Part 6 (1/2)
”It is due entirely to us,” they tell any one who will listen to them, ”that Danilo went out in search of Peerless Beauty in the first place.
When he came to us and asked our advice we said to him: 'Go, by all means! You're young and brave and of course you'll win her!' If we hadn't urged him to go, he would probably have settled down here at home, married some quiet village girl, and never be heard of again!”
That's how the old men talk now, but we know what they really did say at the time!
Yet after all that doesn't matter. All that matters is that Danilo and Peerless Beauty love each other and are happy.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
THE PIGEON'S BRIDE
[Ill.u.s.tration]
_The Story of a Princess Who Kissed and Told_
THE PIGEON'S BRIDE
There was once a King who had an only daughter. She was as lovely as a princess ought to be and by the time she reached a marriageable age the fame of her beauty had spread far and wide over all the world.
Neighboring kings and even distant ones were already sending envoys to her father's court begging permission to offer their sons as suitors to the Princess's hand. As he had no son of his own the Princess's father was delighted that the day was fast approaching when he might have a son-in-law, and long before even the name of any particular prince was discussed the Princess's mother had planned the wedding down to its last detail.
The Princess alone was uninterested.
”I'm not ready to get married yet,” she'd say to her parents every day when they'd begin telling her about the various princes who were anxious to gain her favor. ”Why such haste? I'm young and there's plenty of time. Besides, just now I'm too busy with my embroidery to be bothered with a crowd of young men.”
With that, before the King could reprove her, the Princess would throw her arms about his neck, kiss him under the corner of his mustache, and go flying off to the tower-room where she had her embroidery frame.
Her mother, the Queen, was much upset by the Princess's att.i.tude.
”In my youth,” she said, ”girls were not like this. We were brought up to think that courts.h.i.+p and marriage were the most important events in our lives. I don't know what's getting into the heads of the young girls nowadays!”
But the King, who was still smiling from the tickling little kiss which the Princess had planted under the corner of his mustache, always answered:
”Tut! Tut! We needn't worry yet! Take my word for it when some particular young man comes along she'll be interested fast enough!”
At this the Queen, ending the discussion every day with the same words, would shake her head and declare:
”I tell you it isn't natural for a girl to be more interested in embroidery than in a long line of handsome young suitors!”
The Princess was interested in her embroidery--there's no doubt about that. She spent every moment she could in the tower-room, working and singing. The tower was high up among the treetops. It was reached by winding stairs so narrow and so many that no one any older than the Princess would care to climb them. The Princess flew up them like a bird, scarcely pausing for breath. At the top of the stairs was a trap-door which was the only means of entrance into the tower-room. Once in the tower-room with the bolt of the trap-door securely fastened, the Princess was safe from interruption and could work away at her embroidery to her heart's content. The tower had windows on all sides, so the Princess as she sat at her embroidery frame could look out north, east, south, and west.
The clouds sailed by in the sky, the wind blew and at once the leaves in the treetops began murmuring and whispering among themselves, and the birds that went flying all over the world would often alight on some branch near the tower and sing to the Princess as she worked or chatter some exciting story that she could almost understand.
”What!” the Princess would think to herself as she looked out north, east, south, and west. ”Leave my tower and my beautiful embroidery to become the wife of some conceited young man! Never!”
From this remark you can understand perfectly well that the particular young man of whom her father spoke had not yet come along. And I'm sure you'll also know that shutting herself up in the tower-room and bolting the trap-door was not going to keep him away when it was time for him to come. Yet I don't believe that you'd have recognized him when he did come any more than the Princess did. This is how it happened: