Just then Forgier came, breathless, pulling off his cap. “Your Majesty,” he cried, “King Picrochole’s men swarm through the country. They trample the crops. They take our cattle and our sheep. Earl Swashbuckler plunders the Ford of Vede, and King Picrochole himself holds Rock Clermond.”
“What! What!” gasped Grangousier, turning from his story, all a-tremble. “Picrochole, you say!—Our old neighbor, with whom we have lived so many years in kindness and peace! What is it starts him against us? Is he mad, to turn so on his old friend, Grangousier?”
Forgier told the story of the cakes; and as he spoke, the good giant’s face which had been so troubled, became as bland and beaming as before.
“If it is only a matter of a few cakes,” he cried joyously, “we shall soon satisfy them. For Grangousier’s cooks can make cakes too. And this week the bakers of Lerné need not send cakes to the King; but the King himself will send cakes to the bakers of Lerné. And Marquet shall have a special cartload, all marked with my crown and scepter, to make up for those he lost. Hey, hey, hey, cooks and bakers! Grangousier calls.”
So all the cooks and bakers of the palace scurried up from the kitchen, spoons in hand and caps askew, and stood bowing before Grangousier’s chair.
“Good cooks,” said Grangousier kindly, “can we make here in our kitchen as fine cakes as those of Lerné?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” roared the cooks, bowing as low as they could.
“Well, then,” cried Grangousier, “take all the butter, all the sugar, all the spice in the palace. Spare nothing; but bake me cakes hot and fresh and fragrant enough to make friends again of the proud cake-bakers of Lerné. Five cartloads I would send them by dawn to-morrow, to comfort them for the five dozen the shepherds took.”
The cooks and bakers scuttled out again to be at their mixing and their stirring. And Grangousier rubbed his great hands in glee.
“Nothing like good cakes to end a war!” he chuckled.