‘Do you know the King of the Peacocks?’
But the answer was always, ‘No, no.’
Then they went on and on, so far that no one has ever been farther, and
at last they came to the Kingdom of the Cockchafers.
They had never before seen such a number of cockchafers, and the
buzzing was so loud that the King was afraid he should be deafened by
it. He asked the most distinguished-looking cockchafer they met if he
knew where they could find the King of the Peacocks.
‘Sire,’ replied the cockchafer, ‘his kingdom is thirty thousand leagues
from this; you have come the longest way.’
‘And how do you know that?’ said the King.
‘Oh!’ said the cockchafer, ‘we all know you very well, since we spend
two or three months in your garden every year.’
Thereupon the King and the Prince made great friends with him, and they
all walked arm-in-arm and dined together, and afterwards the cockchafer
showed them all the curiosities of his strange country, where the
tiniest green leaf costs a gold piece and more. Then they set out again
to finish their journey, and this time, as they knew the way, they were
not long upon the road. It was easy to guess that they had come to the
right place, for they saw peacocks in every tree, and their cries could
be heard a long way off.
When they reached the city they found it full of men and women who were
dressed entirely in peacocks’ feathers, which were evidently thought
prettier than anything else.
They soon met the King, who was driving about in a beautiful little
golden carriage which glittered with diamonds, and was drawn at full
speed by twelve peacocks. The King and the Prince were delighted to see
that the King of the Peacocks was as handsome as possible. He had curly
golden hair and was very pale, and he wore a crown of peacocks’
feathers.
When he saw Rosette’s brothers he knew at once that they were
strangers, and stopping his carriage he sent for them to speak to him.
When they had greeted him they said:
‘Sire, we have come from very far away to show you a beautiful
portrait.’
So saying they drew from their travelling bag the picture of Rosette.
The King looked at it in silence a long time, but at last he said:
‘I could not have believed that there was such a beautiful Princess in
the world!’
‘Indeed, she is really a hundred times as pretty as that,’ said her
brothers.
‘I think you must be making fun of me,’ replied the King of the
Peacocks.
‘Sire,’ said the Prince, ‘my brother is a King, like yourself. He is
called “the King,” I am called “the Prince,” and that is the portrait
of our sister, the Princess Rosette. We have come to ask if you would
like to marry her. She is as good as she is beautiful, and we will give
her a bushel of gold pieces for her dowry.’
‘Oh! with all my heart,’ replied the King, ‘and I will make her very
happy. She shall have whatever she likes, and I shall love her dearly;
only I warn you that if she is not as pretty as you have told me, I
will have your heads cut off.’
‘Oh! certainly, we quite agree to that,’ said the brothers in one
breath.
‘Very well. Off with you into prison, and stay there until the Princess
arrives,’ said the King of the Peacocks.
And the Princes were so sure that Rosette was far prettier than her
portrait that they went without a murmur. They were very kindly
treated, and that they might not feel dull the King came often to see
them. As for Rosette’s portrait that was taken up to the palace, and
the King did nothing but gaze at it all day and all night.
As the King and the Prince had to stay in prison, they sent a letter to
the Princess telling her to pack up all her treasures as quickly as
possible, and come to them, as the King of the Peacocks was waiting to
marry her; but they did not say that they were in prison, for fear of
making her uneasy.
When Rosette received the letter she was so delighted that she ran
about telling everyone that the King of the Peacocks was found, and she
was going to marry him.
Guns were fired, and fireworks let off. Everyone had as many cakes and
sweetmeats as he wanted. And for three days everybody who came to see
the Princess was presented with a slice of bread-and-jam, a
nightingale’s egg, and some hippocras. After having thus entertained
her friends, she distributed her dolls among them, and left her
brother’s kingdom to the care of the wisest old men of the city,
telling them to take charge of everything, not to spend any money, but
save it all up until the King should return, and above all, not to
forget to feed her peacock. Then she set out, only taking with her her
nurse, and the nurse’s daughter, and the little green dog Frisk.
They took a boat and put out to sea, carrying with them the bushel of
gold pieces, and enough dresses to last the Princess ten years if she
wore two every day, and they did nothing but laugh and sing. The nurse
asked the boatman:
‘Can you take us, can you take us to the kingdom of the peacocks?’
But he answered:
‘Oh no! oh no!’
Then she said:
‘You must take us, you must take us.’
And he answered:
‘Very soon, very soon.’
