‘We all three flew high in the air: a hunter saw us and shot an arrow; it struck our friend, and singing her farewell, like a dying swan, she slowly sank, in the midst of a forest lake. There we buried her, near the shore of the lake, under a fragrant weeping-birch. But we took our revenge! We bound fire under the wings of a swallow which had built under the hunter’s thatched roof! The thatch caught; the house blazed up! He was burned in it, and the light shone over the lake as far as the drooping birch tree under which she is buried. She will never come back to the land of Egypt.’
And so they both wept; and the father-stork, when he heard it, chattered with his beak till it rattled again.
‘Lies and make-up!’ said he. ‘I have a great mind to drive my beak into their hearts.’
‘And break it off!’ said mother-stork. ‘And what good would that do? Think first of yourself and your own family; everything else is of no consequence!’
‘However, I will seat myself on the edge of the open court in the morning, when all the learned doctors are met to talk about the illness. Perhaps they will come a little nearer the truth.’
And the learned doctors came together, and talked and talked all about, so that the stork could not make head or tail of it—nor did anything come of it for the sickness, or for the daughter in the moor; but, nevertheless, we shall be glad to hear something about it, for we are obliged to listen to a great deal.
But now it will be a very good thing to learn what had gone before this meeting, in order to understand the story better, for at least we know as much as father-stork.
‘Love brings life! The highest love supports the highest life! Only through love will he be able to secure the preservation of his life!’ was what they said; and very wisely and well said it was, according to the learned.
‘That’s a pretty thought!’ said father-stork.
‘I don’t rightly understand it!’ said mother-stork, ‘and it isn’t my fault, but the expressions! However, be that as it may, I’ve something else to think about!’