Fairy Tales from Spain

Once upon a time there was a boy named Rupert, the sharpest and most prudent lad in his village, and indeed in any of those to be found for twenty leagues around.

One night he was with a group of boys of his own age, who, gathered round the fire, were listening with amazement to a veteran soldier, covered with scars, which had gained him the modest stripes of a sergeant pensioner, and who was telling the story of his adventures. The narrator was at the most interesting point of his tale.

"The great City of Fortune," he said, "is situated on the summit of a very high mountain, so steep that only very few have succeeded in reaching the top. There gold circulates in such abundance that the inhabitants do not know what to do with the precious metal. Houses are built of it, the walls of the fortress are of solid silver, and the cannons which defend it are enormous pierced diamonds. The streets are paved with duros, always new, because as soon as they begin to lose their brilliance they are replaced by others just minted.

"You ought to see the cleanliness of it! What dirt there is is pure gold dust, which the dust carts collect in order to throw in large baskets into the drains.

"The pebbles against which we stumble continually are brilliants as large as nuts, despised on account of the extraordinary abundance with which the soil supplies them. In a word, he who lives there may consider the most powerful of the earth as beggars.

"The worst of it is that the path which leads there is rough and difficult, and most people succumb without having been able to arrive at the city of gold."