The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
Children's literature
When the sun arrived he declared that he smelled Christian flesh and he
meant to have it for his dinner. But his mother told him such a pitiful
story of the miserable wretch who had lost everything and had come from
far to ask his help that at last he promised to see him.
So the young man came out from his hiding-place and begged the sun to
tell him if in the course of his travels he had not seen somewhere a
palace that had not its like in the whole world, for its laths were of
gold and its tiles of diamond and all the furniture in silver and gold.
And the sun said no, but that perhaps the wind had seen it, for he
entered everywhere and saw things that no one else ever saw, and if
anyone knew where it was it was certainly the wind.
Then the poor young man again set forth as well as his horse could take
him, begging his living as he went, and somehow or other he ended by
reaching the home of the wind. He found there a little old woman busily
occupied in filling great barrels with water. She asked him what had
put it into his head to come there, for her son ate everything he saw,
and that he would shortly arrive quite mad, and that the young man had
better look out. But he answered that he was so unhappy that he had
ceased to mind anything, even being eaten, and then he told her that he
had been robbed of a palace that had not its equal in all the world,
and of all that was in it, and that he had even left his wife and was
wandering over the world until he found it. And that it was the sun who
had sent him to consult the wind. So she hid him under the staircase,
and soon they heard the south wind arrive, shaking the house to its
foundations. Thirsty as he was, he did not wait to drink, but he told
his mother that he smelled the blood of a Christian man, and that she
had better bring him out at once and make him ready to be eaten. But
she bade her son eat and drink what was before him, and said that the
poor young man was much to be pitied, and that the sun had granted him
his life in order that he might consult the Wind. Then she brought out
the young man, who explained how he was seeking for his palace, and
that no man had been able to tell him where it was, so he had come to
the Wind. And he added that he had been shamefully robbed, and that the
laths were of gold and the tiles of diamond, and all the furniture in
silver and gold, and he inquired if the Wind had not seen such a palace
during his wanderings.
And the Wind said yes, and that all that day he had been blowing
backward and forward over it without being able to move one single
tile. “Oh, do tell me where it is,” cried the young man.” “It is a long
way off,” replied the Wind, “on the other side of the Red Sea.” But our
traveler was not discouraged—he had already journeyed too far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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