She then hastened away to the King, who was again alone, as Graciosa had gone to her chamber.
“I hear that Graciosa has returned!” cried Grognon. “The girl thinks she can come and go at pleasure and cares nothing for any anxiety or sorrow she may cause us. But leave her to me, and I will teach her a lesson in obedience that may save us much trouble in the future.”
The King was troubled at hearing this. He could not bear the thought of again putting the Princess in the power of her stepmother, and yet he knew Grognon’s furious temper and was afraid of awakening it. In the end, however, he agreed to what the Queen asked and promised that she should do as she wished with Graciosa.
Grognon had learned a lesson from the return of the Princess, and she now determined to call to her aid a fairy who was a friend of hers and was as wicked as herself. “This girl,” thought she, “is surely protected by some magic, and if I would succeed against her, I must call upon some power that is greater than my own.”
The fairy came in haste at the Queen’s summons, and when she found what was required of her, her little eyes sparkled with malice.
“This is indeed a matter to my own taste,” said she. “I will tell you how to set a task for the Princess that she cannot possibly accomplish. Then, when she fails, you can say she is disobedient and obstinate, and this will give you an excuse for breaking every bone in her body.”
The advice delighted Grognon. “Quick!” said she. “Tell me what I am to do, for I can hardly wait to rid myself of this creature.”
The fairy then drew from an enormous pocket in her gown a great mass of tangled threads of silk. They were of all colors of the rainbow, and each thread was so twisted in with the others that there seemed neither beginning nor end to it and yet was so fine that one could scarcely breathe upon it without breaking it.
“Take this silk to Graciosa,” said the fairy, “and tell her that before to-morrow she must separate the different colors from each other and wind them into skeins, each color to itself, and that not a single thread of them must be broken. This she will find it impossible to do, and when you visit her to-morrow and find that she has failed, it will give you an excuse to punish her as you see fit.”
This advice delighted the Queen. She took the skeins and hastened away to the place where she had had Graciosa imprisoned. The Princess was weeping and looked so beautiful in her tears that any heart less hard than Grognon’s would have pitied her. But her beauty only increased the Queen’s fury against her.