o a troop of black crows, and _this_ time their feathers
are lasting still.

(From _Contes Armeniens_. Par Frederic Macler.)

_THE PUNISHMENT OF THE FAIRY GANGANA_

Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who ruled over a country
so small that you could easily walk round it in one day. They were
both very good, simple people; not very wise, perhaps, but anxious to
be kind to everybody; and this was often a mistake, for the king
allowed all his subjects to talk at once, and offer advice upon the
government of the kingdom as well as upon private matters. And the end
of it all was, that it was very difficult to get any laws made, and,
still more, to get anyone to obey them.

Now, no traveller ever passed through the kingdom without inquiring
how it came to be so small. And this was the reason. As soon as
Petaldo (for that was the king's name) had been born, his father and
mother betrothed him to the niece of their friend the fairy
Gangana--if she should ever have one. But as the years passed on, and
Gangana was still without a niece, the young prince forgot all about
his destined bride, and when he was twenty-five he secretly married
the beautiful daughter of a rich farmer, with whom he had fallen
violently in love.

When the fairy heard the news she fell into a violent rage, and
hurried off to tell the king. The old man thought in his heart that
his son had waited quite long enough; but he did not dare to say so,
lest some dreadful spell might be thrown over them all, and they
should be changed into birds or snakes, or, worst of all, into
stones. So, much against his will, he was obliged to disinherit the
young man, and to forbid him to come to court. Indeed, he would have
been a beggar had it not been for the property his wife had had given
her by the farmer, which the youth obtained permission to erect into a
kingdom.

Most princes would have been very angry at this treatment, especially
as the old king soon died, and the queen was delighted to reign in his
place. But Petaldo was a contented young man, and was quite satisfied
with arranging his tiny court on the model of his father's, and having
a lord chamberlain, and a high steward and several gentlemen in
attendance; while the young queen appointed her own ladies-in-waiting
and maids of honour. He likewise set up a mint to coin money, and
chose a seneschal as head of the five policemen who kept order in the
capital and punished the boys who were