"SHE HURRIED THE PRINCESS BACK TO HER OWN APARTMENT."
The King was equally puzzled and vexed by the abrupt termination of what he had hoped would have been a conference resulting in relief to himself from pressing anxieties. Now—knowing his wife's absolute and unyielding temper, and the complete control she exercised over her daughter—he saw no way but one (that of using his extreme parental authority) to bring the Princess to obedience; but that measure he was too kind-hearted to resolve upon applying.
In the utmost perplexity of mind he had paced his study for several minutes, without noticing that he was grasping in his right hand a scroll of parchment. On becoming aware of this fact, he stopped suddenly and gazed on the document with bewildered astonishment. It was absolutely certain that he had never seen it before, that it was not in his hand when the Queen and Princess quitted his presence, and that nobody else had entered the room.
While he was thinking of all this, the gay laugh, which had been heard three times before, rang through the study again, only more gaily than ever—for a moment angering the King, though he was one of the most placable of Sovereigns, and causing him to ferret in every possible hiding-place in his study in search of the daring jester. But not a trace of an intruder was discoverable. When he had perfectly assured himself of this, he unfolded the mysteriously conveyed parchment.
The opening words of the document caused him to turn pale, and the sight of the signature at the end of it sent a thrill of terror through his frame. It was nothing less than a formal demand for the hand of the Princess Disdainana, on the part of Kloxoxskin the Ninety-ninth—one of the ugliest and most belligerent monarchs in the world—the document being drawn in the form of an ultimatum, calling upon the King to give his daughter to the said Kloxoxskin in marriage, within two hours of the receipt of this demand, or, failing compliance therewith, to surrender his throne to the said Kloxoxskin, who would, at the time specified, come, supported by his invincible army of one million nine hundred and ninety-nine veteran warriors, to receive the said King's answer.
In his moments of worst apprehension, the King had never thought of anything so terrible as this. He called his wife and daughter back to him, and made them clearly understand the crisis that had come to him and them; but though the Queen was inclined to save her share of the throne by submission, the Princess declared that no consideration would induce her to give herself to any man—to such a human monster as Kloxoxskin least of all.
From that resolution her father tried to move her, but she was inflexible against all his arguments and prayers; and when the two hours' grace was spent, the King found himself in the presence of the redoubtable Kloxoxskin the Ninety-ninth, a prisoner in his palace, and wholly at the mercy of his all-powerful conqueror.
Realising the peril in which she stood, the Queen did her best to persuade her daughter to submit to the inevitable; but the Princess quickly silenced her by giving her back the arguments that had all her life been used in the cultivation of her detestation of all men.
But though she had no misgiving as to her moral strength, the Princess could not but contemplate with alarm the danger of a personal encounter with King Kloxoxskin, so she determined to seek safety in flight and, as soon as dusk came, contrived to slip unperceived from the palace into a dense forest which grew at no great distance from the walls of her father's capital.