On the morrow, early in the morning, a great crowd was assembled before the palace, each striving to be foremost to get a place where they might witness so august a ceremony. All things were prepared on the most magnificent scale; music resounded in peals to the skies; trains of cavalry and infantry, with their glittering arms flashing in the sun, were filling in the courts; in the midst was a platform under an awning, on which was placed a throne prepared for Balzebar, and when all was in readiness he was led forth. As the shouts of admiration went up, the dwarf lolled idly in his seat, and toyed with the golden sceptre that was presented to him; his dull eye wandering without expression over the assembly. Anjah, in disguise, placed himself in front of him, and presently, when directly in his line of vision, raised the cap that shaded his brow, and gave him a full view of his countenance, at the same time fixing on him his eye. Balzebar was transfixed with astonishment for an instant; then, with a cry of joy, rushing forward, tore off the royal helmet and the golden cloak, and threw them, with himself, at the feet of Anjah. A low murmur arose from the crowd as the well known and despised dwarf, Balzebar, was before them, revealed in all his natural hideousness. At this moment the prime minister, who stood near at hand, threw the cloak of gold over the shoulders of Anjah, and placed the helmet with the white plumes upon his lofty brow, and, as they knew their true prince, a shout so triumphant arose from the assembled multitude that it seemed like the breaking of thunder.
No farther notice was taken of Balzebar, but the crown was placed on the head of Anjah, who now brought forward the Princess Merea, and presented her as his spouse, and their future Queen. The whole procession returned to the palace, in which Anjah was received as the reigning prince. The King, though he recovered sufficiently to recognise his son, remained still too weak in mind to admit of his assuming the reins of government, which he quietly resigned to his heir, and passed a quiet and peaceful old age, cheered by the kind attentions of his Queen and his daughter-in-law, the Princess Merea, to whom he became tenderly attached. As for Balzebar, he returned to private life with a much better grace than many others who have been thrown down from a less exalted position. He was ever an intimate of the palace, and was appointed by the King as “Keeper of the Royal Helmet and Golden Cloak,” a post for which he had before showed himself particularly fitted, and to which he thenceforth, as before, remained faithful. He lived long enough to follow the son and daughter of the Prince and Princess as he had done their father and mother before them. As for Anjah and Merea, they ever retained the good opinion and admiration of their subjects, and bequeathed a prosperous and peaceful kingdom to their heirs.
VIII.
THE WONDERFUL BIRD.
ONCE upon a time an old man felt himself to be dying, and, calling his family (consisting of three sons, named Obed, Mozam, and Sadoc) to his bedside, took leave of them one by one, according to the fashion of the east, and, after recommending to their joint protection an aged uncle, who had long been unable to take care of himself, and bidding them be honest and industrious, he addressed them thus:—“My sons, I leave you in possession of this cottage, its furniture, and a small amount of treasure in gold, the fruits of many years’ labor, and I wish you to remain here like brothers, and work together in amity till the death of your uncle, so that he will not be a burden upon either of you; besides this, I am able, by means of the power which has latterly been given me, to foresee future events, and to predict that to one of you will come good fortune through the means of a wonderful bird, who is to be the cause of this great wealth. To which of you it is to come I cannot determine, nor is it of much importance that you should know; it is only required of you each to do his duty, and leave all the rest to Providence.” Obed and Mozam were delighted to hear this good news, each one secretly thinking himself the fortunate one; but poor Sadoc, who was the youngest, and the most dutiful of the three, was so grieved at the prospect of parting with his dear father, who had always been so kind and indulgent to him, that he thought little about this prophecy, as he sat by the bedside, and closed the eyes that should never again look upon him with the light of life and love.
After his father was dead he sat by his corpse till, overcome by weariness (the result of previous long watching), he fell asleep. His brothers had retired to rest early in the evening, and he had supposed them slumbering for hours before; but about midnight the eldest, Obed, who had not undressed himself, hearing the deep, regular breathing of Sadoc, which assured him that he would not easily awaken, stole softly into the room, and, finding the keys, took the box of money from under the bed, and unlocking it, secreted all the gold that he could find in his pockets, and, taking a small bundle of clothes in his hand, started off as rapidly as possible, leaving the body of his father still unburied in the house.
The next morning, when it was discovered that Obed had gone, and that the strong box had been robbed of all its treasure, the second son, Mozam, was loud in his exclamations against the wickedness and ingratitude of his elder brother; but Sadoc felt so disgraced by his conduct he said hardly a word in his grief, but silently went on with the preparations for his father’s funeral, and had him interred with all the appearance of decency and respect possible, in the absence of the first-born son, he who should have been the principal mourner, and at night retired to rest less sad, from feeling the happy consciousness of having done his duty.
