Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in
love. But how a princess who had no gravity 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. But 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 fact 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 manner in which 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 favourite with her, was in it
with her father. Now though the old king rarely condescended to make
light of his misfortune, yet, happening on this occasion to be in a
particularly good humour, 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
direction; for, as the king fell into the boat, she fell into the
water. With a burst of delightful 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's
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.
She was perfectly obstinate.
But at the same time she seemed more sedate than usual. Perhaps that
was because a great pleasure spoils laughing. At all events, 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 quite the same; only she could not stay so
long in the water when they had to break the ice to let her in. Any
day, from morning till evening in summer, 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 the water. For the slightest gust 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
night-gown, till she was seen and angled for by someone 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 her 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 at all 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-bye to all this ceremony
when she got into the water.
And so remarkable were its effects upon her, especially in restoring
her for the time to the ordinary human gravity, that Hum-Drum and
Kopy-Keck agreed in recommending the king to bury her alive for three
years; in the hope that, as the water did 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 his 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 argued that, if water of external origin and
application could be so efficacious, 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 all the
difficulty--to meet which the philosophers were not wise enough. 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 charade-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. Yet 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.