to at all, he was obliged to promise that
he would let her go.

'You may not regret me, Princess,' he said sadly, 'for I fear that you
do not love me well enough; but I foresee that you will more than once
regret that you left this fairy palace where we have been so happy.'

But, in spite of all he could say, she bade farewell to the Queen, his
mother, and prepared to set out; so Percinet, very unwillingly, brought
the little sledge with the stags and she mounted beside him. But they
had hardly gone twenty yards when a tremendous noise behind her made
Graciosa look back, and she saw the palace of crystal fly into a million
splinters, like the spray of a fountain, and vanish.

'Oh, Percinet!' she cried, 'what has happened? The palace is gone.'

'Yes,' he answered, 'my palace is a thing of the past; you will see it
again, but not until after you have been buried.'

'Now you are angry with me,' said Graciosa in her most coaxing voice,
'though after all I am more to be pitied than you are.'

When they got near the palace the Prince made the sledge and themselves
invisible, so the Princess got in unobserved, and ran up to the great
hall where the King was sitting all by himself. At first he was very
much startled by Graciosa's sudden appearance, but she told him how the
Queen had left her out in the forest, and how she had caused a log
of wood to be buried. The King, who did not know what to think, sent
quickly and had it dug up, and sure enough it was as the Princess had
said. Then he caressed Graciosa, and made her sit down to supper with
him, and they were as happy as possible. But someone had by this time
told the wicked Queen that Graciosa had come back, and was at supper
with the King, and in she flew in a terrible fury. The poor old King
quite trembled before her, and when she declared that Graciosa was not
the Princess at all, but a wicked impostor, and that if the King did not
give her up at once she would go back to her own castle and never see
him again, he had not a word to say, and really seemed to believe that
it was not Graciosa after all. So the Queen in great triumph sent for
her waiting women, who dragged the unhappy Princess away and shut her
up in a garret; they took away all her jewels and her pretty dress, and
gave her a rough cotton frock, wooden shoes, and a little cloth cap.
There was some straw in a corner, which was all she had for a bed, and
they gave her a very little bit of black bread to e