And now it was shown that Mozam was in reality no better than his brother Obed, for no sooner was Sadoc fast asleep in his own bed than the second brother arose and let into the door several men who had been waiting outside, and, with their assistance, loaded a cart with all the effects of the cottage that were movable, and drove off with them to the pawnbrokers, who advanced on them a sum of money, with which he made off, as his brother had done before him. When Sadoc arose in the morning he found every article of furniture missing, with the exception of his own and his uncle’s bed, and a few old worthless pots and pans; and his aged relative was seated in the chimney-corner on an old settle, gazing around with a stare of dismay on the scene of devastation. While Sadoc remained shocked, speechless, he heard a sort of chuckling noise, and, looking to see from whence it proceeded, found that an old speckled hen had stolen a nest in some wool that lay under the seat of his uncle, and was there sitting upon a large number of eggs. Here, thought poor Sadoc, is another mouth to feed, and, going into the granary, picked up a few grains of corn and some seeds which he threw to the hen. He then sat down sadly to devise a plan by which he could get bread for himself and his helpless dependent. Had he been alone there would have been no difficulty; the wide world would have been before him, and, with his energy and perseverance, he could soon have achieved a fortune without the intervention of any wonderful bird, and he must now give up any hopes he might have had of finding it. He felt that his father’s last injunction, to take care of his poor idiot brother, was, now that his elders had both proved themselves unworthy of their trusts, doubly binding upon him, so he went out and hired himself to the first master that he could find, as a common laborer, and toiled hard all day for a few scanty pennies, which bought just bread enough to keep himself and his uncle from actual starvation, and a few crumbs for his old hen. After going on a week or two in this way, he came home one night and found the hen had brought out a large brood of chickens. He had now to work harder to procure them a little food also, on which they seemed to thrive; and as spring advanced, and the warm weather came, the old man used to let them out of the coop, and wandered with them about the meadows, where they picked up worms, grasshoppers, and such seeds as they could find, and they grew through the summer so well, that by the time of the Christmas market, they were as plump as partridges, and half of them sold for quite a little sum of money, which he laid by, and sold the eggs of the remaining ones for enough to pay for their food during winter. In the spring, most of them bringing out large broods, he had quite a lot of chickens for the fall market, and eggs to sell all the summer, so that he found after several seasons that he had money enough—the proceeds of his eggs and chickens—to purchase a little spot of rocky ground close beside his cottage, where he meant his uncle should amuse himself, in picking up stones, and planting a few turnips and cabbages. Now we leave him happy and contented, though in poverty so deep, and see what has become of his brothers, who went off to seek the wonderful bird.
On the night that Obed had stolen away with the gold, when he had reached an eminence just beyond, he looked back on the little cottage, where his father’s body lay, and where his brothers were so peacefully sleeping, and his conscience smote him for a moment, for the wrong which he was doing them; but quickly stifling the voice within, he said to himself, “It is now too late to return and replace the money; I should probably be discovered, while doing it, and then the disgrace would be the same; besides I shall, no doubt, be soon able to give them back ten times the value of that I have taken with me; for when I obtain this wonderful bird, which is to make the fortune of one of us, and as I am the oldest, I feel certain that it is my own, I shall come back again, and enrich them all. I should really do them a greater injustice if I staid at home till this money should be spent, and deprived myself of the means of finding it, than by going now, and making a certainty of securing it.” And thus having succeeded in quieting all scruples, he went on as fast as he was able, till after several days, having gone a long distance, he began to proceed on his course more leisurely, without fear of pursuit. And now his mind began to be more and more upon the wonderful bird, and he listened to all the tales of travelers of the birds of Paradise, and of the desert bird, of the owls that hooted dismally through the woods, and the nightingales that cheered the darkness with their melody. Great flocks of birds passed over his head, eastward, and westward, and southward; some of the most beautiful plumage, but none ever stopped in their flight to point him to the treasure that he longed for, but they soared away out of his sight. At last, after a long time, he heard of a bird, which had been known to do many wonderful things. It was said to have it in its power to foretell future events; had pointed out to many persons the places where they found lost money and goods, and was in all respects a most remarkable fowl. “Now,” thought Obed, when stories of its superior powers were recounted to him, “I am coming at last to the object of my desires; this is the bird by whose means I am to realize the great prediction made by my father, and now I can congratulate myself upon the wisdom of the course which I have pursued, in putting myself in a way to find this marvelous creature. I might have staid at home all my lifetime, and have been no richer, though all this fortune (the secret of which this bird no doubt possesses,) stands waiting for me.” So losing not a single moment, he set off to the place where it was being exhibited. He reached an inn at the town that same night, and made so many inquiries concerning it, as to awaken the attention of all present. Among the rest, stopping at the tavern were two men, who seemed disposed to be very sociable with him. They treated him to drink, and professed to feel a great and sudden friendship for him; they threw him completely off his guard, and before he retired to bed he had told them all about the prophecy of his father, and was silly enough to reveal to them that he carried a bag of money with him. After he left the room, they sat whispering together, and laughing about him, and then calling him a great fool, as he was to be sure, they followed him to bed likewise. Now these two very men belonged to the company that were exhibiting the bird, and were stationed at the inn on purpose to gain all the information that they could about the people in the town, so that they could by means of the bird, convey to them such a knowledge of their own private affairs, as to surprise the credulous at once into a belief of its supernatural powers. They had got all the information they wanted concerning Obed, and early in the morning left the inn, to get the conjurer who managed the bird, in readiness to receive him, while he lay dreaming of being in a world where every thing was turned into gold.
As soon as the hour appointed for the performance of its magical tricks had come, Obed presented himself before the bird. It was a macaw, with brilliant plumage; under its feet was a plate, marked like the dial of a clock; it would walk three times around this, and presently, with one of its toes, point to a particular mark, which the exhibiter pretended to interpret and explain. When Obed stood before it, it began to flutter its wings, and showed great signs of agitation, which was said to be because it was going to predict some great fortune to him. This at the offset so prejudiced Obed in its favor, that he was prepared to believe every word that followed. The bird then walked round the dial three times and pointed to a mark; the exhibiter commenced explaining it. At first, he repeated as much of Obed’s plans and history as the two men had picked up the night before, which gave him, in the course of fifteen minutes, such confidence in its ability, that had the bird told him to go to the bottom of the sea in search of the treasure, he would have been almost stupid enough to have done it; but they told him no such thing, for they were not at all desirous of putting him out of the way till they had got possession of his bag of money.
They told him to wait till night came, and then to go alone to a cave, which they pointed out to him, about half a mile distant from the town, through the woods, where he would find an old hermit, who would meet him, and show him where he could find an immense, treasure. They then dismissed him.