,' and with that she searched in her
old sack, and drew out the emerald bracelets King Charming had given
her.

'Ho, ho!' said Turritella, 'those are pretty bits of glass. I suppose
you would like five silver pieces for them.'

'Show them to someone who understands such things, Madam,' answered the
Queen; 'after that we can decide upon the price.'

Turritella, who really loved King Charming as much as she could love
anybody, and was always delighted to get a chance of talking to him, now
showed him the bracelets, asking how much he considered them worth. As
soon as he saw them he remembered those he had given to Fiordelisa, and
turned very pale and sighed deeply, and fell into such sad thought that
he quite forgot to answer her. Presently she asked him again, and then
he said, with a great effort:

'I believe these bracelets are worth as much as my kingdom. I thought
there was only one such pair in the world; but here, it seems, is
another.'

Then Turritella went back to the Queen, and asked her what was the
lowest price she would take for them.

'More than you would find it easy to pay, Madam,' answered she; 'but if
you will manage for me to sleep one night in the Chamber of Echoes, I
will give you the emeralds.'

'By all means, my little kitchen-maid,' said Turritella, highly
delighted.

The King did not try to find out where the bracelets had come from, not
because he did not want to know, but because the only way would have
been to ask Turritella, and he disliked her so much that he never spoke
to her if he could possibly avoid it. It was he who had told Fiordelisa
about the Chamber of Echoes, when he was a Blue Bird. It was a little
room below the King's own bed-chamber, and was so ingeniously built that
the softest whisper in it was plainly heard in the King's room.
Fiordelisa wanted to reproach him for his faithlessness, and could not
imagine a better way than this. So when, by Turritella's orders, she was
left there she began to weep and lament, and never ceased until
daybreak.

The King's pages told Turritella, when she asked them, what a sobbing
and sighing they had heard, and she asked Fiordelisa what it was all
about. The Queen answered that she often dreamed and talked aloud.

But by an unlucky chance the King heard nothing of all this, for he took
a sleeping draught every night before he lay down, and did not wake up
until the sun was high.

The Queen passed the day in great disquietude.