“’Sh!” whispered the Lady-in-waiting. “The fairies hear everything!”
And indeed, the fairy heard her well enough, and very angry she was about it, too. For she was so old that she knew all about it, from beginning to end, and she was sure that the Wizard with Three Dragons was sitting in the Black Forest, watching the whole matter in his crystal globe. So she had whispered her gift—which was nothing more nor less than a Fearless Heart—into the ear of the Little Princess. But the Queen thought she had only kissed her.
So, when the clock was on the hour of four (which, as every one knows, is the end of christenings and fairy gifts) the first godmother went up to the golden cradle.
“Since my first gift was not satisfactory to every one,” she said, angrily, “I will give the Little Princess another. And that is, that when the time comes she shall marry the Prince of the Black Heart!”
Then the clock struck four, while the Queen wept on the bosom of the Lady-in-waiting.
And that was the end of the christening.
Then the King called the wise-men together, and for forty days and nights they read the books and studied the stars.
In the end, they laid out a Garden, with a wall so high that the sun could not shine over it until noon, and so broad that it was a day’s journey for a swift horse to cross it. One tiny door there was: but the first gate was of iron, and five-and-twenty men-at-arms stood before it, day and night, with drawn swords; the second gate was of beaten copper, and before that were fifty archers, with arrows on the string; the third gate was of triple brass, and before it a hundred knights, in full armor, rode without ceasing.
Into the Garden went the Little Princess, and the Queen, and all her ladies; but no man might pass the gates, save the King himself. And there the Princess dwelt until her seventeenth birthday, without seeing any more of the world than the inside of the wall.
Now it happened that, some time before, a young Prince had ridden out of the west and set about his travels. For the wise-man on the hill had come to him and said: