keep on making excuses for this damned epidemic of slander and—call it what you like—it’ll have them calling us Cynics, the original gossiping dogs. For crying out loud, shut up already and get on with your story.
    Berganza
: How can I continue my story if I shut up?
    Scipio
: I mean get to the point, and quit pinning so many extra tails on your story that it looks like an octopus.
    Berganza
: Speak forthrightly. All this about tails just won’t do.
    Scipio
: You’re wrong if you think it’s not rude and crude to call things by their right names, as if it weren’t better, if you have to call them something, to use roundabouts and curlicues to get around the unpleasantness of hearing them described clearly. Handsome is as handsome sounds.
    Berganza
: All right then, I believe you. And, as I was saying, as if it weren’t enough that fate banished me from my classes and the joyful, relaxed life I’d spentin them, leashing me behind a door, replacing the generosity of the students with the meanness of an African slave girl—this also made me paranoid, where before I’d known only quiet and rest. Take it from me, Scipio, misfortune finds the unfortunate, even if they hide in the farthest corners of the earth.
    I say this because the slave girl was in love with another African, also a slave of the house. He slept on a porch between the inner and outer doors of my station, and they couldn’t meet except at night. With that in mind, they’d stolen or copied the housekeys, and most every night the slave girl slipped downstairs and, stopping my mouth with some piece of meat or cheese, let the African in. Together they had a gay old time, thanks to my silence, and at