Fairy Tales from Spain

by José Muñoz Escámez

The emperor in person, full of ire, went out into the ante-room and there met the disturber. It was the imperial prince himself, who was rolling on a sofa unable to restrain his outbursts of laughter. The emperor was delighted to see the sadness, which had so alarmed him, dissipated so unexpectedly. To what was this extraordinary event due?

The prince told him. "On seeing those unhappy invalids run out so quickly, I asked the quack the cause of their flight, and the latter told me with a wealth of detail."

It had amused him so much that the black melancholy which was undermining his existence was dissipated.

"You will remain with my son," said the emperor to the quack, "not as a doctor but as a friend. You are a witty man and wit deserves to be rewarded."

THE DRAWING SCHOOL

Once there was a boy so fond of spoiling walls, doors, and windows with grotesque drawings that there was no way of stopping him from practising his silly cleverness wherever he was. And I say silly, because from his hand came forth some primitive dolls, with heads as round as a billiard ball, eyes and nose forming a sort of cork, and arms and legs like thin thread, terminating in hands and feet which required an inscription in order not to be taken for scourges.

One afternoon he approached the very wall of the school, and there, with the greatest coolness, commenced to draw with a piece of charcoal some of his strange figures. Perico, for so the boy was called, traced the figure of the head of a puppet, made the eyes and the mouth, and, oh, how strange! the doll began to wink and open its mouth and put its tongue out like anything.

Perico was not timid, and therefore the moving of the eyes and mouth did not startle him, and so without paying attention continued with his sketching the arms and the rest of the body. But he had hardly finished when the doll's hand came out and gave him such a tremendous knock that it made him lose his balance, and he would even have fallen to the ground if another blow with the other hand and on the opposite cheek had not kept him on his feet. And as if this was not enough, the legs sprang out of the wall, and two vigorous kicks that Perico received in the pit of the stomach quite convinced him that there was one too many, and he was the one. Thus convinced he was about to run away when the whole doll came away from the stone, and at a bound leapt on his shoulders and began to bite him in the back of the head.

Perico ran towards his house like a greyhound, feeling on his neck the weight of that unexpected load, when the latter grew heavy, as if, instead of a charcoal picture, he had to deal with a bronze statue.

The poor little boy sank to the ground, and on getting up saw at his side, in the middle of the square, the doll in question, as tall as a giant and changed into a motionless iron statue.