In about three hours her worse half opened his eyes, and stretching his gigantic limbs, gazed about him in stupefied astonishment.
"Where am I?" he asked, with a yawn.
"Where thou deservest to be," answered the princess, with severity, drawing herself up to her full height. "A pretty position, I ween, for the queen's consort—drugged and cast into prison! Maybe that another time thou wilt pay more attention to my words; but the worst has not come yet. Thou art to be handed over to the malice of my two sisters. Who knows in what manner they may reek their vengeance? If thou escapest with thy life, thou wilt be fortunate.
"Prepare, then, for thou hast brought all this on thyself by despising my counsels. What! is a man like thee to be at the head of the realm? Thou, with thy brutish appetite, thy dense stupidity and deafness to the voice of wisdom? A pretty example to thy subjects, forsooth! Or thinkest thou that the strength of thine arm alone will suffice to govern the kingdom? I tell thee, brainless boor, that whatever your besotted notion of a king may be, it is a post that is no easy task to fill, and woe to him who aspires to the title and is not able to discharge the duties belonging to it.
"Knowest thou not futurity will judge thy action, that thy name is destined either to honour or disgrace the page of history? That a king must not only be brave, but wise, just, good, merciful, temperate?"
"Enough, O royal spouse, most august princess," answered Hans. "Enough for the present; but tell me first how I came here, and next how to get out again, and for the future I will always listen to thy counsels, though allow me to observe that it was thy will to make a king of me rather than mine own; therefore, if thou hast hit upon the wrong man, methinks the blame is thine. An I had known when I was an humble woodchopper that to be a king I must bear this splitting headache, lie in a dungeon full of rats, to be hanged perhaps on the morrow, besides having to kill so many good hearty fellows just because they happen to differ a little in opinion from your Royal Highness, I should have said, 'The devil take all the kings and kingdoms in the world; I'll e'en abide here and chop wood.'"
"Hush!" cried the princess, with asperity, "and offend not our royal ears with such clownish sentiments. It is but natural that thy rude nature should rebel against counsel that is intended for thy good. It is to be hoped, however, that with time thou mayest be brought to a right view of the great destiny that thou hast to fulfil.
"I confess that had I not been specially commanded in a dream by the queen of the fairies to take thee and raise thee to the throne, I should never of myself have chosen so clownish a helpmate."
"Well, for the matter of that," said Hans, "dreams are things that I don't often trouble my head about, as I never had one come true in my life. Many is the time I've dreamed I had my pocket full of gold, and waking in the morning, devil a groat have I found within it; but maybe it is not so with you princesses, who are a different sort of grain to us poor beggars; and perhaps fairies appear to you in dreams and tell the truth; but whether that is or is not, I know not, being no scholar."
"Well, Hans," said the princess, "thou art not far wrong in not trusting to every dream, or in believing there are certain privileged individuals to whom dreams are given as a warning, as consolation, or as prediction of good fortune; but thou oughtest no longer to doubt, after what thou hast seen and gone through; that thou thyself since thy nuptials hast been under the protection of the good fairies.