But he did not mind what she said.
The instant Prince Dolor got off the cloak it folded itself up into a tiny parcel and rolled itself into the farthest corner of the room. If the nurse had seen it she would have taken it for a mere bundle of rubbish. She brought in the supper and lit the candles, her face as unhappy as usual. But Prince Dolor only saw, hidden in the corner where nobody else would see it, his wonderful traveling-cloak. He ate heartily, scarcely hearing his nurse's grumbling.
"Poor woman!" he thought, "she hasn't a traveling-cloak!"
And when he crept into his little bed, where he lay awake a good while watching the stars, his chief thought was, "I must be up very early to-morrow morning and get my lessons done, and then I'll go traveling all over the world on my beautiful cloak."
So, next day, he opened his eyes with the sun, and went with a good heart to his lessons, which for the first time he found dull, and the instant they were over he crept across the floor, undid the shabby little bundle, climbed on a chair, and thence to the table so as to unbar the skylight; said his magic charm, and was away out of the window in a minute.
He was accustomed to sit so quietly always, that his nurse, though only in the next room did not miss him, and she could not have missed him anyway for the clever godmother made an image, which she set on the window-sill reading and which looked so like Prince Dolor that any common observer would never have guessed the difference.
And all this while the happy little fellow was away floating in the air on his magic cloak, and seeing all sorts of wonderful things—or they seemed wonderful to him, who had hitherto seen nothing at all.
First, there were the flowers that grew on the plain, which, whenever the cloak came near enough, he strained his eyes to look at; they were tiny, but very beautiful.
"I wonder," he thought, "whether I could see better through a pair of glasses like those my nurse reads with, and takes such care of. How I should take care of them too! if only I had a pair!"
Immediately he felt a pair of the prettiest gold spectacles ever seen; and looking downwards, he found that, though ever so high above the ground, he could see every blade of grass, every tiny bud and flower—nay, even the insects that walked over them.