"Pooh! what a very silly kind of girl you are. Couldn't you, a human being, think of something better than that?"
It happened one day that, as they sat opposite each other, looking into each other's eyes—he as quiet as a stone dog on a gate, she with her tapering fingers interlocked, twirling her thumbs as a means of passing her time—the Princess was thinking of her many rejected suitors, whose hearts she had broken; even of the last one, the short, squat man, with sturdy limbs, large hands and feet, a shaggy head and huge ears. And she sighed, for though he was much more of a Satyr than like her Hyperean father, still he was a man.
Thereupon, she looked at the cur, with its sturdy limbs, its shaggy head and huge ears; and she sighed again. The dog winked at her.
"Cur," she said to herself, "you are ugly enough; still, if you were a man I think I could fall in love with you."
The cur stood on his hind legs, his head a little on one side; there was a knowing, impudent look in his eyes. Then he uttered a kind of doggish laugh, something between a whine and a bark; then, after showing his teeth in a grinning kind of way, he licked his chops at her sneeringly.
The words of her last suitor were just then ringing in her ears. She looked at the cur in amazement, for she almost fancied he had uttered those selfsame words.
The cur was evidently mocking her, as he rolled his shaggy head about, and gloated at her just as her last suitor had done. Thereupon, she blushed deeply, and covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears.
The poor dog thereupon came to lick the tears that oozed through her fingers, so that she felt somewhat comforted by the affection which this poor mongrel showed her.
This, thought she, is the end of every haughty beauty who is hard to please and who thinks no one is good enough for her. She rejects all the best matches in early youth, she turns up her nose at every eligible parti, until—when age creeps on and beauty fades—she is happy to accept the first boor that pops the question. As for herself, she had not even a boor whom she could love, not even the churlish man with the huge ears.
That evening, undressing before going to bed, the Princess stood, sad and disconsolate, in front of her mirror. She was still of a radiant beauty, quite as handsome as she had ever been; but alas! she knew that her beauty would soon begin to fade in that lonely tower.