The green bird

The green bird. Juan Valera

There was, in a very remote epoch from the one in which we live, a powerful king, extremely loved by his vassals and possessor of a very fertile, extensive and populous kingdom in the regions of the East. This king had immense treasures and gave splendid feasts. His court was attended by the gentlest ladies and the most discreet and valiant knights that then existed in the world. His army was numerous and hardy. Their ships sailed as if in triumph across the ocean. The parks and gardens, where he used to hunt and enjoy himself, were marvelous for their grandeur and luxuriance and for the copy of vermin and birds that fed and lived in them.
But what shall we say of their palaces and of what was enclosed in their palaces, whose magnificence exceeds all pondering? There richest furniture, thrones of gold and silver, and china, which was then less common than now; there dwarfs, giants, jesters, and other monsters for the pleasure and entertainment of His Majesty; there deep and eminent cooks and confectioners, who took care of his bodily food, and there no less deep and eminent philosophers, poets and jurisconsults, who took care to give pasture to his spirit, who attended his private council, who decided the most arduous questions of law, who sharpened and exercised their wits with charades and logogriffs, and who sang the glories of the dynasty in colossal epics.
The vassals of this king rightly called him the Venturesome. Everything went from good to better during his reign. Her life had been a tissue of happiness, whose brilliance was marred only with a black shadow of sorrow by the early death of the queen, a very complete and beautiful person, whom Her Majesty had loved with all her heart. Imagine, reader, how he would mourn her, and even more so, since he was the innocent cause of her death, due to the same deep affection he had for her.
The stories of that country tell that the king had already been married for seven years without succession, although he vehemently desired it, when wars broke out in a neighboring country. The king departed with his troops; but first he bade farewell to the lady queen with much affection. The latter, giving him a hug, said in his ear:
-Don’t tell anyone so they won’t laugh if my hopes don’t come true; but I think I’m pregnant.

Fragment of the work