: Gathering the courtyard, the eagle establishes science and art, but enlightenment is not good for him. The eagle remains an ignorant, bloodthirsty tyrant, and the aides remain thieves and schemers.

Poets endow eagles with courage, nobility and generosity, often comparing urban ones with them. The narrator doubts the noble properties of the eagles, claiming that these are just birds of prey. The eagles are strong, far-sighted, quick and merciless, and when they appear, the entire feathered kingdom hurries to hide in fear, not in admiration, as the poets claim.

And eagles always live in alienation, in inaccessible places, do not engage in hospitality, but rob, and in their free time from robbery they doze.

However, there was an eagle who wanted to "live like the landowners lived in the old days." He called a hawk, a kite and a falcon and ordered them to collect for themselves a yard from various birds. The nobleman will groom him and console him, while he, remaining bloodthirsty, will keep her in fear.

Predators caught up on all sides of a variety of birds. Ravens were made for all consonants; they were made to answer for “peasants”, musicians made corostels and loons, parrots became buffoons, they entrusted the keys to the treasury to the magpie, owls and owls became night watchmen.They all “were written down in revision tales and issued salary sheets” and realized: they did not take into account that science and art should be in the eagle’s yard. Three birds suited for this role: bullfinch, woodpecker and nightingale.

The bullfinch was a nimble birdie. Having studied at the cantonist school and served as a clerk in the regiment, he began to publish the newspaper Vestnik lesov. Just did not work at the bullfinch newspaper. “It will touch something - you cannot touch it; then it’s not touching anything - it’s not only possible to touch, but it should be. And his head for it knock and knock. " So he decided to go to the yard to the eagle and praise him with impunity.

The woodpecker, a humble scientist, led a solitary life. For days he sat on a pine bitch, diligently hollowed and hollowed out “a whole bunch of historical studies:“ The Genealogy of the Leshy, ”“ Was the Baba Yaga Married, ”“ What Sex Should Witches Enter in Audit Tales? ” And so on". I could not find a publisher for the little woodpeckers and decided to go to the eagle in the courtyard historiographers in the hope that the newly appeared master of the study would print it.

The nightingale loved the whole world, they listened to his songs with bated breath, but he was excessively voluptuous and ambitious.

It was not enough for him to thunder with a free song in the forest ... It was thought: an eagle would hang a necklace of ant eggs on his neck, he would decorate his whole chest with live cockroaches, and the eaglet would make secret dates in the moonlight ...

The eagle was not against science and accepted all three. The golden age began in the eagle’s yard. Starlings learn a hymn, korosteli and loons play trumpets, parrots invent new jokes.They began to take an “enlightening" tax from the raven, established a cadet corps for falcon and hawk, and an academy for owls, owls and owls. Voronyatians bought a copy of the alphabet. The oldest starling was called Vasily Kirilych Tredyakovsky, appointed a poet and ordered to compete with the nightingale.

On the day of the review of sciences and arts, the bullfinch had the greatest success, having read such a light feuilleton, "that even the eagle thought he understood." In the feuilleton, it was said that servile life is better than the master's life - the master has a lot of worries, and the serf for the master does not have grief. When the serf had a conscience, he went without pants, and now, as conscience is not a bit left, he puts on two pairs of pants at once. The eagle listened and agreed.

The nightingale began to sing to the eagle about the joy of the serf, who learned that God had sent him a landowner; about the magnanimity of eagles who do not spare the slaves for vodka. But art did not fit into these "servile" frameworks, now and then it bulged out. I could not understand the eagle song of the nightingale and called Tredyakovsky. Vasily Kirilych so clearly stated the same “servile plots” that the eagle only assented. After the master of the old starling was awarded a necklace of ant eggs, the nightingale was ordered to be taken out of sight.

Although the enlightenment business was moving forward, the seasoned bullfinch lurked: he felt "that an enormous and merciless end would follow all this educational hustle and bustle," and he was right. The falcon and the owl made a mistake, having planned to teach the eagle to read and write the easy “sound method”, but a year later the eagle made mistakes - “instead of“ Eagle, “Aryol“ was signed. ”

Like all teachers, the falcon and the owl “did not give the eagle either rest or time” and the relationship between them became strained. Once an owl in the morning the eagle began to teach grammar. Twice the eagle asked her to leave, and on the third he tore it in two. The same fate befell the falcon, when he asked the arithmetic puzzle to the master.

All the blood in him boiled at the thought that he was saying "everything," and the serf dare to object: "not everything." And ... when the blood begins to boil among the eagles, they can’t distinguish pedagogical methods from sedition.

Everyone immediately realized that the "golden age" was running out. The darkness of ignorance was approaching with "civil strife and all kinds of confusion." A month later, everything fell apart so "that even the food of the eagle and the eagle began to be served spoiled."

To justify itself, the hawk and the kite dumped everything on enlightenment. As a proof, they began to “open up conspiracies,” in each of which a book was certainly involved. Investigations, investigations, fates continued until the eagle put an end to science.

The yard was empty. Ravens left unattended gathered in a flock and flew away. The eagle chased after them, but could not catch up: "the sweet landowner life was so pampered that he could barely move its wings." Then the eagle said to the eagle: “This let the eagles be a lesson!” But what did it mean, "either that enlightenment is harmful to eagles, or that eagles are harmful to enlightenment, or, finally, both of them together - he kept silent about this."