Then the nurse said:
‘Will you take us? will you take us?’
And the boatman answered:
‘Yes, yes.’
Then she whispered in his ear:
‘Do you want to make your fortune?’
And he said:
‘Certainly I do.’
‘I can tell you how to get a bag of gold,’ said she.
‘I ask nothing better,’ said the boatman.
‘Well,’ said the nurse, ‘to-night, when the Princess is asleep, you
must help me to throw her into the sea, and when she is drowned I will
put her beautiful clothes upon my daughter, and we will take her to the
King of the Peacocks, who will be only too glad to marry her, and as
your reward you shall have your boat full of diamonds.’
The boatman was very much surprised at this proposal, and said:
‘But what a pity to drown such a pretty Princess!’
However, at last the nurse persuaded him to help her, and when the
night came and the Princess was fast asleep as usual, with Frisk curled
up on his own cushion at the foot of her bed, the wicked nurse fetched
the boatman and her daughter, and between them they picked up the
Princess, feather bed, mattress, pillows, blankets and all, and threw
her into the sea, without even waking her. Now, luckily, the Princess’s
bed was entirely stuffed with phoenix feathers, which are very rare,
and have the property of always floating upon water, so Rosette went on
swimming about as if she had been in a boat. After a little while she
began to feel very cold, and turned round so often that she woke Frisk,
who started up, and, having a very good nose, smelt the soles and
herrings so close to him that he began to bark. He barked so long and
so loud that he woke all the other fish, who came swimming up round the
Princess’s bed, and poking at it with their great heads. As for her,
she said to herself:
‘How our boat does rock upon the water! I am really glad that I am not
often as uncomfortable as I have been to-night.’
The wicked nurse and the boatman, who were by this time quite a long
way off, heard Frisk barking, and said to each other:
‘That horrid little animal and his mistress are drinking our health in
sea-water now. Let us make haste to land, for we must be quite near the
city of the King of the Peacocks.’
The King had sent a hundred carriages to meet them, drawn by every kind
of strange animal. There were lions, bears, wolves, stags, horses,
buffaloes, eagles, and peacocks. The carriage intended for the Princess
Rosette had six blue monkeys, which could turn summer-saults, and dance
on a tight-rope, and do many other charming tricks. Their harness was
all of crimson velvet with gold buckles, and behind the carriage walked
sixty beautiful ladies chosen by the King to wait upon Rosette and
amuse her.
The nurse had taken all the pains imaginable to deck out her daughter.
She put on her Rosette’s prettiest frock, and covered her with diamonds
from head to foot. But she was so ugly that nothing could make her look
nice, and what was worse, she was sulky and ill-tempered, and did
nothing but grumble all the time.
When she stepped from the boat and the escort sent by the King of the
Peacocks caught sight of her, they were so surprised that they could
not say a single word.
‘Now then, look alive,’ cried the false Princess. ‘If you don’t bring
me something to eat I will have all your heads cut off!’
Then they whispered one to another:
‘Here’s a pretty state of things! she is as wicked as she is ugly. What
a bride for our poor King! She certainly was not worth bringing from
the other end of the world!’
But she went on ordering them all about, and for no fault at all would
give slaps and pinches to everyone she could reach.
As the procession was so long it advanced but slowly, and the nurse’s
daughter sat up in her carriage trying to look like a Queen. But the
peacocks, who were sitting upon every tree waiting to salute her, and
who had made up their minds to cry, ‘Long live our beautiful Queen!’
when they caught sight of the false bride could not help crying
instead:
‘Oh! how ugly she is!’
Which offended her so much that she said to the guards:
‘Make haste and kill all these insolent peacocks who have dared to
insult me.’
But the peacocks only flew away, laughing at her.
The rogue of a boatman, who noticed all this, said softly to the nurse:
‘This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have
been prettier.’
But she answered:
‘Be quiet, stupid, or you will spoil everything.’
Now they told the King that the Princess was approaching.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘did her brothers tell me truly? Is she prettier than
her portrait?’
‘Sire,’ they answered, ‘if she were as pretty that would do very well.’
‘That’s true,’ said the King; ‘I for one shall be quite satisfied if
she is. Let us go and meet her.’ For they knew by the uproar that she
had arrived, but they could not tell what all the shouting was about.
The King thought he could hear the words:
‘How ugly she is! How ugly she is!’ and he fancied they must refer to
some dwarf the Princess was bringing with her. It never occurred to him
that they could apply to the bride herself.
