第36章 PRINCESS ROSETTE(4)

`This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have been prettier.'

But she answered:

`Be quiet, stupid, or you will spoil everything.'

Now they told the King that the Princess was approaching.

`Well,' said he, `did her brothers tell me truly? Is she prettier than her portrait?'

`Sire,' they answered, `if she were as pretty that would do very well.'

`That's true,' said the King; `I for one shall be quite satisfied if she is.Let us go and meet her.' For they knew by the uproar that she had arrived, but they could not tell what all the shouting was about.The King thought he could hear the words:

`How ugly she is! How ugly she is!' and he fancied they must refer to some dwarf the Princess was bringing with her.It never occurred to him that they could apply to the bride herself.

The Princess Rosette's portrait was carried at the head of the procession, and after it walked the King surrounded by his courtiers.

He was all impatience to see the lovely Princess, but when he caught sight of the nurse's daughter he was furiously angry, and would not advance another step.For she was really ugly enough to have frightened anybody.

`What!' he cried, `have the two rascals who are my prisoners dared to play me such a trick as this? Do they propose that Ishall marry this hideous creature? Let her be shut up in my great tower, with her nurse and those who brought her here; and as for them, I will have their heads cut off.'

Meanwhile the King and the Prince, who knew that their sister must have arrived, had made themselves smart, and sat expecting every minute to be summoned to greet her.So when the gaoler came with soldiers, and carried them down into a black dungeon which swarmed with toads and bats, and where they were up to their necks in water, nobody could have been more surprised and dismayed than they were.

`This is a dismal kind of wedding,' they said; `what can have happened that we should be treated like this? They must mean to kill us.'

And this idea annoyed them very much.Three days passed before they heard any news, and then the King of the Peacocks came and berated them through a hole in the wall.

`You have called yourselves King and Prince,' he cried, `to try and make me marry your sister, but you are nothing but beggars, not worth the water you drink.I mean to make short work with you, and the sword is being sharpened that will cut off your heads!'

`King of the Peacocks,' answered the King angrily, `you had better take care what you are about.I am as good a King as yourself, and have a splendid kingdom and robes and crowns, and plenty of good red gold to do what I like with.You are pleased to jest about having our heads cut off; perhaps you think we have stolen something from you?'

At first the King of the Peacocks was taken aback by this bold speech, and had half a mind to send them all away together; but his Prime Minister declared that it would never do to let such a trick as that pass unpunished, everybody would laugh at him; so the accusation was drawn up against them, that they were impostors, and that they had promised the King a beautiful Princess in marriage who, when she arrived, proved to be an ugly peasant girl.

This accusation was read to the prisoners, who cried out that they had spoken the truth, that their sister was indeed a Princess more beautiful than the day, and that there was some mystery about all this which they could not fathom.Therefore they demanded seven days in which to prove their innocence, The King of the Peacocks was so angry that he would hardly even grant them this favour, but at last he was persuaded to do so.

While all this was going on at court, let us see what had been happening to the real Princess.When the day broke she and Frisk were equally astonished at finding themselves alone upon the sea, with no boat and no one to help them.The Princess cried and cried, until even the fishes were sorry for her.

`Alas!' she said, `the King of the Peacocks must have ordered me to be thrown into the sea because he had changed his mind and did not want to marry me.But how strange of him, when Ishould have loved him so much, and we should have been so happy together!'

And then she cried harder than ever, for she could not help still loving him.So for two days they floated up and down the sea, wet and shivering with the cold, and so hungry that when the Princess saw some oysters she caught them, and she and Frisk both ate some, though they didn't like them at all.When night came the Princess was so frightened that she said to Frisk:

`Oh! Do please keep on barking for fear the soles should come and eat us up!'

Now it happened that they had floated close in to the shore, where a poor old man lived all alone in a little cottage.When he heard Frisk's barking he thought to himself:

`There must have been a shipwreck!' (for no dogs ever passed that way by any chance), and he went out to see if he could be of any use.He soon saw the Princess and Frisk floating up and down, and Rosette, stretching out her hands to him, cried:

`Oh! Good old man, do save me, or I shall die of cold and hunger!'

When he heard her cry out so piteously he was very sorry for her, and ran back into his house to fetch a long boat-hook.Then he waded into the water up to his chin, and after being nearly drowned once or twice he at last succeeded in getting hold of the Princess's bed and dragging it on shore.