The Firelight Fairy Book Part 5

Great applause followed this sage judgment.

So the three rogues were led away, and unless you have heard to the contrary, they are still making up for their wicked lives by enforced diligence at their tasks. The palace has five hundred and ninety-six chimneys, eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three windows, and eleven hundred and ninety-nine large dust-gathering carpets, and the chimneys, windows, and carpets have to be swept, washed, and beaten at least once a week.

Now when the King, the Chancellor, and the Chamberlain failed to return, the people took the hunter out of his prison and made him king, because he was the richest and most powerful of them all.

As for the treasure of the treasure castle, it is still there, packed in the linen sacks, lying just inside the great door.

Perhaps some day you may find it. If you do, don't be greedy, and don't go up to the turret chamber.

PRINCE SNEEZE

[Ill.u.s.tration: In a cave filled with icicles, a small dog and a giant are looking into an open chest.]

Once upon a time a king and a queen gave a magnificent party in honor of the christening of their new-born son, Prince Rolandor. To this party the royal parents took good care to invite every single fairy in Fairyland, for they knew very well the unhappy consequences of forgetting to invite fairies to christenings. When all the invitations had been sent out, the Queen went down to the kitchen to superintend the cooking of the master-dainty of the feast, a huge strawberry-tart.

The morning on which the grand ceremony was to take place arrived. At half-past ten the Court Astrologer, who was master of ceremonies, gave the order to form in line; and at ten minutes to eleven the splendid procession started for the church. The road was lined with the King's va.s.sals shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!" Countless little elves with gauzy wings watched from the branches of the trees; and the great cathedral bells went clang, bang, clang, as merrily as could be.

Just behind the royal body-guard came the King's gold-and-diamond coach shining in the sunlight of June, with the King and the Queen in it on one side and the Court Astrologer and the fairy t.i.tania, prospective G.o.dparents of the little Prince, on the other. The Prince himself, swathed in a wonderful silk mantle edged with pearls and turquoises, slept in the Astrologer's arms.

The procession entered the church, where the venerable Lord Archbishop, surrounded by a magnificent choir, was awaiting its coming. A hush went over the great a.s.sembly as the parents and the G.o.dparents advanced to the flower-decked font, and the silence lasted until His Eminence had sprinkled the Prince and given him the name of Rolandor. Then the bells rang again, the organ roared so that the windows shook in their cas.e.m.e.nts, and the choristers sang like birds on a summer afternoon.

The christening over, the procession went back to the castle, past the waiting rows of bystanders, not one of whom had changed his place or gone away, so superb had been the spectacle.

The christening banquet was laid in the great hall of the castle, and, thanks to the Court Astrologer, things went off beautifully. It was the only large banquet ever known in the history of the world where courses were served all at one time, and while one person was finishing an ice, another was not beginning with the soup. Nor was the menu mixed, which happens so frequently to-day that you are apt to have soup, ice, cake, roast, soup, and a roast again. No, from soup to ice the banquet was a huge success; but, alas, disaster came with the strawberry-tart.

As the Queen was chatting with the Lord Chancellor of the Enchanted Islands, she happened to notice--for like a good hostess she had been keeping an eye to the comfort of her guests--that n.o.body on the right-hand side of the hall had been served with strawberry-tart. Almost at the same moment, the chief cook, looking rather pale and worried, bustled through the throng and whispered in her ear, "Your Majesty, the strawberry-tart has given out!"

The Queen turned pale. At length she managed to ask in a weak voice, "Have you plenty of other pastries?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," replied the cook.

"Then let them be served at once."

The cook withdrew, and the Queen, though somewhat shaken, took up the conversation again. Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and she was beginning to forget her start, when a voice, rising clear and rasping over the hubbub of the hall, said suddenly, "Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?"

Everybody turned toward the speaker, an elderly fairy from the Kingdom of the Black Mountains, named Malvolia. She stood up in her place, her arms akimbo, glowering at her plate, on which an attendant had just deposited a small chocolate eclair.

"Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?" she repeated.

The Queen rose. "I am very sorry, Madam Malvolia," said she in her sweetest voice, "but the strawberry-tart has given out."

"Hoity-toity," answered Malvolia rudely; "you mean that you only baked enough for your own personal friends."

At this several guests cried, "Sh! Sh!" and the King began to look worried.

"We will send for some at once," announced His Majesty.

