Gold Once upon a time there was a king, who, having found a few gold mines in his kin

gdom, sent off most of his subjects to extracting the gold from them. And so it happened that the soil was left uncultivated, and there was a great famine in th e land. But the queen, who was prudent and loved the people, had chickens, pigeons, hens and other specialties secretly made for her out of the finest gold; and when th e king wanted to dine she had such specialties served to him, and he was content , for he knew not at first what the queen's purpose was; but, since there was no thing edible among the things sent to him, he started to grow angry. So the quee n reminded him full well that gold was not food and that it would be better to e mploy his subjects in cultivating the soil, which never ceases to be fertile, th an to send them to the mines in search of gold, which will not feed the hungry o r satiate the thirsty, and which has no value other than that which is given to it by men -- and that such value was soon to turn into spite, if it so happened that they found gold in great quantities. She was a sensible queen.