cess.'

'Am I not here?' interrupted Turritella. 'Here is the ring you gave me.
With whom did you talk at the little window, if it was not with me?'

'What!' cried the King angrily, 'have I been altogether deceived and
deluded? Where is my chariot? Not another moment will I stay here.'

'Oho,' said the Fairy, 'not so fast.' And she touched his feet, which
instantly became as firmly fixed to the floor as if they had been nailed
there.

'Oh! do whatever you like with me,' said the King; 'you may turn me to
stone, but I will marry no one but Fiordelisa.'

And not another word would he say, though the Fairy scolded and
threatened, and Turritella wept and raged for twenty days and twenty
nights. At last the Fairy Mazilla said furiously (for she was quite
tired out by his obstinacy), 'Choose whether you will marry my
goddaughter, or do penance seven years for breaking your word to her.'

And then the King cried gaily: 'Pray do whatever you like with me, as
long as you deliver me from this ugly scold!'

'Scold!' cried Turritella angrily. 'Who are you, I should like to know,
that you dare to call me a scold? A miserable King who breaks his word,
and goes about in a chariot drawn by croaking frogs out of a marsh!'

'Let us have no more of these insults,' cried the Fairy. 'Fly from that
window, ungrateful King, and for seven years be a Blue Bird.' As she
spoke the King's face altered, his arms turned to wings, his feet to
little crooked black claws. In a moment he had a slender body like a
bird, covered with shining blue feathers, his beak was like ivory, his
eyes were bright as stars, and a crown of white feathers adorned his
head.

As soon as the transformation was complete the King uttered a dolorous
cry and fled through the open window, pursued by the mocking laughter of
Turritella and the Fairy Mazilla. He flew on until he reached the
thickest part of the wood, and there, perched upon a cypress tree, he
bewailed his miserable fate. 'Alas! in seven years who knows what may
happen to my darling Fiordelisa!' he said. 'Her cruel stepmother may
have married her to someone else before I am myself again, and then what
good will life be to me?'

In the meantime the Fairy Mazilla had sent Turritella back to the Queen,
who was all anxiety to know how the wedding had gone off. But when her
daughter arrived and told her all that had happened she was terribly
angry, and of course all her wrath fell upon Fiordelisa. 'She shall