ow much I may
love you, dearest, I shall box your jaws!"

"None the less, what I was going to say is true," declared Manuel, "and
if only you would believe it, matters would go more smoothly between
us."

[Illustration]

XI

Magic of the Apsarasas

Now the tale tells how, to humor Alianora, Count Manuel applied himself
to the magic of the Apsarasas. He went with the Princess to a high
secret place, and Alianora, crying sweetly, in the famous old fashion,
"Torolix, Ciccabau, Tio, Tio, Torolililix!" performed the proper
incantations, and forthwith birds came multitudinously from all quarters
of the sky, in a descending flood of color and flapping and whistling
and screeching.

The peacock screamed, "With what measure thou judgest others, thou shalt
thyself be judged."

Sang the nightingale, "Contentment is the greatest happiness."

The turtle-dove called, "It were better for some created things that
they had never been created."

The peewit chirped, "He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none
for himself."

The stork said huskily, "The fashion of this world passeth away."

And the wail of the eagle was, "Howsoever long life may be, yet its
inevitable term is death."

"Now that is virtually what I said," declared the stork, "and you are a
bold-faced and bald-headed plagiarist."

"And you," replied the eagle, clutching the stork's throat, "are a dead
bird that will deliver no more babies."

But Dom Manuel tugged at the eagle's wing, and asked him if he really
meant that to hold good before this Court of the Birds. And when the
infuriated eagle opened his cruel beak, and held up one murderous claw,
to make solemn oath that indeed he did mean it, and would show them too,
the stork very intelligently flew away.

"I shall not ever forget your kindness, Count Manuel," cried the stork,
"and do you remember that the customary three wishes are always yours
for the asking."

"And I too am grateful," said the abashed eagle,--"yes, upon the whole,
I am grateful, for if I had killed that long-legged pest it would have
been in contempt of the court, and they would have set me to hatching
red cockatrices. Still, his reproach was not unfounded, and I must think
up a new cry."

So the eagle perched on a rock, and said tentatively, "There is such a
thing as being too proud to fight." He shook his bald head disgustedly,
and tried, "The only enduring peace is a peace without victory," but
that did not s