Sad to say, he behaved like an infant tiger. Never was there seen such a tempestuous baby. He wriggled, and howled, and fought, and plunged, until the poor mother and nurses turned red with mortification. But the old aunty held on to him bravely, and examined him from top to toe. Nothing could she find, till she came to the sole of the right foot, and there was a tiny red mark like a burning torch. As soon as aunty saw this she sighed, and whispered a word in the baby's ear, when he became as quiet as any lamb.
Aunty sent away the nurses, and told the poor queen there was no doubt about it; her boy was bewitched, and when he grew up he would try to devour his sister. The only thing was to keep them apart, and this the queen told her husband; and he sent for a wise man, who confirmed what aunty had said. The wise man added that all would go well so long as the princess was kept apart from her brother, and as the brother was the heir of the kingdom, there was nothing left but to banish the unfortunate princess. The king built for his daughter, in the remotest corner of his kingdom, an ivory tower. Around the tower was a crystal moat full of gold and silver fish. Around the moat were lovely flower-beds, and around the flower-beds was a thick and thorny hedge. In this tower there was a room lined with tufted blue satin, like the inside of a bonbon box, and all the furniture was made of fine carved ivory. Here the princess was shut up for life, under the care of an old dame, Madame Véloutine by name, who once had kept a boarding-school for duchesses, and was very respectable indeed. Poor Eglantine was gradually forgotten at court, and her cannibal brother grew up without knowing he had ever had a sister.
THE PRINCESS EGLANTINE.
Like all other captive princesses, past, present, and to come, Eglantine was beautiful and accomplished. She could speak in every language, work in silk and crewels, paint china plaques, make mince-pies, sing like a nightingale, and play anything on the piano at sight with her eyes shut! Her skin was milk-white, with a rosy flush on the cheeks, while her glorious golden hair never came out of crimp, but rippled from the roots to her very feet.
One day a prince, cantering by upon his palfrey, looked up at the tower window, and there saw this lovely creature, surrounded by a flock of pretty white doves. Prince Charming gazed and gazed, and the longer he stood there, the more enraptured he became. When he heard from the country people that no one knew who or what was this mysterious beauty, excepting that once a year, by night, a grand gentleman and lady visited her, and looked at her while asleep, the ardent young prince made a vow to solve the secret without delay. He engaged his old tutor to make love to Eglantine's governess, and this plan succeeded so well that the tutor was, ere long, invited to take a cup of tea at five o'clock, in the ground floor apartment of the tower where Madame Véloutine kept house. Madame Véloutine was very much fluttered by the attentions of the tutor, a gloomy-looking individual with savage dark mustache and deep-sunken eyes. The poor old thing, who had been reading novels without any intermission for eighteen years, was very sentimental, and the idea of a suitor coming to woo at some period of her existence was never wholly absent from her thoughts. She dressed herself in one of the Princess Eglantine's white robes, put a blue sash around her waist, and covering her little red nose with rice powder, sat in a darkened corner with a guitar upon her knees. The tutor flattered her, and soon she grew confidential and told him the story of her charge. When the tutor took his leave, Madame Véloutine sighed deeply, and pitied the poor man who had fallen a victim to her charms. She did not see the fat purse of gold the prince bestowed on him, upon learning the true state of the case about the enchanting captive!
Prince Charming rode, day and night, till he reached the king's palace. "Give me your daughter for my wife," he said. The king turned pale at hearing that the secret was betrayed. "For pity's sake speak lower, young man," said the anxious father. "Only suppose her brother should hear of it." With that he told the whole story to Prince Charming, who forthwith rode to ask a wise man what he should do to set the princess free, with safety to herself.
"Ride as far as you will, and as fast as you will with her, you may not escape the curse," said the wise man.
The prince went off heavy hearted, and visited a witch he knew. She was knitting a stocking, which ravelled every night as fast as it grew by day.
"I have been knitting this stocking for fifty years," said the witch, taking a pinch of snuff out of the soup-tureenful that she always kept beside her. "I could as soon make it whole in one night as keep away the curse from her."