It was so on the present occasion. After the little ebullition just recorded, she speedily recovered her equanimity. Her eyes no longer sparkled with passion, and so agreeable an expression came over her countenance, that nobody thought about her wrinkles, or the unbecomingness of her yellow petticoat.
“I was taking an airing on Mount Caucasus a quarter of an hour ago,” said she, “when one of our people told me of your good fortune; so here I came wind-speed to congratulate you, and to see if I could not find some lucky gifts for my great-great-nephew.”
King Katzekopf thanked her for her condescension, and immediately proposed to escort her to the royal nursery.
“Ha! ha! ha!” cried the Lady Abracadabra, almost choking with laughter at the absurdity of the suggestion. “You don’t suppose I came to talk to you before I had seen the baby, do you? Why, I’ve been sitting by his cradle these ten minutes!”
“You have?” exclaimed the King in astonishment.
“Aye, marry,” said the lady, “and have pulled the chair from under the Baroness Yellowlily, and, he! he! he! have given her such a bump. She was going to feed the child with pap that would have scalded it; but it will be cool enough, I warrant me, now, before she has done rubbing her bruised elbows. Well, nephew, and so you’re going to have a grand christening, are you? Who are to be sponsors besides myself?”
It had never entered into King Katzekopf’s imagination to ask the Lady Abracadabra to be godmother to the young prince. And now she had taken it as a matter of course, and it would never do to affront her! Was there ever such a distress? And what would Queen Ninnilinda say, and what would the Arch-duchess of Klopsteinhesseschloffengrozen say, when, after a direct invitation, she found an old Fairy was to be substituted in her place?
The King was so nervous and frightened that he did not know what to answer. He could only stammer out something about final arrangements being as yet undetermined.
“Well, but, at any rate, I suppose you have settled the child’s name,” continued the Lady Abracadabra, approaching the Council-table. “Hoity toity! what is this?” she added, snatching up one of his Majesty’s memoranda: “Conrad-Adalbert-Willibald-Lewis-Hildebrand-Victor-Sigismund-Belvidere-Narcissus-Adonis Katzekopf? I never heard such a string of silly, conceited names in my life. I shan’t allow it, I can tell you that,” and she stamped on the floor till her diamond buckles glanced like lightning. “If I am to have anything to do with the child, I shall give him what name I think proper. Stay; I’ve watched him for ten minutes, and can read his whole character, and a more wilful little brat I never saw. You shall call him Eigenwillig. There! that’s to be his name; Eigenwillig, and nothing else!”[[1]]
[1]. It is mentioned in the Chronicle of Carivaldus of Cologne, from which this veracious tale has been extracted, that the word “Eigenwillig,” in the ancient Teutonic tongue, bears the meaning of Self-willed; a statement which is the more credible, since it has a corresponding signification in the modern language of Germany.