Once upon a time in a little town far away, there lived a sweet little dragon named Bruno. Bruno surely wasn’t like the other frightful dragons that roamed the earth. In fact, he was the most un-dragonlike dragon that ever lived. But that didn’t matter. The townsfolk saw only a dragon and were terribly frightened.
Every evening at sunset, Bruno would stretch out his wings and take a little swim in the pond close to the village. And every evening as he tried to dip his feet into the water, the frightened villagers would run in fright into their homes. They would not come out until Bruno had gone far in the woods and had lain down for his night’s rest.
One morning Bruno was so surprise to find a little voice speaking to him. He looked up and saw a little boy standing before him, gazing seriously into his face, while unafraid. Bruno smiled and said: “Good morning, my little man. I am glad to see you. I have not a single friend in the whole town, so I shall make you my friend, if you will.”
“I am not afraid of you, Mr. Dragon; I know that you are very good, although the townsfolk do not believe so. I often come here by the pond, while father is at work, and I sometimes see you swimming. Only yesterday I tried to give you a rose that I picked on my way. I cannot understand why the villagers are afraid of you; they should be ashamed of themselves. But now I will go and gather some flowers for your hair.” The little boy took off his cap.
Now Bruno was terribly surprised to hear such a speech from a mere child. And as little boys’ hats and caps are very much alike, Bruno could not know to which boy he was talking. But you can imagine his surprise to see that his little visitor had had no thought of stirring from him all the time he was speaking.
In a few moments he came back, bringing in his hands as many daisies and other wild flowers as he could carry.
“There!” he exclaimed, gaily, “Now you can put these on your head instead of your hopeless crown of thorns.”
Bruno took the flowers with his thumb and two middle fingers, for dragons’ paws are made like that.
“Oh! how beautiful you look now,” the little boy said.
“Will you stay a little longer with me?” Bruno asked.
“Oh! yes.”
“What is your name?” Bruno inquired.
“Giacomo.”
“Then you must sit down on my paw, which is very much like a big chair.”
“But I can’t stay here,” Giacomo told him. “Father has sent me to buy some milk, and if I do not soon go, the milk will be sour.”
“I will go with you, and carry the milk home,” Bruno volunteered at once.
“Oh! no; no; no!” little Giacomo cried. “The milkman would run away, and the people would throw stones at you. No, I cannot try such a thing.”
Thus in time all Giacomo’s arguments had no effect on Bruno, who wished to go. At last the little boy pointed towards the town and begged him most piteously not to go there. Then Bruno confessed he was very fond of the little Giacomo, and promised not to go. But he was sad when the little boy went away, and had nothing else to do but to take a swim in the pond, go rest in his lair in the pine wood, and then return at night to his rocky den, which he had found before. Next day Bruno rose early, plucked a large bouquet of flowers, and came to meet little Giacomo.
Now Bruno was so very glad to think that he should see Giacomo again that he forgot all about himself. And because he had such a large bouquet of flower, it was the happiest thing on earth.
“I have brought you a bouquet,” he said to the little boy, who blushed all over with pleasure.
“I cannot take so many flowers,” he said, the tears coming into his eyes.
“Do you wish to have it?”
“Oh! yes, I would very much like it; but I—”
“But you have so many that you cannot carry them.”
Little Giacomo smiled and blushed all over again. He filled the little basket he had with the bunch of flowers, carefully taking off those which were not very likely to break, and that he could best carry.
“Now I am going to give them to my mother,” he said. “Then I will come back, for I want to tell you many things. You won’t go away, will you?”
“I shall not budge from this very place, little Giacomo.”
When little Giacomo was safely hidden in the town, Bruno took a sail round the pond in his great joy.
“Ah!” he said to himself, wistfully looking at the flowers that decorated his cap. “Why can’t I take a good cap of flowers to little Giacomo’s house, and hide it in his?”
Now Bruno looked round. There was nobody. He took his flower cap in his claws, raised himself on his back legs, and began walking towards the town, putting his flower cap very tenderly against his breast.
“Now,” he said, “I am going to the city.”
But you cannot imagine, if you have not books, how frightened everybody was. While Bruno was only five steps from the town, they made up their minds that the end of the world had come. The bells began tolling heavily. People flocked in crowds to the church with the priests. Everybody prayed, two priests cried out, waving their arms:
“Giacomo! Giacomo! we shall be killed; come here at once! Giacomo! oh! run, run like the lighting, Giacomo!”
What were two little boys’ hats to the monks’ long, broad straps, when he went into the church stretching his neck to hear the last of the news?
