"I do not at all consider this a subject for jest," said the little lady, surveying the jester indignantly through her tears.
"Looking at the matter broadly, I should say that it was just as much a subject for jesting as for weeping. Will your small Highness tell me what there is in all this to cry about? Do you not know that it is very foolish to cry about little things, and that the tears of even a princess are just as salt as those of anybody else, and if called up in abundance will make her eyes and nose just as red as those of a dairy maid who cries over a pail of spilled milk?"
"Le Glorieux," said Marguerite solemnly, "if my father is as anxious to see me as I am to see him, he would write 'Hurry, hurry,' in his letter instead of telling me to wait."
"Would you write 'Hurry, hurry,' to him if he were coming to you on a tiresome trip?"
"Indeed I would! I would say, 'Hurry, and hurry, and hurry again, for I long to embrace you.' Only think, I have lived for eight long years with no one near me but Cunegunda who really loves me, and none of my own blood to touch my brow with a kiss!"
"I do not know," said the fool reflectively, "how I should feel were there none near me to love me save Cunegunda, but I need not worry about that, for Cunegunda, if I read her aright, is not burned up with affection for me; but what you say proves to me that you are not really so fond of your father as he is of you."
"You are dreaming; what do you mean by such words?" asked the princess, wiping her eyes and looking haughtily at the jester. "I adore my father; he is dearer to me than all the crowns of the world."
"It is this way," said Le Glorieux; "as I remark probably once a day more or less, I am nothing but a fool, but nevertheless I say a good many wise things, and I think a good many more. Very often when I remain perfectly quiet my silence counts for a good deal, for I am thinking very hard about something. But as I was going to say, when one has the right kind of affection for another, there is not a grain of selfishness in it. Your father is just as anxious to see you as you are to see him, still at the same time he thinks of your comfort first and of his own wishes next."
"Do you think so, really?" asked Marguerite, smiling, then asked, "But why could he not have come to me himself instead of sending a messenger?"
"Kings and princes can not go about as they please, though they are always supposed to be doing what they like to do," replied Le Glorieux. "A king can not even marry to please himself. He may say, 'I do not want a wife, I prefer to be a bachelor.' The state says, 'Not a bit of it; you must marry.' Then the state picks out a wife for him. If she is pretty and agreeable he is lucky, but if she has a horrible squint and the temper of a tigress and the state says, 'Marry her,' why, marry her he must. Just now your father is probably cooking up a lot of schemes against France for its treatment of you and himself, and he is telling Spain and England how dearly he always loved them, and he is figuring out the lands that France ought to restore to him in return for his great disappointment, so he has no time to rush away to see his little daughter."