shall be married,
and--live happily ever after!"

PRINCE HYACINTH AND THE DEAR LITTLE PRINCESS

BY MADAME LEPRINCE DE BEAUMONT

Once upon a time there lived a King who was deeply in love with a
Princess, but she could not marry anyone, because she was under an
enchantment. So the King set out to seek a fairy, and asked what he
could do to win the Princess's love. The Fairy said to him:

"You know that the Princess has a great cat which she is very fond of.
Whoever is clever enough to tread on that cat's tail is the man she is
destined to marry."

The King said to himself that this would not be very difficult; and he
left the Fairy, determined to grind the cat's tail to powder rather
than not tread on it at all.

You may imagine that it was not long before he went to see the
Princess; and puss, as usual, marched in before him, arching its back.
The King took a long step, and quite thought he had the tail under his
foot, but the cat turned round so sharply that he trod only on air. And
so it went on for eight days, till the King began to think that this
fatal tail must be full of quick-silver--it was never still for a
moment.

At last, however, he was lucky enough to come upon puss fast asleep and
with its tail conveniently spread out. So the King, without losing a
moment, set his foot upon it heavily.

With one terrific yell the cat sprang up and instantly changed into a
tall man, who, fixing his angry eyes upon the King, said:

"You shall marry the Princess because you have been able to break the
enchantment, but I will have my revenge. You shall have a son, who
will never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long, and
if you ever tell anyone what I have just said to you, you shall vanish
away instantly, and no one shall ever see you or hear of you again."

Though the King was horribly afraid of the enchanter, he could not help
laughing at this threat.

"If my son has such a long nose as that," he said to himself, "he must
always see it or feel it; at least, if he is not blind or without
hands."

But, as the enchanter had vanished, he did not waste any more time in
thinking, but went to seek the Princess, who very soon consented to
marry him. But after all, they had not been married very long when the
King died, and the Queen had nothing left to care for but her little
son, who was called Hyacinth. The little Prince had large blue eyes,
the prettiest eyes in the world, and a sweet lit