So the last part and final Enjoy ____________________________
-as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.
Early in the next morning the mayor was walking in the square below in company with town councillors. As they passed the coloumn he looked up at the statue: " dear me! How shabby the happy prince looks!" He said.
"How shabby indeed!" Cried the town councillors, who always agreed with the mayor; and they went up to look at it.
"The ruby has fallen out if his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer," said the mayor in fact, " he is little better than a beggar!"
"Little better than a beggar," said the town councillors. "And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!" Continued the mayor. "We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not allowed to die here." And the town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.
So they pulled down the statue of the happy prince. "As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful," said the art professor at the University.
Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. "We must have another statue, of course-" he said "and it shall be a statue of myself."
"Of myself," said each of the town councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.
"What a strange thing!" Said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. "This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away." So they threw it on a dustheap where the dead swallow was lying.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Bring me the two most precious things in the city," said God to one of his angels; and the angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
"You have rightly chosen," said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the happy prince shall praise me."
~The end~
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