"Oh yes,--strawberry-tart baked by the Queen's own hands for her own dear friends," said Malvolia sneeringly; "but for me, a fairy of age and distinction, an ordinary, low baker's eclair. The Kingdom of the Black Mountains has been deliberately insulted in my person!"

"No, no, no, no!" cried the King and the Queen. "We a.s.sure you, madam, that it was a simple mischance."

"Pish and tush!" replied Malvolia, who, like a great many people, secretly enjoyed feeling herself aggrieved. "I consider the affair an affront, a deliberate affront. And you shall pay dear for this humiliation," she screamed, quickly losing control of her temper. "Every time the Prince sneezes something shall change until--"

At this very moment, alas, a northeast wind blew gustily through the open windows of the hall, shaking the tapestries from the walls, and carrying away the last of Malvolia's sentence. The angry fairy turned herself into a great black raven and flew, cawing hoa.r.s.ely, over the heads of the banqueters and out of the window with the wind.

A baby's cry was heard, and the King and the Queen rushed panic-stricken to where their little son lay in his cradle on a raised platform at the head of the hall. The little Prince's fat, pink face was twisted into dreadful lines; he opened his mouth wide several times and half closed it again; then, opening it wider than ever, he sneezed a terrible sneeze.

There came a loud clap of thunder. When the confusion was over, the Court Astrologer was found to have turned into an eight-day clock, with a sun, moon, and stars arrangement, a planetary indicator, and a calendar calculated for two thousand years. The banquet ended rather gloomily, although the gifts of the other fairies, such as health, wealth, and beauty, managed to make everyone a little more cheerful.

When the guests were gone, the King and Queen sent for Doctor Pill, the court physician, to consult him in regard to the measures which ought to be taken to prevent the Prince's sneezing. As for the poor Court Astrologer, he was hung up in the sacristy of the cathedral, and every eight days his wife wound him up, with tears.

"What shall we do, doctor?" asked the King rather mournfully.

"The Prince must be preserved from the things which cause sneezing,"

said the doctor sagely.

"Such as draughts?" suggested the King.

"Draughts, head-colds, snuff, and pepper," answered the leech. "Let his little highness be put into a special suite of rooms; admit no person to them until he has been examined for head-cold, and has put on germ-proof garments; and as his little highness grows older, forbid the use of pepper in his food. Better still, if Your Majesty has a castle in the mountains, let the Prince be taken there for the sake of the purer air."

"There is the tower on the Golden Mountain," said the King.

At this the Queen began to weep again, for she, quite naturally, did not wish to part with her child.

"But, my dear, we can't have him sneezing, and things changing all the time," said the King.

"I beg Your Majesty to consider the danger of a head-cold," put in the doctor.

"Yes, think of the danger of a head-cold," echoed the King, who saw clearer than the Queen the chaos that might result if the Prince was attacked by a prolonged fit of sneezing. "People with head-colds may sneeze ten or fifteen times a day."

"Or fifty," said the doctor.

"Or fifty," echoed the King again, shaking his head, for he was torn between paternal love and kingly duty. "Imagine fifty enchantments in a day! By eventide the whole kingdom would be upset, undone, and the people plotting a revolution."

"The tower on the Golden Mountain is in a fine healthful locality," said the doctor, "and the Prince could be brought up as happily there as in the palace."

So at length the Queen consented. In a few days the little Prince, who had not sneezed a second time, was removed to the tower on the Golden Mountain. His room, designed by Doctor Pill, was completely protected from draughts, and every breath of air that entered it was tri-bi-sterilized. Mrs. Pill, who had been a hospital nurse, took care of him. Three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, his royal parents rode out to the tower, and after putting on germ-proof garments, were admitted to the nursery of their infant son.

And so the years went by. n.o.body was found able to break Malvolia's spell, and the clue to its undoing had been carried away by the wind.

Malvolia herself had disappeared.

The Prince became a handsome little boy. Accomplished teachers taught him history, music, drawing, dancing, and all the other things that a prince ought to know. But of real life he knew almost nothing at all.

His most faithful friend during these lonely years was a French poodle, who spoke both French and English exceedingly well. Of course, he had a marked canine accent, rather growling his g's and howling the aw's and the ow's, but his words were well chosen and his vocabulary extensive.

Never was seen a more friendly, wise, and devoted animal.