The Princess Rosette’s portrait was carried at the head of the
procession, and after it walked the King surrounded by his courtiers.
He was all impatience to see the lovely Princess, but when he caught
sight of the nurse’s daughter he was furiously angry, and would not
advance another step. For she was really ugly enough to have frightened
anybody.
‘What!’ he cried, ‘have the two rascals who are my prisoners dared to
play me such a trick as this? Do they propose that I shall marry this
hideous creature? Let her be shut up in my great tower, with her nurse
and those who brought her here; and as for them, I will have their
heads cut off.’
Meanwhile the King and the Prince, who knew that their sister must have
arrived, had made themselves smart, and sat expecting every minute to
be summoned to greet her. So when the gaoler came with soldiers, and
carried them down into a black dungeon which swarmed with toads and
bats, and where they were up to their necks in water, nobody could have
been more surprised and dismayed than they were.
‘This is a dismal kind of wedding,’ they said; ‘what can have happened
that we should be treated like this? They must mean to kill us.’
And this idea annoyed them very much. Three days passed before they
heard any news, and then the King of the Peacocks came and berated them
through a hole in the wall.
‘You have called yourselves King and Prince,’ he cried, ‘to try and
make me marry your sister, but you are nothing but beggars, not worth
the water you drink. I mean to make short work with you, and the sword
is being sharpened that will cut off your heads!’
‘King of the Peacocks,’ answered the King angrily, ‘you had better take
care what you are about. I am as good a King as yourself, and have a
splendid kingdom and robes and crowns, and plenty of good red gold to
do what I like with. You are pleased to jest about having our heads cut
off; perhaps you think we have stolen something from you?’
At first the King of the Peacocks was taken aback by this bold speech,
and had half a mind to send them all away together; but his Prime
Minister declared that it would never do to let such a trick as that
pass unpunished, everybody would laugh at him; so the accusation was
drawn up against them, that they were impostors, and that they had
promised the King a beautiful Princess in marriage who, when she
arrived, proved to be an ugly peasant girl.
This accusation was read to the prisoners, who cried out that they had
spoken the truth, that their sister was indeed a Princess more
beautiful than the day, and that there was some mystery about all this
which they could not fathom. Therefore they demanded seven days in
which to prove their innocence. The King of the Peacocks was so angry
that he would hardly even grant them this favour, but at last he was
persuaded to do so.
While all this was going on at court, let us see what had been
happening to the real Princess. When the day broke she and Frisk were
equally astonished at finding themselves alone upon the sea, with no
boat and no one to help them. The Princess cried and cried, until even
the fishes were sorry for her.
‘Alas!’ she said, ‘the King of the Peacocks must have ordered me to be
thrown into the sea because he had changed his mind and did not want to
marry me. But how strange of him, when I should have loved him so much,
and we should have been so happy together!’
And then she cried harder than ever, for she could not help still
loving him. So for two days they floated up and down the sea, wet and
shivering with the cold, and so hungry that when the Princess saw some
oysters she caught them, and she and Frisk both ate some, though they
didn’t like them at all. When night came the Princess was so frightened
that she said to Frisk:
‘Oh! Do please keep on barking for fear the soles should come and eat
us up!’
Now it happened that they had floated close in to the shore, where a
poor old man lived all alone in a little cottage. When he heard Frisk’s
barking he thought to himself:
‘There must have been a shipwreck!’ (for no dogs ever passed that way
by any chance), and he went out to see if he could be of any use. He
soon saw the Princess and Frisk floating up and down, and Rosette,
stretching out her hands to him, cried:
‘Oh! Good old man, do save me, or I shall die of cold and hunger!’
When he heard her cry out so piteously he was very sorry for her, and
ran back into his house to fetch a long boat-hook. Then he waded into
the water up to his chin, and after being nearly drowned once or twice
he at last succeeded in getting hold of the Princess’s bed and dragging
it on shore.
Rosette and Frisk were joyful enough to find themselves once more on
dry land, and the Princess thanked the old man heartily; then, wrapping
herself up in her blankets, she daintily picked her way up to the
cottage on her little bare feet. There the old man lighted a fire of
straw, and then drew from an old box his wife’s dress and shoes, which
the Princess put on, and thus roughly clad looked as charming as
possible, and Frisk danced his very best to amuse her.
