"We had flown all three high up in the air when a sportsman saw us, and shot at us with his arrow. It struck our young friend; and, slowly singing her farewell song, she sank like a dying swan down into the midst of the lake in the wood. There, on its banks, under a fragrant weeping birch tree, we buried her. But we took a just revenge: we bound fire under the wings of the swallow that built under the sportman's thatched roof. It kindled--his house was soon in flames--he was burned within it--and the flames shone as far over the sea as to the drooping birch, where she is now earth within the earth. Alas! never will she return to the land of Egypt."
And they both wept bitterly; and the old stork-father, when he heard it, rubbed his bill until it was quite sore.
"Lies and deceit!" he cried. "I should like, above all things, to run my beak into their breasts."
"And break it off," said the stork-mother; "you would look remarkably well then. Think first of yourself, and the interests of your own family; everything else is of little consequence."
"I will, however, place myself upon the edge of the open cupola to-morrow, when all the learned and the wise are to assemble to take the case of the sick man into consideration: perhaps they may then arrive a little nearer to the truth."
And the learned and the wise met together, and talked much, deeply, and profoundly of which the stork could make nothing at all; and, sooth to say, there was no result obtained from all this talking, either for the invalid or for his daughter in "the wild morass;" yet, nevertheless, it was all very well to listen to--one _must_ listen to a great deal in this world.
But now it were best, perhaps, for us to hear what had happened formerly. We shall then be better acquainted with the story--at least, we shall know as much as the stork-father did.
"Love bestows life; the highest love bestows the highest life; it is only through love that his life can be saved," was what had been said; and it was amazingly wisely and well said, the learned declared.
"It is a beautiful thought," said the stork-father.
"I don't quite comprehend it," said the stork-mother, "but that is not my fault--it is the fault of the thought; though it is all one to me, for I have other things to think upon."