to your complaints? Have you wrongs? Tell me, and I will right them. Have you sorrows? Make them known and let me soothe them. Do you not know that your King is your servant, and lives but to do you good?”
And the crowd grumbled and muttered, and one voice cried—
“We don’t want to be done good to. We want to enjoy ourselves.”
“I did not know,” said the King, gently. “But now you have spoken I will at once appoint a Minister of Public Enjoyment, and——”
The Magician was watching the crowd, and he saw how the sight of the King’s good face and the sound of his good voice were working on their hearts that had once loved him. Now Negretti sprang forward. “One word, brother!” he cried, and led the King into the shadow of a close-clipped yew-tree walk. The moment they were hidden he caught his brother’s arm and whispered a wicked spell: and the first words of it were in Persian, and the next in Greek, and after that came words in Arabic and Spanish, and the speech of the county of Essex, and the last words of all were “be changed to a stone.”
