Her parents were very troubled about it, and they called in a wise old fairy in order to get her advice. She went into the matter thoroughly, and finally told them that if the princess could only once be made to cry, the spell would be broken for ever and she would thenceforward be just like other people.
This wasn’t particularly helpful, but it gave them some hope, and they immediately set about the task of making the princess weep. Of course it was a rather difficult matter, because naturally they didn’t want her to be really miserable, and they hardly knew how to begin. Finally they offered a reward of five hundred crowns to anybody who should succeed in making their daughter cry without doing her any harm.
Wise men came from all over the kingdom to see what they could do, and many things were tried, but all to no purpose.
One of them suggested that she should be shut up in a room by herself and fed on bread and water for a whole week. The queen thought this very cruel, but the king persuaded her to try it. She insisted, however, that at any rate it should be bread and milk. But every time they came to bring the princess her basin of bread and milk they found her laughing, and at the end of the week she was still as cheerful as ever.
“Look,” she said, “my feet have grown so thin that I can’t keep my slippers on.” And she kicked her foot into the air and sent her slipper flying across the room, and laughed to see the scandalised face of the butler.
But her mother burst into tears. “My poor starved lamb,” she said, “they shall not treat you so any longer.” And she rushed into the kitchen and ordered soup and chicken and pink jelly to be sent up to the princess for her next meal.
Another wise man came who said that for six months he had been practising pulling the most awful faces and making the most terrible noises imaginable, in order to be able to cure the princess. Children, he said, were so frightened by him that they had to be carried shrieking and howling from the room, and even grown-up people were so terrified that they wept aloud. He requested that he might be left alone with the princess; but the queen waited outside the door and listened.
She trembled with anxiety as she stood there, for the noises the wise man made were so bloodcurdling that she could hardly bear to hear them herself, and it seemed dreadful that her child should be left alone to endure such a trial. But in a few minutes she heard peals of laughter coming from inside the room, and presently the wise man opened the door. He was quite done up, and blue in the face, with the efforts he had been making. “It’s no use,” he said rather crossly. “No use at all,” and went away looking much annoyed.
The princess came running out to her mother.