Within a year I had made a fair
acquaintance with the Batrugian language, and was appointed royal
interpreter, with a princely salary, although no one speaking any other
tongue, myself and two native professors of rhetoric excepted, had ever
been seen in the kingdom.
One day I heard a great tumult in the street, and going to a window saw,
in a public square opposite, a crowd of persons surrounding some high
officials who were engaged in cutting off a man's head. Just before the
executioner delivered the fatal stroke, the victim was asked if he had
anything to say. He explained with earnestness that the deed for which he
was about to suffer had been inspired and commanded by a brass-headed cow
and four bushels of nightingales' eggs!
"Hold! hold!" I shouted in Batrugian, leaping from the window and forcing
a way through the throng; "the man is obviously insane!"
"Friend," said a man in a long blue robe, gently restraining me, "it is
not proper for you to interrupt these high proceedings with irrelevant
remarks. The luckless gentleman who, in accordance with my will as Lord
Chief Justice, has just had the happiness to part with his head was so
inconsiderate as to take the life of a fellow-subject."
"But he was insane," I persisted, "clearly and indisputably _ptig nupy
uggydug_!"--a phrase imperfectly translatable, meaning, as near as may be,
having flitter-mice in his campanile.
"Am I to infer," said the Lord Chief Justice, "that in your own honorable
country a person accused of murder is permitted to plead insanity as a
reason why he should not be put to death?"
"Yes, illustrious one," I replied, respectfully, "we regard that as a good
defense.
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