At that moment the third queen, Moon, left her room to go to the
king. And as she moved through the noiseless night, she clearly
heard in a distant part of the palace the sound of pestles grinding
grain. And she cried: "Oh, oh! It will kill me!" She wrung her
hands and sat down in agony in the hall. But her servants returned
and led her to her room, where she took to her bed and wept. And
when the servants asked what the matter was, she tearfully showed
her hands with bruises on them, like two lilies with black bees
clinging to them. So they went and told the king. And he came in
great distress, and asked his dear wife about it. She showed her
hands and spoke, though she suffered: "My dear, when I heard the
sound of the pestles, these bruises came." Then the king made
them give her a cooling plaster of sandal-paste and other things.

And the king thought: "One of them was wounded by a falling
lotus-petal. The second was burned by the moonbeams. The third
had her hands terribly bruised by the sound of pestles. I love them
dearly, but alas! The very delicacy which is so great a virtue, is
positively inconvenient."

And he wandered about in the palace, and it seemed as if the night
had three hundred hours. But in the morning the king and his
skilful physicians took such measures that before long his wives
were well and he was happy.


When he had told this story, the goblin asked: "O King, which of
them was the most delicate?" And the king said: "The one who
was bruised by the mere sound of the pestles, when nothing