"Find me, by to-morrow, something absolutely impossible for her to do."
The fairy brought a great basket full of feathers, plucked from every kind of bird—nightingales, canaries, linnets, larks, doves, thrushes, peacocks, ostriches, pheasants, partridges, magpies, eagles—in fact, if I told them all over, I should never come to an end; and all these feathers were so mixed up together, that they could not be distinguished.
"See," said the fairy, "even one of ourselves would find it difficult to separate these, and arrange them as belonging to each sort of bird. Command your prisoner to do it; she is sure to fail."
Grognon jumped for joy, sent for the princess, and ordered her to take her task, and finish it, as before, by set of sun.
Graciosa tried patiently, but she could see no difference in the feathers; she threw them all back again into the basket, and began to weep bitterly. "Let me die," said she, "for death only will end my sorrows. Percinet loves me no longer; if he did, he would already have been here."
"Here I am, my princess," cried a voice from under the basket; and the fairy-prince appeared. He gave three taps with his wand—the feathers flew by millions out of the basket, and arranged themselves in little heaps, each belonging to a different bird.
"What do I not owe you?" cried Graciosa.
"Love me!" answered the prince, tenderly, and said no more.
When Grognon arrived, she found the task done. She was furious at the fairy, who was as much astonished as herself at the result of their malicious contrivances. But she promised to try once more; and for several days employed all her industry in inventing a box, which, she said, the prisoner must be forbidden on any account to open. "Then," added the cunning fairy, "of course, being such a disobedient and wicked girl, as you say, she will open it, and the result will satisfy you to your heart's content."
Grognon took the box, and commanded Graciosa to carry it to her castle, and set it on a certain table, in an apartment she named, but not upon any account, to open it or examine its contents.