“Hmpf!” thought the Emperor. “What nightingale? Nobody ever told me about a nightingale! Is it possible that I have a nightingale in my Empire, in my very own garden, and nobody has ever mentioned it to me, and I had to discover it from a book?”

And immediately he summoned his Chief Imperial Gentleman-in-Waiting. Now the Chief Imperial Gentleman-in-Waiting was so exalted a person that, if anyone of a lower rank asked him a question, he wouldn’t even answer with a word. “Ppp!” he would say — and that means nothing at all.

“It says here,” said the Emperor, pointing to a page in the book, “that I have a most remarkable bird called a nightingale. She is a most extraordinary bird, it says, and the loveliest thing in all my Empire. Why haven't I been told about this?”

“It's the first time I've ever heard of her, Your Majesty," said the Gentleman-in-Waiting. “She has never been presented at Court.”

“I command you to bring her here to sing for me this very evening!” said the Emperor. “Hmpf! The whole world knows about this remarkable bird of mine — except me!”

“It's the first time I've ever heard of her,” repeated the Gentleman-in-Waiting. “I will look for her, Your Majesty, and I will find her.”

Find her? But how?

The Gentleman-in-Waiting ran upstairs and downstairs, through rooms and corridors, but no one he met had ever heard of the nightingale. So he hurried back to the Emperor and said it must be a story made up by the clever people who write books. “You shouldn't believe everything you read, Your Majesty. Writers like to tell fairy tales, you know; they'll just make something up and not care whether it's true or not.”

“But this book,” said the Emperor, “was sent to me by the Emperor of Japan, and Emperors don't tell lies. Now just you listen to me. I want the nightingale here. I want her tonight! And if she doesn't appear after dinner, at seven o'clock on the dot, every courtier in the palace will get one punch in the stomach.”

“Tsing-pe!” said the Gentleman-in-Waiting, and he ran up and down all the stairs again, through all the rooms and corridors. And half the courtiers ran with him, since they weren't particularly fond of being punched in the stomach. There they all were, trying to find out about this extraordinary nightingale that everyone in the world had heard of — everyone, that is, except the people at Court.