But Walpurga could not help putting her hands up to her hat, in order to feel whether the tassel at the back and the flowers in front were still in place.
Mademoiselle Kramer begged their highnesses not to look at the sleeping child, lest they might awaken it.
Irma was the first to speak. "How deeply significant are all of nature's laws. The waking eye arouses the sleeping child. In the depths of every human soul, an infant soul rests sleeping, and it is not well to permit either sympathy or idle curiosity to disturb it."
"I would like to know how you always manage to have such original thoughts," replied the king.
"I don't know," replied Irma, playing with her riding-whip. "I've courage enough to say what I think, and that passes for originality. Nearly all human beings are changelings. They were changed while in the cradle of education."
The king laughed. Walpurga, however, quickly turned her thumbs inward, and said:
"Changelings. It's wrong to speak of anything of that sort before a child that's less than seven months old, for the evil spirits are all powerful up to that time, even if the child is christened."
In order to exorcise any evil spell from the child, she breathed upon it thrice.
The princess looked sadly at the nurse and the child, but did not utter a word.
"I don't understand a word of what the nurse says," remarked the hereditary prince.