of his best friend. "Approach," he cried, "this tree, and behold the wretched king you love, bathed in his blood!" The Enchanter, much surprised, looked about him everywhere, without seeing any one. "I am a Blue Bird," exclaimed the king, in a feeble and plaintive voice. At these words the Enchanter found him, without more trouble, in his little nest. Another person might have been more astonished, but he was versed in every portion of the necromantic art. It cost him but a few words to stanch the blood which was fast flowing; and with some herbs he found in the wood, and over which he muttered a short spell, he cured the king as perfectly as if he had never been wounded.
He then begged he would inform him through what adventure he had become a bird, and who had wounded him so cruelly. The king satisfied his curiosity, and told him that it must have been Florine who had revealed the amorous mystery of the secret visits he paid her, and who, to make her peace with the queen, had consented to have the cypress-tree filled with the daggers and razors which had hacked him almost to pieces. He exclaimed a thousand times against the treachery of the princess, and said he should have been happy if he had died before he had known the wickedness of her heart. The Magician inveighed against her, and against all the sex: he advised the king to forget her. "What a misfortune it would be," said he, "if you could continue to love the ungrateful girl! After what she has been guilty of towards you, one has everything to fear from her." The Blue Bird could not remain long of that opinion; he still loved Florine too dearly: and the Enchanter, who knew his real sentiments, notwithstanding the pains he took to conceal them, said to him gaily,—
"Crush'd by Fortune's cruel blow,
Vainly Reason's voice is heard;
We but listen to our woe,
Deaf to sage or soothing word.
Leave old Time his work to do;
All things have their sunny side;
But till he turns it to our view,
Nought but darkness is descried."
The Royal Bird admitted the truth of the remark, and begged his friend to take him home and to put him in a cage, where he would be safe from a cat's paw, or any murderous
