The

The Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales. This is your host and storyteller, John Haggardorn. Today, a great story from G.K. Chesterton called The Fairy Tale of Father Brown.

This one is from his collection, The Wisdom of Father Brown.

Hope you enjoy it.

The picturesque city and state of Helig Waldstein was one of those toy kingdoms of which certain

parts of the German Empire still consist.

It had come under the Prussian hegemony quite late in history, hardly 50 years before the

fine summer day when Flambeau and Father Brown found themselves sitting in its gardens and drinking its beer.

There had been not a little of war and wild justice there within living memory, as soon will be shown.

But in merely looking at it, one could not dismiss the impression of childishness, which is the

most charming side of Germany.

Those little pantomime paternal monarchies in which a king seems as domestic as a cook.

The German soldiers by the innumerable sentry boxes looked strangely like German toys,

and the clean-cut battlements of the castle, gilded by the sunshine, looked more like the gilt gingerbread.

For it was brilliant weather.

The sky was as prussian of blue as potsdam itself could require,

but it was yet more like that lavish and glowing use of the color

which a child extracts from a shilling paintbox.

Even the gray-ribbed trees looked young,

for the pointed buds on them were still pink,

and then a pattern against the strong blue looked like innumerable childish fingers. Despite his prosaic appearance and generally practical walk of life, Father Brown was not without a certain

streak of romance in his composition,

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