Fairy Tales From All Nations

by Anthony R. Montalba

So well did the queen play her part, that no one suspected anything. She ran shrieking to the castle, and with rent clothes and dishevelled hair sank on the steps of the hall, acting as if some great disaster had befallen her, and by the king's command her women carried her to her chamber. A full quarter of an hour passed ere she came to herself. Then she assumed an attitude of grief, wept, and exclaimed, "Ah, poor Aurora, what a bridal day for thee! Ah, unfortunate prince!"

After repeatedly exclaiming in this manner, she at length related that a band of robbers had suddenly burst into the garden, and had forcibly torn the royal children from her arms, and carried them off; that they had struck herself to the ground and left her half dead; and she then showed a swelling on her forehead, to produce which she had purposely hit her head against a tree. They all believed her words, and the king commanded all the great lords, and counts, and knights, and squires, to mount their horses and pursue the robbers. They traversed the forest in all directions, and visited every cave, and rock, and mountain, for at least three miles round the palace, but they could not find a trace of either the robbers or the prince and princess. The king, however, could not rest, and caused further search and enquiries to be made, for weeks and months; and he sent messengers into all the countries he could think of; but all was in vain, and at length it was as if the prince and princess had never been in existence, so entirely had they disappeared.

The old king, however, thought that the robbers had been tempted by the fine jewels that the prince and princess wore on the wedding day, and that they had stripped them of those and then murdered them, and buried their bodies in some secret place: this so grieved him that he shortly after died. On his death-bed, as he had no children, he bestowed his kingdom on his wife, and besought his subjects to be true and obedient to her as they had been to him. They gave their promise, and acknowledged her as queen, more out of love for him than for her.

Thus four years passed away, when, in the second year after the king's death, the queen began to govern with great rigour; and with the treasures the king had left behind him, she hired foreign soldiers whom she brought over the sea to guard her and to keep watch over the palace; for she knew that she was not beloved by her subjects, and she said, "That they should now do out of fear what they would not do for love."

And so it came to pass, that from day to day she became more hated by every one, but nobody durst show his hate, for the slightest whisper against her was punished with death. Nevertheless, the murmurs and whispers still went on; and it was commonly said among the people, that the queen had a hand in the children's disappearance; for, in truth, there were plenty of persons who, on account of her sharp eyes and her affected love for the children, suspected her of evil practices against them. These murmurs, so far from dying away, went on increasing; but the queen cared not for them, and thought "they will remain the brutes into which I have transformed them, and no one will deprive me of the crown." However, things turned out otherwise than she expected.

Meanwhile the poor royal children led a sorry life. The prince had fled to the forest as a grey wolf, and was obliged to conduct himself like a wolf, and howl like one too, and by day to wander about in desolate places, and to prowl about at night like a thief; for wolfish fear had also sprung up in his heart. And also, he was obliged to live like other wolves, on all sorts of prey—on wild animals and birds, and in the dreary winter-time he was often obliged to content himself with a mouse, and live on very short commons, and with chattering teeth, to make his bed amongst the hard cold stones. And this certainly was very different from the princely mode of life to which he had been accustomed previous to his being driven into this wild savage misery.

He had, however, one peculiarity, which was, that he only destroyed and devoured animals, and never desired to take human blood. Yet there was one after whose blood he did thirst, and that was the wicked woman who had transformed him; but she took very good care never to go where she might be within reach of that wolf's teeth. It must not, however, be supposed that the prince, who was now a wolf, still preserved human reason. No; all had grown dark within him, and under the form of the beast as which he was condemned to scour the forest, he had also very little more than brute understanding. It is true, a dim instinct often drew him towards the royal residence and its gardens, as though he had cause to expect that he should find prey there; but he had no clear remembrance of the past: how indeed should it have lasted under a wolf's skin? At those moments when he felt the impulse, he was always also seized with unusual fierceness; but as soon as he came within a thousand paces of the spot, a cold shudder passed through him and compelled him to retire. This was the effect of the queen's magic art, which enabled her to keep him banished from her to just that distance, and no further.

She, however, did all in her power to destroy him, and caused her attendants to hunt very frequently in the forest which surrounded the castle, thinking that it was most probable that he was still there. On this account, twice in almost every week, she caused noisy hunts and battues after wolves and foxes to be held there; and, as a pretext for these, she kept a great many pretty deer there, of which our royal wolf did not fail to devour as many as he could catch. He, however, always contrived to escape the danger, although the dogs often had their claws in the hair of his back, and the hunters aimed many a shot at him. He concealed himself for the moment, and when the noise ceased and the bugles no longer resounded, he returned to the thicket, which was close to the castle, and lay in the sunny spots where, as a boy and youth, he had often played. Still he knew nothing of the past, but it was a mysterious love that drew him thither.

The Princess Aurora as we have said had flown up into a tree, being transformed into a nightingale. But her soul had not become dark beneath its light feathery garb, like the prince's within the wolf's hide; and she knew much more than he, both of her own self and of men, only she was deprived of the power of speech. But she sang all the more sweetly in her solitude, and often so beautifully, that the beasts skipped and leaped with delight, and the birds gathered round her, and the trees and flowers rustled and bent their heads. I think the very stones might have danced had they but had the power to love, but their hearts were too cold. Men would soon have remarked the little bird, and much talk would have arisen about her, but some secret power withheld them from entering the wood, so that they never heard the nightingale sing.

I have already related how the queen persecuted the poor royal wolf with hunts and battues, so that he was the innocent cause of great trouble and inconvenience to the whole wolvine family. As great evil too befel the little birds, and in those days of tyranny, it was a great misfortune to be born either a thrush, a linnet, or a nightingale, in the neighbourhood of the castle. For the queen, after the death of the king had thrown all the power into her own hands, suddenly pretended to have an illness of so peculiar a kind, that not only were the cries, cawing, and chattering of birds of prey insupportable to her, but even the sweetest twittering and warbling of the merry little birds affected her unpleasantly; and in order to make people believe this, she fainted on two occasions when she heard them sing.