He’d learned about that extinct species on a visit to London’s National History Museum, where he was shown the preserved bones of the creature; a hybrid, he understood, of a goat and a mouse. Dorothea Bate, the paleontologist who discovered the first fossil remains, told him that it had died out thousands of years ago. The archduke had also viewed a number drawings based on the skeleton of the mouse-goat, which stood with humble majesty in its glass case. Those drawings obsessed him. He was fascinated by everything related to Majorca and, since his arrival on the island, had paid ethnologists and geologists to carry out research there. He himself had made not a few excursions to broaden his knowledge of the terrain and had written books on the Balearics. Only autochthonous plants grew there, and he employed botanists to catalogue the flora on the whole island. He made wine from the grapes and pressed oil from the olives found in no other region, and had even founded an agricultural museum. He commissioned landscapes from the artists who took up residence in S’Estaca for long periods, and demanded such levels of faith to nature that the paintings could be mistaken for their real counterparts. He’d also invited paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, and even the famous naturalist Odón de Buen; in his house in Miramar, the two of them had lengthy discussions about the theory of the origin of the species. The archduke had believed that everything was catalogued and ready to be exhibited to his guests, as if the whole island were a showcase. He was openly proud of what he’d done for Majorca. But the animal that had crossed his path in the night, with its gait so similar to the withered limp of the elephantiasis sufferer, wounded that pride.

He considered ordering his servants to search the Serra de Tramuntana, but was deterred by the thought that what he had seen was just the product of delirium, and that people might begin to talk.