A certain king once woke from a disturbing dream and could not remember what it contained. All he remembered was the terror. He called his wise men and demanded they tell him the dream itself and its meaning — not merely interpret what he could recount. None could. The king grew furious.
His vizier, knowing his life depended on producing an interpreter, rode out to find one. At the gate of a certain town he met a renowned teacher walking with a small boy, perhaps ten years old. The vizier began explaining his errand. Before he had finished, the boy — who was Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, already a prodigy in his teacher's household — stepped forward and said calmly, "I know what the king dreamed. I will come and tell him."
The vizier, astonished, brought the child back to court.
The boy Maimonides stood before the king and spoke evenly. "You saw in your dream a great banquet table, laid with every kind of food. From the corner of the room a wild boar crept out. It ate from every dish on the table. Then it vanished as suddenly as it had come."
The king went white. "That is exactly what I dreamed."
"The dishes," the boy explained, "are your wives — every one of them. The boar is a slave living in your women's quarters, disguised in female clothes. He moves among them all and you do not know him." Maimonides then identified the man — a slave the king had never suspected — hidden among the women in female dress.
The king's rage was sudden. He wanted the man killed on the spot. But Maimonides, though still a child, counseled restraint. "Do not kill him in public, my king. Do it privately, at night, without uproar. Protect the dignity of your household."
The king listened. The boy saved the kingdom's honor as well as solving the riddle.
The Exempla keeps the story as a tribute to Maimonides even in his youth, and as a teaching that true wisdom does not only speak truth — it also knows when truth should be spoken aloud and when it should be whispered in the dark.
(From The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster, 1924, no. 354, from Codex Gaster 66.)