"Silent?" echoed the Princess. "Surely, it is the forest that is silent!"
"Oh, no," said the minstrel's son, smiling; "the forest is full of sound. Can you not hear them all talking,—the bees and the flowers and the great pine-trees?"
Princess Prunella listened. "No," she said, shaking her head, "I can hear nothing." Then she took the deaf boy's hands and pulled him towards the gate. "Come back to the town with me," she said eagerly. "It is true that you cannot hear the other people's voices; but you will always be able to hear me, and that is ever so much more important!"
So the minstrel's son went back to the palace with Princess Prunella; and when the King and Queen saw how happy their little daughter was at last, they said nothing more about deaf Robert not being a prince, but got over the difficulty by making him a Marquis on the spot and giving him the appointment of Playfellow-in-chief to her Royal Highness. A magnificent banquet was given to celebrate this important event, at which several speeches were made by the King and several tunes were played by the band; but as the speeches were exceedingly pompous and the tunes were exceedingly noisy, the new Marquis, for whom they were intended, heard neither one nor the other. However, he heard every word that the little Princess whispered in his ear, and perhaps that was all that he wished to hear.
Never had life passed so peacefully at the palace as in the days that followed. The Princess was never heard to utter an angry word, and she went about with a contented look on her face that cheered the hearts of all who knew her. It was indeed a happy day for the court when the minstrel's son came to play with the King's daughter, and every one rejoiced that the King and the Queen had been wise enough to let their little daughter have her own way. But all this while no one thought of the minstrel's son.
Now, anybody might suppose that a minstrel's son, who suddenly found himself made into a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a Princess, would be the happiest boy in the world. And yet, although he grew fonder every day of his little playfellow, deaf Robert was the saddest person in the whole court. He grew more and more silent as the days went on, until at last even the Princess noticed that he was changed.
"The wonderful look has gone from your face," she said to him. "Can it be that you do not feel happy at court?"
Then the boy-Marquis told her the truth. "I am unhappy because I cannot hear the sounds of the town," he said. "Will not your father go and live in the forest for a change, so that we can play there together, instead of in this horrible, silent place?"
"But I don't want to go and play in the forest," objected the Princess. "There are no people in the forest; and I should forget I was a person myself, if I had nothing to talk to but the flowers and the trees."
For the first time since they had played together, deaf Robert remembered that he was nearly two years older than the little Princess; and he smiled in a superior manner. "That is only because you hear all the wrong things," he said. "If you could once hear the sounds of the forest, you would never want to come back to the town."