She called out to the skaters to ask them if they would look into her glass. “Hand it here,” answered one, who in the ice appeared very pale, thin, and respectable. “I am a philosopher; I am not afraid of the truth.” He looked in, and lo, there was a stork, standing on one leg, with his eyes half closed, and his head neatly tucked under his wing. “What a caricature!” he exclaimed, giving the glass a toss. It fell upon the ermine muff of a furbelowed old dowager, who was skating bravely about, notwithstanding her seventy years. “I will see how I look,” she said, with a simpering smile; and behold, there was a puffy white owl in the mirror. Down fell the glass, but Rosamond caught and saved it.
“What a little unfledged thing you are, to be carrying that bit of broken glass about with you!” called out the philosopher.
“Better be unfledged than a one-eyed stork,” answered Rosamond, and skated swiftly out of sight.
Now, the grandest skater of all was a griffin, who led all the others, skating more skilfully than any of them, and flitting like mad across the very thinnest places. It made one's head giddy to see him. His swiftness and dexterity, and a knack he had of knocking the other skaters into great black holes under the ice, whenever they crossed his path, greatly imposed upon them, and they all took care to follow straight behind, or to keep well out of his way. Now and then a bear would growl as he glided by; but the next day, Rosamond would see that bear hard at work building ice palaces, too busy to growl. One day, skating off into a corner, she found the griffin sitting apart, behind a great block of ice with his claws crossed, and looking very cold and dreary, like a snow image. “Would you not like to take a peep into my glass?” she said to him, quite amiably.
“No, child,” solemnly answered the griffin. “I know by your ironical smile that you have discovered the truth—that I am nothing but a griffin. But if the skaters believe in me, why undeceive them? Why should magpies and zebras have any thing better to reign over them?”
“But do you not see how thin the ice is? You will surely break through some day.”
“I know it,” he replied. “A good strong trampling, and we are all scattered far and wide. But I keep the tigers and hyenas at work, and the more sagacious elephants bear their burdens in quiet, and let me alone. If there be a lion among them, he roars so gently it does no harm. And you must be a good girl, and keep silence. I see that you also wear a crown, and you know how heavy it is.”
“Yes, and it is of brass too, like yours. I am trying to free myself from it,” answered Rosamond. “But I do not care for your peacocks and parrots, and will not tell them yours is not of gold; so do not be afraid;” and off she went, leaving his majesty in a very uneasy state of mind. But he had nothing to fear from her, for although she did not cry, “Vive l'Empereur!” when he skated gorgeously by, she never revealed the fact that he was only a long-clawed griffin.
Rosamond might have staid a long time in Paris, so amused was she by all the gay plumage and dazzling confusion around her; but she soon found that she was dying of starvation. She had always heard French dishes and bon-bons most highly extolled, and now she found they were nothing but dry leaves and husks, served up very prettily, to be sure, but with no nourishment in them. So she looked on the map again, and decided to go to the shore of the Baltic, and follow it along until she came to the town in which the priest lived; for it certainly was useless to look for one among the gayly-plumed skaters in Paris.
Hard walking she found it, among sands and stones, and poor living in the fishermen's huts scattered along the coast. She was quite glad, one day, to meet a little girl of her own age, picking berries. Rosamond helped Greta fill her basket, and then accepted her invitation to go home with her. After walking through a long green lane, among fields of waving grain, they entered a town built of white marble; and Rosamond knew this was the place she sought. They stopped at Greta's house; but when Rosamond saw how many children there were in it, she thought she should not be very comfortable there, and asked for a hotel. Greta told her there was none in the town, but that she would find herself welcome in any house.