The Art of Story-Telling, with nearly half a hundred stories

by Julia Darrow Cowles

The only pleasure the court had was to stand and stare at Blanzeflor, for she glowed with a beauty more bright and radiant than all the torchlights in the banqueting hall, and when she bowed and smiled it warmed the heart like the sun in summer.

Now, dreadful stories came to the queen’s ears of how the king would fling people into prison for the smallest offence, or wring their necks like chickens; but alas! what could she do in the matter? She, herself, sat like a prisoner in the royal castle, and never was she allowed to go out on foot but only on horseback followed by a royal retinue and closely guarded.

It happened one day, however, that the queen was in church—there at least the king could not prevent her from going—and as she knelt in prayer before the high altar, she noticed how meanly and poorly God’s holy altar was adorned.

Then the queen wept bitterly and said to herself: “I drink out of golden goblets, and silver torches are lighted on my table, but upon God’s altar the candlesticks are of pewter and the velvet cloth which covers the Lord’s table is all faded and patched. I cannot bear to see it.” And thereupon she slowly and carefully unclasped her necklace, drew off seven of the largest pearls and laid them upon the altar.

That evening she had her hair combed back and fastened in a knot upon her neck, so that the king might not see that the pearls were missing.

Now it happened one night that the queen lay awake. She could not sleep because she thought she heard strange sounds of sighing and sobbing out in the night. It all sounded so piteous and heartrending that the queen wept upon her silken pillow. “Here I lie upon my bed of satin,” she sighed, “whilst outside, perhaps little children go barefooted in the snow. I cannot bear to think of it.”

There was a sound of twittering and chirping, and now she saw how one little half-frozen bird after another flew up and tapped upon the window-pane with its beak, in search of a chance grain of corn.

“Alas, alas!” sighed the queen, “I eat roast venison out of a golden dish and drink mulled wine, and there outside the poor little birds starve to death in the cold. I cannot bear to think of it;” and the next day she begged leave of the king to collect the crumbs after meals and to place them in a basket outside her window for the birds.

Well, of course the king thought it was asking a good deal, but as the queen never begged for anything for herself, and the crumbs were, after all, of not much use for anything else, he allowed her to take them, and from that day the queen always sat and rolled bread between her white fingers during meals, and crumbled one little piece after another into little bits, whilst she chatted and jested with the king, so that he might not pay any heed to what she was doing, and when she rose from the table she would sign to her page, and then he would brush all the crumbs into a small basket which was hung outside the queen’s chamber window, and at sunrise she was always awakened by the chirping of the small hungry birds when they came to empty her basket.