deliver the
deposit of light to the Creditor of the Day, the King summoned the
council; and when he told them what had passed, confirming the wicked
intention shown in killing the falcon and the horse on purpose to vex
him, they judged that Jennariello deserved to die. The prayers of
Liviella were all unavailing to soften the heart of the King, who said,
"You do not love me, wife, for you have more regard for your
brother-in-law than for my life. You have seen with your own eyes this
dog of an assassin come with a sword that would cut a hair in the air
to kill me; and if the bedpost (the column of my life) had not
protected me, you would at this moment have been a widow." So saying,
he gave orders that justice should take its course.

When Jennariello heard this sentence, and saw himself so ill-rewarded
for doing good, he knew not what to think or to do. If he said nothing,
bad; if he spoke, worse; and whatever he should do was a fall from the
tree into the wolf's mouth. If he remained silent, he should lose his
head under an axe; if he spoke, he should end his days in a stone. At
length, after various resolutions, he made up his mind to disclose the
matter to his brother; and since he must die at all events, he thought
it better to tell his brother the truth, and to end his days with the
title of an innocent man, than to keep the truth to himself and be sent
out of the world as a traitor. So sending word to the King that he had
something to say of importance to his state, he was led into his
presence, where he first made a long preamble of the love he had always
borne him; then he went on to tell of the deception he had practiced on
Liviella in order to give him pleasure; and then what he had heard from
the doves about the falcon, and how, to avoid being turned to marble,
he had brought it him, and without revealing the secret had killed it
in order not to see him without eyes.

As he spoke, he felt his legs stiffen and turn to marble. And when he
went on to relate the affair of the horse in the same manner, he became
visibly stone up to the waist, stiffening miserably--a thing which at
another time he would have paid in ready money, but which now his heart
wept at. At last, when he came to the affair of the dragon, he stood
like a statue in the middle of the hall, stone from head to foot. When
the King saw this, reproaching himself for the error he had committed,
and the rash sentence he had passed upon so good and