s jilted you, that you were not so old as you looked."

"The false creature!" said Kapchack, quite beside himself with rage. In
his jealousy of Prince Tchack-tchack, who was so much younger, and had
two eyes, he had said this, and now he bitterly repented his vanity.
"The false creature!" he screamed, "where is she? I will have her torn
to pieces! She shall be pecked limb from limb! Where is she?" he
shrieked. "She left the palace yesterday evening, and I have not seen
her since."

"She went to the firs with the jay," said the weasel. "He is her old
lover, you know. Did you not see how merry he was just now, at the
council?"

Then Kapchack pecked up the ground with his beak, and tore at it with
his claws, and gave way to his impotent anger.

"There shall not be a feather of her left!" he said. "I will have her
utterly destroyed! She shall be nailed to a tree!"

"Nothing of the kind," said the weasel, with a sneer. "She is too
beautiful. As soon as you see her, you will kiss her and forgive her."

"It is true," said Kapchack, becoming calmer. "She is so beautiful, she
must be forgiven. Weasel, in consideration of important services
rendered to the state in former days, upon this one occasion you shall
be pardoned. Of course the condition is that what has passed between us
this day is kept strictly private, and that you do not breathe a word of
it."

"Not a word of it," said the weasel.

"And you must disabuse your mind of that extraordinary illusion as to my
identity of which you spoke just now. You must dismiss so absurd an idea
from your mind."

"Certainly," said the weasel, "it is dismissed entirely. But, your
majesty, with your permission, I would go further. I would endeavour to
explain to you, that although my conduct was indiscreet, and so far open
to misconstruction, there was really nothing more in it than an
ill-directed zeal in your service. It is really true, your majesty, that
all the birds and animals are leagued against me, and that is why I have
been afraid to stir abroad. I was invited to the secret council, of
which you have heard from the gnat, and because I did not attend it,
they have one and all agreed to vilify me to your majesty.

"But in fact I, for once, with the service of your majesty in view,
descended (repugnant as it was to my feelings) to play the eavesdropper,
and I overheard all that was said, and I can convince your majesty that
there are far greater traitors in your dominio