until you have crushed the head of the person you love best in
the world. But I will leave you your mind and memory, that your
tortures may be increased a thousand-fold.'

Great magician as he was, Ismenor could not have invented a more
terrible fate had he tried for a hundred years. The hours passed
wearily by for the poor princess, who longed for a wood-cutter's axe
to put an end to her misery. How were they to be delivered from their
doom? And even supposing that King Lino _did_ fly that way, there were
thousands of blue parrots in the forest, and how was she to know him,
or he her? As to her mother--ah! that was too bad to think about! So,
being a woman, she kept on thinking.

Meanwhile the blue parrot flew about the world, making friends
wherever he went, till, one day, he entered the castle of an old
wizard who had just married a beautiful young wife. Grenadine, for
such was her name, led a very dull life, and was delighted to have a
playfellow, so she gave him a golden cage to sleep in, and delicious
fruits to eat. Only in one way did he disappoint her--he never would
talk as other parrots did.

'If you only knew how happy it would make me, I'm sure you would try,'
she was fond of saying; but the parrot did not seem to hear her.

One morning, however, she left the room to gather some flowers, and
the parrot, finding himself alone, hopped to the table, and, picking
up a pencil, wrote some verses on a piece of paper. He had just
finished when he was startled by a noise, and letting fall the pencil,
he flew out of the window.

Now hardly had he dropped the pencil when the wizard lifted a corner
of the curtain which hung over the doorway, and advanced into the
room. Seeing a paper on the table, he picked it up, and great was his
surprise as he read:

'Fair princess, to win your grace,
I will hold discourse with you;
Silence, though, were more in place
Than chatt'ring like a cockatoo.'

'I half suspected it was enchanted,' murmured the wizard to himself.
And he fetched his books and searched them, and found that instead of
being a parrot, the bird was really a king who had fallen under the
wrath of a magician, and that magician the man whom the wizard hated
most in the world. Eagerly he read on, seeking for some means of
breaking the enchantment, and at last, to his great joy, he discovered
the remedy. Then he hurried to his wife, who was lying on some
cushions under the tree on which th