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 seem to content him either. Afterward he cried out, "All persons who oppose me have pygmy minds," and "If everybody does not do exactly as I order, the heart of the world will be broken": and many other foolish things he repeated, and shook his head over, for none of these axioms pleased the eagle, and he no longer admired the pedagogue who had invented them. So in his worried quest for a saying sufficiently orotund and meaningless to content his ethics, and to be hailed with convenience as a great moral principle, the eagle forgot all about Count Manuel: but the stork did not forget, because in the eyes of the stork the life of the stork is valuable. The other birds uttered various such sentiments as have been recorded, and all these, they told Manuel, were accredited sorceries. The big yellow-haired boy did not dispute it, he rarely disputed anything: but the droop to that curious left eye of his was accentuated, and he admitted to Alianora that he wondered if such faint-hearted smug little truths were indeed the height of wisdom, outside of religion and public speaking. Then he asked which was the wisest of the birds, and they told him the Zhar-Ptitza, whom others called the Fire-Bird.