y wrote upon golden slates with diamond
pencils, and could read just as well without a book as with one, so
there was no mistake about their being real princes. Their sister
Elise sat upon a little footstool of looking-glass, and she had a
picture-book which had cost the half of a kingdom. Oh, these children
were very happy; but it was not to last thus forever.

Their father, who was king over all the land, married a wicked queen
who was not at all kind to the poor children; they found that out on
the first day. All was festive at the castle, but when the children
wanted to play at having company, instead of having as many cakes and
baked apples as ever they wanted, she would only let them have some
sand in a tea-cup, and said they must make-believe.

In the following week she sent little Elise into the country to board
with some peasants, and it did not take her long to make the king
believe so many bad things about the boys that he cared no more about
them.

"Fly out into the world and look after yourselves," said the wicked
queen; "you shall fly about like birds without voices."

But she could not make things as bad for them as she would have liked;
they turned into eleven beautiful wild swans. They flew out of the
palace window with a weird scream, right across the park and the
woods.

It was very early in the morning when they came to the place where
their sister Elise was sleeping in the peasant's house. They hovered
over the roof of the house, turning and twisting their long necks, and
flapping their wings; but no one either heard or saw them. They had to
fly away again, and they soared up towards the clouds, far out into
the wide world, and they settled in a big, dark wood, which stretched
right down to the shore.

Poor little Elise stood in the peasant's room, playing with a green
leaf, for she had no other toys. She made a little hole in it, which
she looked through at the sun, and it seemed to her as if she saw her
brothers' bright eyes. Every time the warm sunbeams shone upon her
cheek it reminded her of their kisses. One day passed just like
another. When the wind whistled through the rose-hedges outside the
house, it whispered to the roses: "Who can be prettier than you are?"
But the roses shook their heads and answered: "Elise!" And when the
old woman sat in the doorway reading her Psalms the wind turned over
the leaves and said to the book: "Who can be more pious than you?"
"Elise!" answered the