Stranica 182 [182]
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condition, took him by the leg and threw him out of the
window. The wind bore the unhappy fowl to a dunghill,
where it left him for a moment.
“Oh, wind,’ murmured Coquerico, who still breathed,
“oh, kindly zephyr, protecting breeze, behold me cured of
my vain follies. Let me rest on the paternal dunghill.”
“Let you rest!” roared the wind. “Wait, and I will
teach you how I treat ingrates." And with one blast it
sent him so high in the air that, as he fell back, he was
transfixed by a steeple.
There St. Peter was awaiting him. With his own hand
he nailed him to the highest steeple in Rome, where he is
still shown to travelers. However high placed he may be,
all despise him because he turns with the slightest wind;
black, dried up, stripped of his feathers, and beaten by the
rain, he is no longer called Coquerico, but Weathercock,
and thus expiates, and must expiate eternally, his disobedi¬
ence, vanity, and wickedness.