Fairy Tales from Spain (Illustrated)

Short Stories from Spain: Tales For Children From Many Lands

CONTENTS

Khing-Chu-Fu
The City of Fortune
The Garden of Health
Carabi! Carabo!
The Author of the Wall
The Devil's Tournament
The Treasure of the Dragon
The Man with the Two Faces
The Treachery of Micifuf
Trompetilla and Trompetin
The Quack Doctor
The Drawing School
The Man with the Nose
The Island of Brilliants
The Judgment of the Flowers
The Three Questions
The Captain's Exploit
The Topsy-Turvy World
Don Suero the Proud

KHING-CHU-FU

Khing-Chu-Fu, Empress of China, was doing her hair when her maids who, on their knees witnessed the delicate operation of artistically arranging the imperial hair of her majesty, burst into cries of admiration scarcely repressed by the etiquette of the palace.
"What is the matter?" Khing-Chu-Fu deigned to ask, turning her head.
"Ah, lady!" exclaimed the maids in a chorus. "Brahma has deigned to favour you with a sign of his protection."
"And what is that?" inquired the empress.
"A silver thread which appears amidst your beautiful hair."
"That is to say I have a white hair."
"So it is called amongst simple mortals, but in the Daughter of the Sun they are threads of silver, to which poets spontaneously sing verses under the penalty of being quartered like dogs."
"Let the seers and astrologers come at this very moment. I must know what this foretells."
Five minutes afterwards the royal boudoir was full of moustached men with eye-protectors, who, kneeling, waited to be consulted.
"To-day a white hair has appeared in my head!" exclaimed the empress.
The seers tugged at their moustaches in desperation, leaving the floor covered with hairs.
"Hail!" said the eldest, "Daughter of the Sun, who hast all the brilliance of the diamond, the beauty of the iris, the wisdom of Confucius, and the sweetness of the honey! This silver thread foretells a terrible calamity in the empire. Know that Brahma has decreed—it horrifies me to say so!—that one of your imperial teeth will commence to ache."
Terror was depicted on every countenance, and all who witnessed this scene pulled their pigtails, a sign of terrible desperation among the Chinese. The pages and maids groaned in chorus; the mandarins sat down on their hats, passing the time by eating tangerine oranges and rubbing their eyes with the peel. The news spread into the city, and very soon the whole of Pekin came out into the streets and places weeping salt tears over the terrible aching of the too—, for simple subjects were forbidden to pronounce completely the names of the imperial members or other parts of their illustrious sovereign's body.
"The too—, the too—!" shouted the maddened people, making Pekin seem like an immense enclosure of bulls: and as if to make the illusion still more complete, there were not lacking people who produced cattle-bells with which the faithful are called to the pagoda—the church of the Chinese.
In those days there came to Pekin a young Spaniard, a native of Seville, a sharp and witty youth, who had arrived at the capital of the Chinese Empire after having wandered over half the world on foot, without money and without shame. He was thought to be very wide-awake and even clever, and all because he had been a groom and bull-ring attendant in his own town where he was nicknamed Pinchauvas.
Well, our Pinchauvas was astonished to see the desperation of those Chinese and above all when he heard the sound of too—! too—! which made him fear he was going to meet a drove of bulls. In case it was so, he thought it better to climb up to the first window which came to hand.
He had hardly reached the window, when from the interior of the house came forth a hand, and then an arm, which, catching hold of him firmly by the neck, pulled him up and made him enter the house in a most original way.
The arm was that of a palace guard who, on seeing our Sevillian climbing up to a window of one of the imperial rooms, detained him in order to deliver him up to justice.

Fairy Tales from Spain (Illustrated)