TRY A DROP OF WATER.
Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been falling in
love. But how a princess who had no gravity at all could fall into
anything, is a difficulty, perhaps the difficulty. As for her own
feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a
beehive of honey and stings, to be fallen into. And now I come to
mention another curious fact about her.
"The palace was built on the shore of the loveliest lake in the world,
and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother. The root
of this preference, no doubt,--although the princess did not recognize
it as such,--was that the moment she got into it, she recovered the
natural right of which she had been so wickedly deprived,--namely,
gravity. whether this was owing to the fate that water had been
employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do not know. But it is
certain that she could swim and dive like the duck that her old nurse
said she was. The way that this alleviation of her misfortune was
discovered, was as follows: One summer evening, during the carnival of
the country, she had been taken upon the lake by the king and queen, in
the royal barge. They were accompanied by many of the courtiers in a
fleet of little boats. In the middle of the lake, she wanted to get
into the lord chancellor's barge, for his daughter, who was a great
favorite with her, was in with her father, The old king rarely
condescended to make light of his misfortune, but on this occasion he
happened to be in a particularly good-humor, and as the barges
approached each other, he caught up the princess to throw her into the
chancellor's barge. He lost his balance, however, and dropping into the
bottom of the barge, lost his hold of his daughter, not, however,
before imparting to her the downward tendency of his own person, though
in a somewhat different directions for as the king fell into the boat,
she fell into the water. With a burst of delighted laughter, she
disappeared in the lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They
had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under
water in a moment, but they had all, one after another, come up to the
surface again for breath, when,--tinkle, tinkle, babble and gush, came
the princess' laugh over the water from far away. There she was,
swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen,
chancellor or daughter. But though she was obstinate, she seemed more
sedate than usual. Perhaps that was because a great pleasure spoils
laughing. After this the passion of her life was to get into the water,
and she was always the better behaved and the more beautiful, the more
she had of it. Summer and winter it was all the same, only she could
not stay quite so long in the water when they had to break the ice to
let her in. Any day, from morning till evening, she might be descried,--
a streak of white in the blue water,--lying as still as the shadow of
a cloud, or shooting along like a dolphin, disappearing, and coming up
again far off, just where one did not expect her. She would have been
in the lake of a night too, if she could have had her way, for the
balcony of her window overhung a deep pool in it, and through a shallow
reedy passage she could have swum out into the wide wet water, and no
one would have been any the wiser. Indeed, when she happened to wake in
the moonlight, she could hardly resist the temptation. But there was
the sad difficulty of getting into it. She had as great a dread of the
air as some children have of water. For the slightest gush of wind
would blow her away, and a gust might arise in the stillest moment.
And, if she gave herself a push towards the water and just failed of
reaching it, her situation would be dreadfully awkward, irrespective of
the wind, for at best there she would have to remain, suspended in her
nightgown till she was seen and angled for by somebody from the window.
"'Oh! if I had my gravity,' thought she, contemplating the water, 'I
would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into
the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!'
"This was the only consideration that made her wish to be like other
people.
"Another reason for being fond of the water was, that, in it alone, she
enjoyed any freedom. For she could not walk out without a cortege,
consisting in part of a troop of light horse, for fear of the liberties
which the wind might take with her. And the king grew more apprehensive
with increasing years, till, at last, he would not allow her to walk
abroad without some twenty silken cords fastened to as many parts of
her dress, and held by twenty noblemen. Of course horseback was out of
the question. But she bade good by to all this ceremony, when she got
into the water. So remarkable were its effects upon her, especialy, in
restoring her for the time to the ordinary human gravity, that, strange
to say, Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck agreed in recommending the king to bury
her alive for three years, in the hope that, as the water had done her
so much good, the earth would do her yet more. But the king had some
vulgar prejudices against the experiment, and would not give consent.
Foiled in this, they yet agreed in another recommendation, which,
seeing that the one imported his opinions from China and the other from
Thibet, was very remarkable indeed. They said, that if water of
external origin and application could be so efficatious, water from a
deeper source might work a perfect cure; in short, that if the poor,
afflicted princess could by any means be made to cry, she might recover
her lost gravity.
"But how was this to be brought about? Therein lay the difficulty. The
philosophers were not wise enough for this. To make the princess cry
was as impossible as to make her weigh. They sent for a professional
beggar, commanded him to prepare his most touching oracle of woe,
helped him, out of the court charity-box, to whatever he wanted for
dressing up, and promised great rewards in the event of his success.
But it was all in vain. She listened to the mendicant artist's story,
and gazed at his marvellous make-up till she could contain herself no
longer, and went into the most undignified contortions for relief,
shrieking,--positively screeching with laughter.
"When she had a little recovered herself, she ordered her attendants to
drive him away, and not give him a single copper; whereupon his look of
mortified discomfiture wrought her punishment and his revenge, for it
sent her into violent hysterics, from which she was with difficulty
recovered.
"But so anxious was the king that the suggestion should have a fair
trial, that he put himself in a rage one day, and rushing up to her
room, gave her an awful whipping. But not a tear would flow. She looked
grave, and her laughing sounded uncommonly like screaming,--that was
all. The good old tyrant, though he put on his best gold spectacles to
look, could not discover the smallest cloud in the serene blue of her
eyes."