"The peacock," said Benjamin Crud, "is the symbol of wisdom."

"I had thought," I said, "that it was the symbol of vanity."

We were examining a bas-relief in the iconostasis of the cathedral at Torcello on Midsummer's Eve of 1987.

"Not in the eleventh century. The peacock in those days was taken to be more than merely wise: it was considered to be omniscient."

"I have been told," I said, "that before the war we had peacocks in the courts of my college. All they ever did was drive people potty with their abominable squawk."

"They were proclaiming their splendour and importance," Benjamin said. "You see, for a start, the flesh of a peacock was deemed to be incorruptible--"

"Why--?"

"--A good question," said Benjamin Crud, brandishing his Hebrew nose like a scimitar. "Presumably because either they were killed and gobbled up by rodents, or they were eaten at banquets by human beings or they concealed themselves very cleverly and modestly if they knew that they were about to die of natural causes. In any of these cases, their cadavers, their dead flesh, would never be seen to decay. Nor was it. Hence their reputation for never decomposing."

"Good effort," I applauded. "Intelligent Americans are the most plausible people I know. Intelligent Europeans are so aggressive and assertive that they are intolerable. Very well, then: let us accept that the flesh of peacocks is incorruptible; why does that make them omniscient?"

"Because they are believed to be a type of the resurrection. This means that they live forever and therefore have the time to accumulate knowledge ... all knowledge. Furthermore, they are, of course, holy. 'By the peacock" was once a formidable oath."

"Christian or pagan, Benj?"

For unknown reasons Benjamin preferred this abominable vocative to 'Benjamin' in full or either of the two other available contractions, "Ben" or "Benjie".