267th story

Long ago, there was a king who did strange things and tormented his people in new ways every day.

One day, when the royal treasury was running low, he ordered the city guards to go out and fine anyone with a physical defect — ten coins.

A guard saw a man sitting by a wall with one blind eye. He approached him and said, “You must pay ten coins for your blind eye.”

The man, who had a stutter, replied: “B-b-but w-w-why?”

The guard said, “Oh, so you stutter as well? That’s twenty coins!” He grabbed the man by the collar, and in the struggle, the man’s hat fell off. The guard saw that he was bald. “Aha! Bald too — that’s thirty coins!”

The man started to run away, limping as he went. The guard shouted after him: “Stop him, don’t let him get away! He owes the king forty coins!”

That is our condition today, all around the world.