“If they be pleasant and amusing, do tell them at once, otherwise leave them for later. Dark concerns bore me immensely.”
And he sat in his armchair, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, which hung out loose through a slit in his robes.
“No, father,” answered the Prince. “They are neither pleasant nor amusing. Yet you must hear them.”
The King shooed him away with a gesture of his hand.
“Later, you’ll tell me everything then. Come here yourself, now, Cunningson, and tell me what might be the business of these two basket-bearing men.”
The High Chancellor drew nearer and bowed.
“These are the two equerries whom I had sent last week to the neighbouring kingdoms,” he explained. “They have returned at last, and bring the answers of the rulers, your royal relatives.”
“Bid them approach,” ordered the King.
“Polydorus!” called out the High Chancellor.
The first equerry set down his basket and knelt before his sovereign.
“My lord,” he said, “I went to His Majesty your Royal Cousin and told him all that His Excellency the High Chancellor had commanded me to say. I had barely spoken the first words, and he threw insults at me, threatened to have me hanged and thrown to his dogs to be devoured by them. He then had me sent for again, and asked me many questions about the palace and about Your Majesty. In the end he told me to take this basket and to bring it to you, this being, however, the last gift he will send to you, for he is, he said, building ships and buying swords, and has no florins to spare to send abroad.”
The King blazed up, was dismayed and then became furious.
“The impudence of him!” he thundered, menacing his invisible relative with his clenched fist. “He is building ships and buying swords, or so he claims! Let him just dare say so once more, and I shall pour into his kingdom an army of a hundred thousand, and I shall send down the river my colossal fleet, so that he will be stunned with terror…”
Then, suddenly changing tone:
“Uncover the basket, Cunningson,” he continued, “and see if there is anything good to eat inside. This talk about business has given me an appetite, and my throat is parched.”
Cunningson unpicked the string with which the cover had been sewn onto the basket, opened it, and proffered it to the King; he, with great haste, pushed aside some stalks of hay and revealed a tiny basket containing a few eggs.
“What are these?!” he bellowed peevishly.
“These are eggs, my lord,” said the High Chancellor very respectfully.
“I can see that, you idiot! I am not asking you to tell me what they are called!.. Empty out the hay, and look underneath. There must be more things, a hidden treasure perhaps…”
The High Chancellor took out the basket of eggs, set it down beside him and carefully fumbled through the hay.
But he found nothing.
“You are nothing but a nincompoop!” said the King uneasily. “I am certain that I shall find the treasure myself.”
And kneeling beside the basket, he plunged half inside it.
In the meantime, and seeing that everyone’s attention was turned upon the gift of the King the Royal Cousin, the dark-haired maid-in-waiting drew stealthily nearer, and, grabbing some eggs, shoved them in her pocket.
The Prince, standing cross-armed nearby, saw this, but he did not speak. He gazed at the scene with deeply felt disgust.
Nothing else could be found in the basket, and the King sat back in his armchair, sulky and snappish.
“You there, come here as well,” he said to the second equerry. “Tell me how you fared at the palace of the King my Royal Uncle.”
The equerry Polycarpus approached with his basket, and, as Polydorus had done before him, knelt in front of the King.
“My lord, when the King your Royal Uncle heard all that His Excellency the High Chancellor had bid me say, he smiled, and asked me to wait outside while he took counsel with his jester, who is, he says, his best advisor; he wanted to decide what he might send you, which would be of the greatest benefit to you. He then sent for me and gave me this sealed hamper and a letter that I have brought to you.”
“Hand it over,” said the King, greatly pleased. “He at least has royal manners!”
He took the letter, opened it, perched his spectacles securely on the bridge of his nose, and began to read it out:
Most Illustrious King and Nephew,
I have been informed of your news with great joy, and also that things are not going so very well in that kingdom of yours. And thus I now finally have the opportunity of being of good use to you, and of sending you a gift. My reasoning is that if I send you golden florins, you shall spend them, and they will run out. If, on the other hand, I send you things to eat, whether cooked or uncooked, they shall be eaten, and again all too swiftly consumed. If I send you clothes, with time they will become threadbare. So, then, I have sent you a gift which you shall keep for ever, a gift proportionate to your worth, most illustrious King and Nephew, such a gift, that upon looking at it you shall feel instantly how great my esteem is for you, and you will also realize how significant your existence is to the rest of the world.
As ever,
The King your Royal Uncle
“There! This is a man!” cried the King excitedly. “See a letter written with courteousness and good sense! Proportionate, he writes, to my worth, do all of you hear this well? What do you stand there for, Cunningson, you nincompoop? Why don’t you open up the basket?”
Cunningson cut the strings and uncovered a parcel wrapped in a red silk scarf, intricately worked with gold and silver patterns.
The red colour caught the eye of the Queen, who had remained indifferent until then to all the goings-on.
She got up hurriedly, abandoning her glass shards, and ran to the King.
“Oh, how lovely, how dazzlingly flamboyant!” she said. “You keep the gift, my king, but do give me the scarf so I may make a pretty bonnet.”
“Have it you shall, my lady,” said the King with joy. “I will give you anything you desire now! Cunningson, place the parcel on the table. Indeed, I wish to open it myself.”
He secured his crown onto his head, wrapped himself with great dignity in his discoloured mantle, and drew near the table.
With enormous care, he undid the knots of the scarf. A parchment covered the gift, and the King read out pompously and thunderously the words written upon it with gold ink:
If you understand my meaning, it shall be to your benefit.
“Careful!” cautioned the King. “You see that there is a secret meaning concealed in here. To me has been bestowed the glory of discovering it. Move aside!”
And with a gesture of great majesty he lifted the parchment — unveiling a donkey’s head with a tin crown between its pointed ears!
A general guffaw broke out around the table. The King alone remained speechless, his mouth agape, his eyes bulging, while the Queen, seizing the scarf, was hastening to her mirror to wrap it over her head.
The Prince too had drawn closer, his face grown ashen, looking now at his father, and now at the donkey’s head. Then suddenly, hiding his face in his hands, he leant against the windowsill and burst into tears.
The King heard his son’s sobs in the midst of everyone else’s laughter. He turned around, his face transformed.
“Who weeps?” he asked.
His eyes fell upon the young man, standing against the window, and with shaky steps he advanced towards him, placing his hand heavily upon his child’s shoulder.
“You,” he said, “you are truly noble! You felt the insult hurled against your father. Blessed may you be!”