Page:Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo.djvu/81

 I promise you that, if with your intelligence you can devise how the male of that animal that we see before us can become a female, and the female can become a male, when we have returned to our city, I will do nothing before I have fairly settled our debt.

The Queen answered that if he would know to do what she was looking for, she would also do immediately what he requested her to do with the unicorns. If it happened otherwise, she was content to free him from the debt he owed her.

The King was immeasurably cheerful and happy about this, and answered her that he was satisfied with the conditions proposed to him. He took the bow in his hand, and with his first arrow he shot the female animal in the tail and from the pain she began kicking up in the air and immediately he shot her in the navel with his second arrow, which penetrated the body in the middle and stayed there. Seen from the outside it resembled a virile organ of such an animal. Then without any delay he pierced the male with an arrow in the location where naturally the female organ would be and the opening of the wound made it look like the female organ. Then turning to the Queen, he said, "Now it's up to you, Madam, to try, if you can do a better shot than mine."

When he had said that, she took the bow in her hand, and the first arrow aimed at the male threw its horn on the ground; the second was thrust in the forehead of the female.