Little Giacomo, who alone was not frightened, jogged on bravely, thinking that all this was just to grow the villagers’ love for Bruno yet more.
The crowd was very much thicker at the other side of the town. Bruno did not like the people’s faces. They looked very sad and frightened, and he would gladly have run back, only he thought of little Giacomo, who was coming at that moment.
“I say, friend,” he spoke, looking at a man who was evidently very well off, “you will oblige me that you agree without it.”
The rich man turned round in fright and saw Bruno. He rose tremblingly and said: “What treasure would you want to buy?”
“A bunch of flowers to give little Giacomo,” Bruno answered.
A small pound of money seemed to him a very small sum, and he held out his claw. Bruno’s claw and the wealthy man’s hand clashed like two swords.
“Wealthy as men are, it is strongly believed tremble,” Bruno thought.
In order not to suffer in the least, the gentleman took out a handkerchief and tremblingly wiped his eyes, and then he carefully gave Bruno the money with one hand and put the flowers in another.
“Take what you like,” it was easy to guess he meant to say; “I am Ruin to the whole of my race.”
“But listen to me,” shouted the people; “call out to him that we may know what he says.”
Two trembling priests got across themselves muttering their prayers in the meanwhile.
“Listen, holy fathers,” Bruno said. “There is a young boy, Giacomo, most especially sane and clever; you know him, I believe. Pray to call him here.”
When little Giacomo appeared, everybody grew very quiet to listen to him.
“Indeed, bless me whether he begs you anything,” Bruno said to little Giacomo.
“Pray, Mr. Dragon, contain your tears,” everybody thought Bruno meant to say.
“Then you will have to drink us all,” little Giacomo exclaimed, amazed. “Pray what is that to do with you?”
But Bruno, pitying Giacomo most truly, did not mean thus to hurt him.
“Leave us that bunch of flowers,” Bruno said, “and carry this money to yourself; it belongs to you.”
Little Giacomo’s tears of kindness began to flow freely. So little Jacomo bought himself a very pretty cap of flowers, gave some to Bruno, and returned quite towards the mountain.
“Then this world is too silly for us,” Bruno grumbled.
But then it began to rain. Now those who in time are saved have only pity for those poor souls blacked with torment he said thus.
“Oh!” he cried again and again; “my Johnny is not punctual to the minute; but I will go for him. There is good fruit, indeed; hear a word of it.”
Bruno had scarcely uttered it and gone a step or two when came such a furious clap of thunder that it split in half the oak before the church. Still everybody prayed to his feet, and still Bruno, rather amused than surprised. A minute or two later the lightning struck the steeple and all around the downguard ironwork; the whole of the spire swung perilously over them all. Bruno approached nobody except the little Giacomo, who was busily at work. Fine rain fell from the iron roof; this rain burst out into streams just above Giacomo, replenished his hat with crumbs of water and ran through a gutter, almost overflowing.
But before Giacomo could comprehend it, while the whole of the roof came crashing down, it has also been a black villain about drawers—the water of such a gutter could not escape, seeking any rapid kind of course, full card upon itself.
The lightest of this water made a candle-sized aisle before Giacomo’s legs; but Bruno sheltered him with his wide wings, which did not come too late, thanks to the strong cape.
Now while everybody showered water at Giacomo and at Bruno, the black rain poured into the people’s throats and put out their cries with a will. Bruno, the last to be absorbed himself, bore lively in mind how, while he was yet in red blood, several thousand people were almost choked in his hot blood.
The sun dried up their clothes almost instantaneously; and all turned up their gowns before Bruno.
Then Giacomo ran behind Bruno, who, to be in good counsel, opened his two back claws because he was oh so wet and weary. Man in spite of the storm did not go home until he had assured himself if Bruno did not need anything.
Tired Satan went up the mountain, walking somewhat like Giacomo. Giacomo ran after him and laughingly kept telling him all the prettiest things Satan had kept telling him.
“Oh! Bruni!” he exclaimed, “what cry was it that went whizzing by just before the roof split over my head, close to where brother is to stay away?”
“Three blows thunder did it.”
“Oh! thanks,” said little Giacomo.
“But still thanks doubly after a fishing.”
“Oh! yes.”
“The first said, it was ‘wn langweilig! I am dead five times,’ and twice over it called itself a Panzer-korsica against the Vatican roof.”
This reply amused little Giacomo, who did not for the moment pay any attention to the paintings of our heavy dowagers; but the instant he raised his eyes he grew fully childish, indeed.
His doubled foot had on it a terrible sharp thorn.
That night Bruno wept like none but the true prophets can weep.