up tall and beautiful, and
everything she did and said was charming. Every time the King and Queen
came to see her they were more delighted with her than before, but
though she was weary of the tower, and often begged them to take her
away from it, they always refused. The Princess's nurse, who had never
left her, sometimes told her about the world outside the tower, and
though the Princess had never seen anything for herself, yet she always
understood exactly, thanks to the second Fairy's gift. Often the King
said to the Queen:

'We were cleverer than Carabosse after all. Our Mayblossom will be happy
in spite of her predictions.'

And the Queen laughed until she was tired at the idea of having
outwitted the old Fairy. They had caused the Princess's portrait to be
painted and sent to all the neighbouring Courts, for in four days she
would have completed her twentieth year, and it was time to decide
whom she should marry. All the town was rejoicing at the thought of the
Princess's approaching freedom, and when the news came that King Merlin
was sending his ambassador to ask her in marriage for his son, they
were still more delighted. The nurse, who kept the Princess informed
of everything that went forward in the town, did not fail to repeat the
news that so nearly concerned her, and gave such a description of the
splendour in which the ambassador Fanfaronade would enter the town, that
the Princess was wild to see the procession for herself.

'What an unhappy creature I am,' she cried, 'to be shut up in this
dismal tower as if I had committed some crime! I have never seen
the sun, or the stars, or a horse, or a monkey, or a lion, except in
pictures, and though the King and Queen tell me I am to be set free when
I am twenty, I believe they only say it to keep me amused, when they
never mean to let me out at all.'

And then she began to cry, and her nurse, and the nurse's daughter, and
the cradle-rocker, and the nursery-maid, who all loved her dearly, cried
too for company, so that nothing could be heard but sobs and sighs. It
was a scene of woe. When the Princess saw that they all pitied her she
made up her mind to have her own way. So she declared that she would
starve herself to death if they did not find some means of letting her
see Fanfaronade's grand entry into the town.

'If you really love me,' she said, 'you will manage it, somehow or
other, and the King and Queen need never know anything about it.'

Then