"But did he not say I sent him?"
"No, indeed," said Kapchack, for the gnat, not to be outdone, had indeed delivered the fox's message, but had taken the credit of it for himself. "Begone, sir (the fox slunk away); and do you (to his guards) go to the firs and wait for me there." The eight magpies immediately departed, and there was no one left but the weasel.
The king looked down at the guilty traitor; the traitor hung his head. Presently the king said: "Weasel, false and double-tongued weasel, did I not choose you to be my chiefest and most secret counsellor? Did you not know everything? Did I not consult you on every occasion, and were you not promoted to high honour and dignity? And you have repaid me by plotting against my throne, and against my life; the gnat has told me everything, and it is of no avail for you to deny it. You double traitor, false to me and false to those other traitors who met in this very place to conspire against me. It is true you were not among them in person, but why were you not among them? Do you suppose that I am to be deceived for a moment? Wretch that you are. You set them on to plot against me while you kept out of it with clean paws, that you might seize the throne so soon as I was slain. Wretch that you are."
Here the weasel could not endure it any longer, but crawling to the foot of the tree, besought the king with tears in his eyes to do what he would—to order him to instant execution, but not to reproach him with these enormities, which cut him to the very soul. But the more he pleaded, the more angry Kapchack became, and heaped such epithets upon the crouching wretch, and so bitterly upbraided him that at last the weasel could bear it no more, but driven as it were into a corner, turned to bay, and faced the enraged monarch.
He sat up, and looking Kapchack straight in the face, as none but so hardened a reprobate could have done, he said, in a low but very distinct voice: "You have no right to say these things to me, any more than you have to wear the crown! I do not believe you are Kapchack at all—you are an impostor!"
At these words Kapchack became as pale as death, and could not keep his perch upon the pollard, but fluttered down to the ground beside the weasel. He was so overcome that for a moment or two he could not speak. When he found breath, he turned to the weasel and asked him what he meant. The weasel, who had now regained his spirits, said boldly enough that he meant what he said; he did not believe that the king was really Kapchack.
"But I am Kapchack," said the king, trembling, and not knowing how much the weasel knew.
In truth the weasel knew very little, but had only shot a bolt at random from the bow of his suspicions, but he had still a sharper shaft to shoot, and he said: "You are an impostor, for you told La Schach, who has jilted you, that you were not so old as you looked."
"The false creature!" said Kapchack, quite beside himself with rage. In his jealousy of Prince Tchack-tchack, who was so much younger, and had two eyes, he had said this, and now he bitterly repented his vanity. "The false creature!" he screamed, "where is she? I will have her torn to pieces! She shall be pecked limb from limb! Where is she?" he shrieked. "She left the palace yesterday evening, and I have not seen her since."
"She went to the firs with the jay," said the weasel. "He is her old lover, you know. Did you not see how merry he was just now, at the council?"