482
LEV KASSIL
or quickwittod, that conqueror of the winds. But the cunning
!
Once-Upon-a-Time helped him out once more. "Let him make
an untrue mirror," he advised. "Let her admire herself in a
curved mirror."
The king sent for Amalgam and said: "They say you are
very bored without your mirrors, Master Craftsman. I will allow
you to make one mirror, but it must be curved so that whoever
looks in it will see himself ridiculous and unattractive. And the
better looking the person, the more hideous he will be in the
mirror. Let the nose be twisted across the face, let the eyes pop
out onto the cheeks, let the mouth stretch from ear to ear and the
ears hang like a dog's!" "No! Never," answered Amalgam.
"My
mirrors shall never distort the true face of beauty."
The king was enraged: "Do you dare disobey my com–
mands! Do you want to be thrown down the ventilator! Seize
him!" "Wait ... let me think first," said Amalgam.
He was silent for a moment, and then as though making up
his mind, he said, looking into the king's face with his clear eyes :
"All right, let it be as you say; I will make a mirror of that kind."
"But don't try any tricks," the king warned him. "I shall look
into the mirror myself to test it."
Amalgam went off to his workshop, fanned the fire until
it blazed and set the crucible to heat. He spent three days and
three nights making the mirror and another three days and three
nights polishing it. And the mirror he made was finer than
anything he had ever made before. Then he told the king the
work was completed.
The king looked at the mirror from the side and said: "The
surface doesn 't look curved to me." "That is the whole secret,
Your Majesty," answered Amalgam. "It looks like an ordinary
mirror, but won't you take a look in it?"
The king looked at himself in the mirror. He was hideously
ugly, but had not seen himself for so many years that he roared
with delight.
"Well done, Master Craftsman; I shall award you the
