The princess sat with her mother in an arbour.
“Ah!” said the queen, “there is another come to ask your hand. How I wish he may be the really handsome one you desire, this time!”
“It is all useless, mother; I don’t mean to see any more of them—they are all uglier, one than the other.”
The queen was about to answer by instancing several noted paragons of manly beauty whom she had rejected like the rest, but the chamberlain came in with great importance just at that moment, to say that the prince who had just arrived appeared to be a very great prince indeed, and that he was in a great hurry, and demanded to see the princess instantly.
The princess was very indignant at this abrupt proposal, and refused absolutely to see him; but at last the queen got her to consent to place herself in a hollow pillar in the great reception-hall, and through a little peephole, contrived in the decorations, take a view of him without his knowing that she did so.
When the princess thus saw the stranger, she was dazzled with the perfection of his form and the surpassing beauty of his countenance, and she could hardly restrain herself from darting from her hiding-place and offering him her hand at once; in order to preserve herself from committing such a mistake, she immediately let herself down through a little trap-door into the room below, where it had been agreed that her mother should meet her.
“Well, what did you think of him?” said the queen, who did not keep her long waiting.
“Oh! I think he might do,” said the princess, with an assumed air of indifference, for she was too proud to acknowledge how much she admired him.
The queen was overjoyed that at length she consented to marry, and so put an end to the anxiety she was in to see her established before she died. That she might not take it into her head to go back from what she had said, her parents hastened on the wedding preparations, and the prince seemed very anxious, too, that no delay should occur. As soon as the festivities were over, he handed his bride into a magnificent gold coach, and drove off with her, followed by a retinue which showed he was a very great prince indeed.
Away they rode many days’ journey, till at last they reached a palace of greater magnificence than any thing the princess had ever conceived, filled with crowds of servants, who fulfilled her least wish almost before it was uttered, and where every pleasure and every gratification was provided for her in abundance.