Tiger tells the Truth!

Can you believe this?
Really a good story!

Read on!!

FEBEA

Febea is Nero’s panther.

Softly domestic, like an enormous royal house cat, she sprawls beside the neurotic Caesar, who caresses her with the delicate, androgynous hand of a cruel and corrupt emperor.

She yawns, and as she does, her flexible, wet tongue appears between her two rows of teeth—sharp, white teeth. She feeds on human flesh, and in the mansion of the sinister demigod of decadent Rome she is accustomed to seeing three red things at all time: roses, the imperial crimson, and blood.

One day, Nero brings into his presence Leticia, a snowy-skinned young virgin, the daughter of a Christian family. Leticia, fifteen, has the loveliest face, the most adorable little pink hands, divine azure eyes, the body of an ephebe about to be transformed into woman—worthy of a triumphant chorus of hexameters in one of Ovid’s metamorphoses.

Nero has been seized by a whim for this woman: he desires to possess her through his art, his music, and his poetry. The maiden—mute, unmoved, serene in her white chasteness—listens to the song sung by the formidable imperator, who accompanies himself on his lyre, and when he, the artist on the throne, concludes his erotic hymn (rhymed according to the rules of his great master Seneca), he sees that his captive, the virgin of his lustful whimsy, remains mute and innocent, like a lily, like a modest marble vestal.

At that, the great Caesar, filled with disdain, calls Febea and points an imperial finger at the victim of his vengeance. The powerful, proud panther stretches languidly, showing her sharp, gleaming claws, and she slowly yawns, her massive jaws gaping, and then, shaking off her stupor, her tail swings slowly, from side to side.

But then a remarkable thing occurs; the beast speaks the following words to the emperor:

“Oh, admirable and potent Emperor, thy will is that of an immortal; thy aspect is that of Jupiter; thy broad forehead is crowned with the glorious laurel—but I beg that today you allow me to inform you of two things: my fangs will never act against a woman such as this, who scatters splendors like a star; and thy verses, dactyls, and pyrrhics are truly abominable.”