carried him home in order to roast him for
supper.

"Quick!" said he to his wife on entering the house, "give me some
boiling water; here is a sinner to be punished."

"Pardon, pardon, Madame Water!" cried Coquerico. "Oh, good and gentle
water, the best and purest thing in the world, do not scald me, I pray
you!"

"Did you have pity on me when I implored your aid, ungrateful wretch?"
answered the water, boiling with indignation. And with a single gush
it inundated him from head to foot, and left not a bit of down on his
body.

The unhappy Coquerico stripped of all his feathers, the soldier took
him and laid him on the gridiron.

"Oh, fire, do not burn me!" cried he, in an agony of terror. "Oh,
beautiful and brilliant fire, the brother of the sun and the cousin of
the diamond, spare an unhappy creature; restrain thy ardor, and soften
thy flame; do not roast me!"

"Did you have pity on me when I implored your aid, ungrateful wretch?"
answered the fire, and, fiercely blazing with anger, in an instant it
burnt Coquerico to a coal.

The soldier, seeing his roast chicken in this deplorable condition,
took him by the leg and threw him out of the window. The wind bore the
unhappy fowl to a dunghill, where it left him for a moment.

"Oh, wind," murmured Coquerico, who still breathed, "oh, kindly
zephyr, protecting breeze, behold me cured of my vain follies. Let me
rest on the paternal dunghill."

"Let you rest!" roared the wind. "Wait, and I will teach you how I
treat ingrates." And with one blast it sent him so high in the air
that, as he fell back, he was transfixed by a steeple.

There St. Peter was awaiting him. With his own hand he nailed him to
the highest steeple in Rome, where he is still shown to travelers.
However high placed he may be, all despise him because he turns with
the slightest wind; black, dried up, stripped of his feathers, and
beaten by the rain, he is no longer called Coquerico, but Weathercock,
and thus expiates, and must expiate eternally, his disobedience,
vanity, and wickedness.

KING BIZARRE and PRINCE CHARMING

OR, THE ART OF GOVERNING MEN

A TALE OF ALL NATIONS

[Illustration:]

I

KING BIZARRE AND PRINCE CHARMING

In the kingdom of Wild Oats, a happy country, a land blessed of
Heaven, where the men are always right and the women never wrong,
there lived long ago a king who thought of nothing but the happiness
of his kingdom, and who, it is said, never was dull for