At last, Blondina burst into tears, when the crone appeared to be melted by her sorrow, and, advancing, whispered in her ear.
"If I give you this nut," she said, "it shall be on one condition, only, your Majesty; and that is, that you crack it in the presence of your prime minister alone, in some remote corner of your palace."
Blondina gladly consented, and sending away her attendants, took possession of the nut, and summoned her prime minister to her side. This functionary was a very stern and important officer of State, who had been foremost in the movement to banish the Princess Vixetta from the court. He arrived all breathless, at the queen's behest, and in the meantime the old crone had disappeared as mysteriously as she came. Blondina ordered the prime minister to follow her to a secluded summer-house, where, eagerly cracking the nut with her royal high-heeled shoe, she found inside only a few pinches of white powder, and a scroll containing some fine writing in an unknown tongue.
"Thanks to my love of study, your Majesty," modestly suggested the prime minister, "I have mastered the only language you have left unacquired, which happens to be Arabic. On this bit of paper, I can decipher certain instructions to the finder."
"Tell me them, quickly, my dear lord," said the enchanted princess, "and I will apply myself to the study of Arabic to-morrow. So much for a neglected education," she added, with a sigh that she had left anything so important undone; for, as I have said before, this princess had a passion for acquiring languages.
"If the finder of this treasure desires to acquaint himself with the language of the animal world, and to take the form of any other living thing, he has only to snuff up a pinch of the enclosed powder, bow to the earth three times, and cry the name of the creature he desires to become, followed by these exact words:—
'Kurri-kuree,
Changed would I be.'
"At once he will assume the likeness of the thing named, and will understand all he hears going on around him, remaining in that shape as long as he may choose. Whenever he wishes to resume his own natural form, he has only to bow himself again three times to the earth, and repeat the formula already given. But let him, during the period of transformation, especially beware of laughing aloud—or he will inevitably forget the formula, and run the risk of remaining as he has chosen to be."
"This is the most delightful thing I ever had happen to me," said the merry young queen, clapping her hands. "Come, my lord, I am dying to try the experiment. Suppose we become two turkeys, and wander into the barn-yard. Nothing could please me more than a little adventure of that kind. Besides, you forget I have never studied Turkish, and this will be an excellent opportunity."
The prime minister, who was a man of sober years, beyond the taste for such mad-cap frolics, remonstrated in vain with his wilful mistress. Blondina would have her way; and, in a short time, behold both queen and minister indulging in a solemn pinch of white snuff, and pronouncing distinctly the magic formula, while inclining themselves humbly to the earth!