Accordingly the Second Musician took his leave with great humility, and spent all that night and the following day plunged in the deepest thought. As soon as the twenty-four hours had elapsed he again appeared before the King, who was awaiting him impatiently, sitting on the music-stool. “Well?” said the King. “Quite well, O King, I thank you,” replied the Second Musician, “though somewhat fatigued by my labors.” “Pshaw!” said the King impatiently. “Have you found a way of teaching me to sing?” “I have, O King,” replied the Second Musician solemnly; “but it is not an easy way. Nevertheless it is the only one.” The King assured him that money was no object, and begged him to unfold his plan. “In order to learn to sing,” said the Second Musician, “you must eat a pie composed of all the singing-birds in the world. In this way only can the difficulty of your having no natural ear for music be overcome. If a single bird is omitted, or if you do not consume the whole pie, the charm will have no effect. I leave Your Majesty to judge of the difficulty of the undertaking.” Difficulty? The King would not admit that there was such a word. He instantly summoned his Chief Huntsman, and ordered him to send other huntsmen to every country in the world, to bring back a specimen of every kind of singing-bird. Accordingly, as there were sixty countries in the world at that time, sixty huntsmen started off immediately, fully armed and equipped. After they were gone, the King, who was very impatient, summoned his Wise Men, and bade them look in all the books, and find out how many kinds of singing-birds there were in the world. The Wise Men all put their spectacles on their noses, and their noses into their books, and after studying a long time, and adding up on their slates the number of birds described in each book, they found that there were in all nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine varieties of singing-birds. They made their report to the King, and he was rather troubled by it; for he remembered that the Second Musician had said he must eat every morsel of the pie himself, or the charm would have no effect. It would be a _very_ large pie, he thought, with nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine birds in it. “The only way,” he said to himself, “will be for me to eat as little as possible until the huntsmen come back, then I shall be very hungry. I have never been _very_ hungry in my life, so there is no knowing how much I could eat if I were.” So the King ate nothing from one week’s end to another, except bread and dripping; and by the time the huntsmen returned he was so thin that it was really shocking.