into the air; then God sent one of his numberless angels
against the ship. The wicked prince showered thousands of bullets upon
him, but they rebounded from his shining wings and fell down like
ordinary hailstones. One drop of blood, one single drop, came out of
the white feathers of the angel's wings and fell upon the ship in
which the prince sat, burnt into it, and weighed upon it like
thousands of hundredweights, dragging it rapidly down to the earth
again; the strong wings of the eagles gave way, the wind roared
round the prince's head, and the clouds around--were they formed by
the smoke rising up from the burnt cities?--took strange shapes,
like crabs many, many miles long, which stretched their claws out
after him, and rose up like enormous rocks, from which rolling
masses dashed down, and became fire-spitting dragons.

The prince was lying half-dead in his ship, when it sank at last
with a terrible shock into the branches of a large tree in the wood.

"I will conquer God!" said the prince. "I have sworn it: my will
must be done!"

And he spent seven years in the construction of wonderful ships to
sail through the air, and had darts cast from the hardest steel to
break the walls of heaven with. He gathered warriors from all
countries, so many that when they were placed side by side they
covered the space of several miles. They entered the ships and the
prince was approaching his own, when God sent a swarm of gnats--one
swarm of little gnats. They buzzed round the prince and stung his face
and hands; angrily he drew his sword and brandished it, but he only
touched the air and did not hit the gnats. Then he ordered his
servants to bring costly coverings and wrap him in them, that the
gnats might no longer be able to reach him. The servants carried out
his orders, but one single gnat had placed itself inside one of the
coverings, crept into the prince's ear and stung him. The place
burnt like fire, and the poison entered into his blood. Mad with pain,
he tore off the coverings and his clothes too, flinging them far away,
and danced about before the eyes of his ferocious soldiers, who now
mocked at him, the mad prince, who wished to make war with God, and
was overcome by a single little gnat.

THE WILD SWANS

Far away in the land to which the swallows fly when it is
winter, dwelt a king who had eleven sons, and one daughter, named
Eliza. The eleven brothers were princes, and each went to school
with a s