ned with a great cavalcade, and finding
a cask of caviar where he had left a pan of milk, he stood for awhile
beside himself with amazement. At length he said, "Who has made this
great blot of ink on the fine paper upon which I thought to write the
brightest days of my life? Who has hung with mourning this newly
white-washed house, where I thought to spend a happy life? How comes it
that I find this touchstone, where I left a mine of silver, that was to
make me rich and happy?" But the crafty slave, observing the Prince's
amazement, said, "Do not wonder, my Prince; for me turned by a wicked
spell from a white lily to a black coal."

The poor Prince, seeing that there was no help for the mischief,
drooped his head and swallowed this pill; and bidding the slave come
down from the tree, he ordered her to be clothed from head to foot in
new dresses. Then sad and sorrowful, cast-down and woe-begone, he took
his way back with the slave to his own country, where the King and
Queen, who had gone out six miles to meet them, received them with the
same pleasure as a prisoner feels at the announcement of a sentence of
hanging, seeing the fine choice their foolish son had made, who after
travelling about so long to find a white dove had brought home at last
a black crow. However, as they could do no less, they gave up the crown
to their children, and placed the golden tripod upon that face of coal.

Now whilst they were preparing splendid feasts and banquets, and the
cooks were busy plucking geese, killing little pigs, flaying kids,
basting the roast meat, skimming pots, mincing meat for dumplings,
larding capons, and preparing a thousand other delicacies, a beautiful
dove came flying to the kitchen window, and said,

"O cook of the kitchen, tell me, I pray,
What the King and the slave are doing to-day."

The cook at first paid little heed to the dove; but when she returned a
second and a third time, and repeated the same words, he ran to the
dining-hall to tell the marvellous thing. But no sooner did the lady
hear this music than she gave orders for the dove to be instantly
caught and made into a hash. So the cook went, and he managed to catch
the dove, and did all that the slave had commanded. And having scalded
the bird in order to pluck it, he threw the water with the feathers out
from a balcony on to a garden-bed, on which, before three days had
passed, there sprang up a beautiful citron-tree, which quickly grew t