The old man saw that Rosette must be some great lady, for her bed
coverings were all of satin and gold. He begged that she would tell him
all her history, as she might safely trust him. The Princess told him
everything, weeping bitterly again at the thought that it was by the
King’s orders that she had been thrown overboard.
‘And now, my daughter, what is to be done?’ said the old man. ‘You are
a great Princess, accustomed to fare daintily, and I have nothing to
offer you but black bread and radishes, which will not suit you at all.
Shall I go and tell the King of the Peacocks that you are here? If he
sees you he will certainly wish to marry you.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Rosette, ‘he must be wicked, since he tried to drown me.
Don’t let us tell him, but if you have a little basket give it to me.’
The old man gave her a basket, and tying it round Frisk’s neck she said
to him: ‘Go and find out the best cooking-pot in the town and bring the
contents to me.’
Away went Frisk, and as there was no better dinner cooking in all the
town than the King’s, he adroitly took the cover off the pot and
brought all it contained to the Princess, who said:
‘Now go back to the pantry, and bring the best of everything you find
there.’
So Frisk went back and filled his basket with white bread, and red
wine, and every kind of sweetmeat, until it was almost too heavy for
him to carry.
When the King of the Peacocks wanted his dinner there was nothing in
the pot and nothing in the pantry. All the courtiers looked at one
another in dismay, and the King was terribly cross.
‘Oh well! ‘he said, ‘if there is no dinner I cannot dine, but take care
that plenty of things are roasted for supper.’
When evening came the Princess said to Frisk:
‘Go into the town and find out the best kitchen, and bring me all the
nicest morsels that are being roasted upon the spit.’
Frisk did as he was told, and as he knew of no better kitchen than the
King’s, he went in softly, and when the cook’s back was turned took
everything that was upon the spit, As it happened it was all done to a
turn, and looked so good that it made him hungry only to see it. He
carried his basket to the Princess, who at once sent him back to the
pantry to bring all the tarts and sugar plums that had been prepared
for the King’s supper.
The King, as he had had no dinner, was very hungry and wanted his
supper early, but when he asked for it, lo and behold it was all gone,
and he had to go to bed half-starved and in a terrible temper. The next
day the same thing happened, and the next, so that for three days the
King got nothing at all to eat, because just when the dinner or the
supper was ready to be served it mysteriously disappeared. At last the
Prime Minister began to be afraid that the King would be starved to
death, so he resolved to hide himself in some dark corner of the
kitchen, and never take his eyes off the cooking-pot. His surprise was
great when he presently saw a little green dog with one ear slip softly
into the kitchen, uncover the pot, transfer all its contents to his
basket, and run off. The Prime Minister followed hastily, and tracked
him all through the town to the cottage of the good old man; then he
ran back to the King and told him that he had found out where all his
dinners and suppers went. The King, who was very much astonished, said
he should like to go and see for himself. So he set out, accompanied by
the Prime Minister and a guard of archers, and arrived just in time to
find the old man and the Princess finishing his dinner.
The King ordered that they should be seized and bound with ropes, and
Frisk also.
When they were brought back to the palace some one told the King, who
said:
‘To-day is the last day of the respite granted to those impostors; they
shall have their heads cut off at the same time as these stealers of my
dinner.’ Then the old man went down on his knees before the King and
begged for time to tell him everything. While he spoke the King for the
first time looked attentively at the Princess, because he was sorry to
see how she cried, and when he heard the old man saying that her name
was Rosette, and that she had been treacherously thrown into the sea,
he turned head over heels three times without stopping, in spite of
being quite weak from hunger, and ran to embrace her, and untied the
ropes which bound her with his own hands, declaring that he loved her
with all his heart.
Messengers were sent to bring the Princes out of prison, and they came
very sadly, believing that they were to be executed at once: the nurse
and her daughter and the boatman were brought also. As soon as they
came in Rosette ran to embrace her brothers, while the traitors threw
themselves down before her and begged for mercy. The King and the
Princess were so happy that they freely forgave them, and as for the
good old man he was splendidly rewarded, and spent the rest of his days
in the palace. The King of the Peacocks made ample amends to the King
and Prince for the way in which they had been treated, and did
everything in his power to show how sorry he was.
The nurse restored to Rosette all her dresses and jewels, and the
bushel of gold pieces; the wedding was held at once, and they all lived
happily ever after—even to Frisk, who enjoyed the greatest luxury, and
never had anything worse than the wing of a partridge for dinner all
the rest of his life.[7]
[7] Madame d’Aulnoy.