conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Book of Merlyn'?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Book of Merlyn
  They had caught light, however, and, when he had blown them out and delivered them to the magician, it was found that all the pages had been burned in half.
  And the poor badger, who was supposed to be the secretary of the committee, but he was not a good one, began rummaging about short-sightedly among the boomerangs, looking very much ashamed and worried.
  Cavall, who had come secretly, sneaked into the king's lap with an imploring look, and was not prevented. Goat stared into the fire with his jewel eyes. Badger sat down again with a guilty expression, and hedgehog, sitting primly in his corner away from the others with his hands folded in his lap, gave an unexpected lead.
  Everybody looked at him in surprise, but he was not to be put down. He knew why people moved away when he sat next to them, but a mun had rights for all that.
  The king said, "I would like it very much if you did tell me. At present I do not understand anything, except that I have been brought here to fill some gaps in this extraordinary education. Could you explain from the beginning?"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When the goose next to him spread her wings and leaped, he did so automatically. Some eight of those nearby had been jerking their bills, which he had imitated as if the act were catching, and now, with these same eight, he found himself on pinion in the horizontal air. The moment he had left the earth, the wind had vanished: its restlessness and brutality had dropped away as if cut off by a knife: he was in it, and at peace.
  The eight geese spread out in line astern, evenly spaced, with him behind. They made for the east, where the poor lights had been, and now, before them, the bold sun began to rise. A crack of orange broke the black cloud-bank far beyond the land; the glory spread, the salt marsh growing visible below. He saw it like a featureless moor or bogland, which had become maritime by accident; its heather, still looking like heather, having mated with the seaweed until it was a salt wet heather, with slippery fronds. The burns which should have run through the moorland were of sea-water on blueish mud. There were long nets here and there, erected on poles, into which unwary geese might fly. These, he now guessed, had been the occasions of those warning-notes. Two or three widgeon hung in one of them, and, far away to the eastward, a fly-like man was plodding over the slob in tiny persistence, to collect his bag.
  The sun, as it rose, tinged the quicksilver of the creeks and the gleaming slime itself with flame. The curlew, who had been piping their mournful plaints since long before the light, flew now from weed-bank to weed-bank: the widgeon, who had slept on water, came whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker: the mallard toiled from land, against the wind: the redshanks scuttled and prodded like mice: a cloud of tiny dunlin, more compact than starlings, turned in the air with the noise of a train: the black-guard of crows rose from the pine trees on the dunes with merry cheers: shore birds of every sort populated the tide line, filling it with business and beauty.
  The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that he was almost moved to sing. All the sorrow of his thoughts about man, the miserable wishes for peace which had beset him in the Combination Room so lately, these fell from him for the moment in the glory of his wings. He would have liked to cry a chorus to life, and, since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The vault of daybreak filled itself with heralds, and this is what they sang:
  HE FOUND HIMSELF in a coarse field, in daylight. His companions of the flight were grazing round him, plucking the grass with sideways wrenches of their soft small bills, bending their necks into abrupt loops, unlike the graceful curves of the swan. Always, as they fed, one of their number was on guard, its head erect and snakelike. They had mated during the winter months, or else in previous winters, so that they tended to feed in pairs within the family and squadron. The young female, his neighbour of the mud-flats, was unmated. She kept an intelligent eye upon him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Some eight of those nearby had been jerking their bills, which he had imitated as if the act were catching, and now, with these same eight, he found himself on pinion in the horizontal air. The moment he had left the earth, the wind had vanished: its restlessness and brutality had dropped away as if cut off by a knife: he was in it, and at peace.
  The eight geese spread out in line astern, evenly spaced, with him behind. They made for the east, where the poor lights had been, and now, before them, the bold sun began to rise. A crack of orange broke the black cloud-bank far beyond the land; the glory spread, the salt marsh growing visible below. He saw it like a featureless moor or bogland, which had become maritime by accident; its heather, still looking like heather, having mated with the seaweed until it was a salt wet heather, with slippery fronds. The burns which should have run through the moorland were of sea-water on blueish mud. There were long nets here and there, erected on poles, into which unwary geese might fly. These, he now guessed, had been the occasions of those warning-notes. Two or three widgeon hung in one of them, and, far away to the eastward, a fly-like man was plodding over the slob in tiny persistence, to collect his bag.
