The Nightingale

A king lived in a beautiful palace. The palace had a very big garden with a lot of lovely flowers. People walked through the garden and looked at the flowers. Then they walked through a beautiful wood to the sea.

A nightingale lived in a tree in the wood. It sang beautifully! Every night an old man came through the wood to the sea. He wanted to catch fish. He stood and listened to the little bird. 'Oh, that's a pretty song!' he thought, and he cried.

Visitors from many other countries came to see the king. 'We like your city, your palace and your garden,' they told the king. 'They're very beautiful.'

Some visitors heard the little bird. 'Nothing is as beautiful as the nightingale's voice,' they said. They wrote books about the city, the palace and the garden, and they always wrote wonderful things about the nightingale.

Other people round the world read these books, and one day the king saw one. He read and read and he was very happy. 'But nothing is as good as the nightingale's voice,' the book said.

'What's this?' asked the king. 'The nightingale? I don't know this bird! Is there really a bird with a beautiful voice in my garden? Nobody told me. We learn a lot of new things from books.'

So the king called his most important servant.

'People say there's a very pretty bird here,' said the king. 'They say that it sings very beautifully. I want the nightingale to sing to me tonight.'

'I don't know this nightingale,' said the servant, 'but I'll find it.'

But where was the bird? The servant ran everywhere. He asked the other servants, but they knew nothing about it. He went to the king and said, 'There's no nightingale here. I can't find it.'

'A great king sent me this book,' said the king. 'It says there's a nightingale in my garden. Bring it here now or I'll be very angry.'

The servant ran through the palace and its gardens, and the other servants ran, too. Then they found a young girl in the palace kitchen and asked her about the nightingale.

'Oh, yes! It sings in the wood near the sea. It has a beautiful voice! I take some food through the wood to my mother every night because she's very ill. Sometimes I sit down in the wood and then I hear the nightingale's song.'