Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/289

Rh THE DRAGON.

who seeks the injury of another, finds his own hurt; and he who spreads the snares of treachery and deceit, often falls into them himself; as you shall hear in the story of a queen, who with her own hands constructed the trap in which she was caught by the foot.

was one time a king of High-Shore, who practised such tyranny and cruelty, that whilst he was once gone with his wife on a visit of pleasure to a castle at a distance from the city, his royal seat was usurped by a certain sorceress. Whereupon, having consulted a wooden statue which used to give oracular responses, it answered, that he would recover his dominions when the sorceress should lose her sight. But seeing that the sorceress, besides being well guarded, knew at a glance the people whom he sent to annoy her, and did dog's justice upon them, he became quite desperate; and out of spite to her, he deprived all the women of that place