The King was a pattern of amiability, and, as to wisdom, could have held his own in comparison with any crowned potentate on earth; but of the Queen not half as much could be said in praise. As a girl, her beauty had been renowned, and had brought to her Princes by the score as wooers; but to their suits she had, as the phrase is, turned a deaf ear, regarding men as creatures made wholly of ill qualities, and marriage with them a debasement of herself in every sense; and it was not until her father threatened to imprison her for the rest of her life in a town built of steel and adamant, that she could be induced to accept a husband.
The amiability of her spouse was often sorely tried by her constant disparagement of men; but, being founded upon exceptional goodness of character, he did not allow it to be overcome, and schooled himself to bear with her fantastic ideas, rewarding himself for his leniency by sometimes laughing in his sleeve at the more preposterous of her pretensions.
A great many years passed without their having any family until, one day, the Queen had a baby girl, and consoled herself by reflecting that that, at least, was better than having a boy, "to grow up into a horrid man," as she expressed herself.
It happened that, at the moment of the little Princess's birth, the fairy Gaieia was passing the palace, and, as she had no particularly pressing business on hand, slipped in, and, after congratulating the Queen on the beauty of her offspring, constituted herself the infant's god-mother—as was the fairy custom at that period—at the same time laughingly predicting that she would prove to be "the joy of her parents."
It hardly needs to be recorded that, with her very peculiar views as to what a woman's conduct in life ought to be, the Queen did not permit her daughter to receive instruction of any kind from anybody but herself; the King, consequently, rarely saw his child, and knew nothing of the character which had been made for her by her mother, rather than allowed to come to her and develop itself in the natural order of things. In this way the Princess Disdainana—so her mother had insisted on naming her—was brought up until she had reached her seventeenth year. If the youthful beauty of her mother had been renowned, that of the Princess was celebrated far and near as being nothing less than marvellous, and a hundred of the richest and handsomest Kings and Princes in the world vied with each other in their endeavours to obtain her hand; but to not one of them would she deign to listen even for a moment, regarding all men as a sort of natural excrescence, whose only fitting place in the world was in companionship with the horses and dogs, or, at most, as ugly and repulsive creatures necessary for the performance of the most unpleasant labours. It was on this account that she had become universally known as "The Princess Who Despised All Men."
This state of things became, at last, a cause of extreme uneasiness to the King. By the time she had arrived at a marriageable age, the fact that he, too, was year by year growing older began to recur to his mind with disquieting persistency; for, having no son to succeed him, he saw that, if his daughter's disinclination to marry were maintained, his dynasty was in danger of coming to an end—and that is a prospect which no King can be expected to contemplate with equanimity.
One day, therefore, when the subject was worrying him very much, he sent for his wife and daughter and explained to them the extreme discomforts of the situation which had been brought about by the obduracy of the Princess.
"My daughter, I am happy to say, knows her duty to herself," replied the Queen proudly.
The King was about to retort, "But she does not appear to know anything whatever about her duty to her father;" but, as it was a rule of conduct with him never to use that form of contradiction in any discussion he had with his wife, he held his peace.
"Rather than become the wife of an ugly, coarse, bearded man, I would die a hundred deaths!" cried the Princess vehemently.