"There was a prince on the other side," confessed the Princess Gentianella.
"To be sure, there was," smiled the Queen. "There is always a prince on the other side; but why should that make you unhappy? Is he not a nice prince?"
"He is a real Prince," said her little daughter; "and I should not be at all unhappy if he had not just told me that he is somebody else's Prince!"
"Never mind," said the Queen, consolingly; "you will soon find another prince in your garden."
"But not that Prince," wept the poor little Princess.
"One prince is much the same as another," said the Queen; but she did not think so for a moment, and no more did the little Princess.
Now, it was quite true that Prince Amaryllis had not been playing fair, and that his forgetfulness was enough to annoy the nicest little Princess in the world; but for all that, he was going to be executed, and it is difficult to be angry for long with anyone who is just going to be executed. So, when Princess Gentianella ran out once more into the sunshine on the following morning, she was fully prepared to make friends with her Prince from over the wall. She was greatly disturbed to find, however, that there was no one to make friends with; and although she called the Prince's name several times, not an answer came from the other side of the wall. Then the Princess Gentianella did what she had never been brave enough to do before,—she shut her eyes and jumped; and either she jumped higher than so small a princess ever jumped before, or else the wall was not nearly such a high wall as she had always thought it was, for the next moment she found herself on her two little feet in the very middle of the Prince's garden. She was very close to the invisible country now, and the people's voices were so loud that she could actually hear what they were saying. This was not really surprising, though, for they were all saying the same thing.
"Our Prince cannot make the flowers grow, and the Witch has taken him away to be executed," was what they were saying.