  The sun, as it rose, tinged the quicksilver of the creeks and the gleaming slime itself with flame. The curlew, who had been piping their mournful plaints since long before the light, flew now from weed-bank to weed-bank: the widgeon, who had slept on water, came whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker: the mallard toiled from land, against the wind: the redshanks scuttled and prodded like mice: a cloud of tiny dunlin, more compact than starlings, turned in the air with the noise of a train: the black-guard of crows rose from the pine trees on the dunes with merry cheers: shore birds of every sort populated the tide line, filling it with business and beauty.
  The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that he was almost moved to sing. All the sorrow of his thoughts about man, the miserable wishes for peace which had beset him in the Combination Room so lately, these fell from him for the moment in the glory of his wings. He would have liked to cry a chorus to life, and, since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The vault of daybreak filled itself with heralds, and this is what they sang:
  HE FOUND HIMSELF in a coarse field, in daylight. His companions of the flight were grazing round him, plucking the grass with sideways wrenches of their soft small bills, bending their necks into abrupt loops, unlike the graceful curves of the swan. Always, as they fed, one of their number was on guard, its head erect and snakelike. They had mated during the winter months, or else in previous winters, so that they tended to feed in pairs within the family and squadron. The young female, his neighbour of the mud-flats, was unmated. She kept an intelligent eye upon him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Round Table had been smashed at Salisbury, its few survivors thinning out as the years went by. At last there were only four of them left: Bors the misogynist, Bleoberis, Ector, and Demaris. These old men made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, for the repose of the souls of all their comrades, and there they died upon a Good Friday for God's sake, the last of the Round Table. Now there are none of them left: only knights of the Bath and of other orders degraded by comparison.
  Then there is another tale, widely supported, that our hero was carried away to the Vale of Affalach by a collection of queens in a magic boat. These are believed to have ferried him across the Severn to their own country, there to heal him of his wounds.
  The legends of the common people are beautiful, strange and positive. Gervase of Tilbury, writing in 1212, says that, in the woods of Britain, "the foresters tell that on alternate days, about noon, or at midnight when the moon is full and shiny, they often see an array of huntsmen who, in answer to enquirers, say they are of the household and fellowship of Arthur." These, however, were probably real bands of Saxon poachers, like the followers of Robin Wood, who had named their gang in honour of the ancient king. The men of Devon are accustomed to point out "the chair and oven" of Arthur among the rocks of their coast. In Somersetshire there are some villages called East and West Camel (ot), mentioned by Leland, which are beset with legends of a king still sitting in a golden crown. It is to be noted that the river Ivel, whence, according to Drayton, our "knightly deeds and brave achievements sprong," is in the same county. So is South Cadbury, whose rector reports his parishioners as relating how "folks do say that in the night of the full moon King Arthur and his men ride round the hill, and their horses are shod with silver, and a silver shoe has been found in the track where they do ride, and when they have ridden round the hill they do stop to water their horses at the wishing well." Finally there is the little village of Bodmin in Cornwall, whose inhabitants are certain that the king inhabits a local tumulus. In 1113 they even assaulted, within the sanctuary, a party of monks from Brittany—an unheard-of thing to do—because they had thrown doubts upon the legend. It has to be admitted that some of these dates scarcely fit in with the thorny subject of Arthurian chronology, and Malory, that great man who is the noblest source of all this history, maintains a discreet reserve.
  As for myself, I cannot forget the hedgehog's last farewell, coupled with Quixote's hint about the animals and Milton's subterranean dream. It is little more than a theory, but perhaps the inhabitants of Bodmin will look at their tumulus, and, if it is like an enormous mole-hill with a dark opening in its side, particularly if there are some badger tracks in the vicinity, we can draw our own conclusions. For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned friends, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue from their rath in joy and power: and then, perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old mediaeval blessing of certain simple people—who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun.