nd died
suddenly in the night. The queen, in addition to her grief, was
frantic with anxiety, knowing that the king was such a hard man that
if he knew his only son had died, he would hate the queen and
perhaps divorce her. So she sent, with the utmost secrecy, a
trusted servant to find another child to replace the one she had
lost. "Bring me a child with no past," she told her servant, "and I
will give it a future."

Finding such a child was a tiring and frustrating task for the
servant, and he met with humiliation and rejection and insult and
false leads and failure at every turn. But since this story is not
about him, nor about the rewards of perseverance, let us say simply
that eventually he found himself at the door of the holy order of
women we have mentioned above.

"Yes, we do have such a child as you seek," the matron told him.
"We were keeping him until we could find his parents, or until we
could find him a good home. Perhaps your mistress, whoever she is,
will care for him well." The servant assured the matron that this
would be so and gave her a large gift to maintain the house and its
charitable work. As she handed him the child, she said, "The woman
who has been nursing the child says that this parting is like a
death to her, for she has become very attached to him. But she
loves him too much to think of her feelings. I hope that what is a
sadness for her will be a happiness for the child."

"Truly, good woman," replied the servant, "it is rightly said that
the death of every fruit is the seed of new life. Every ending is
also a beginning."

As the years passed, the baby grew up into a fine, strong young man.
The king, who remained crusty and harsh toward everyone else,
changed completely when his son (as he supposed) entered the room.
The king became actually friendly and laughed some and often engaged
in animated conversation with the young prince. The king was often
heard to say that he would never let the prince part from him even
for a day but that the prince should be his always. They often rode
on horseback through the forest all day or sat together by the fire
until the servants fell asleep, discussing the kingdom and enjoying
each other's company.

When the prince reached his early manhood, the king not only took
him into confidence on affairs of state, but began to share power
with him, knowing that not many more years would pass before there
would necessarily be a new king.