I
Once upon a time, in the reign of King Cambrinus, there lived at
Avesnes one of his lords, who was the finest man—by which I mean the
fattest—in the whole country of Flanders. He ate four meals a day,
slept twelve hours out of the twenty-four, and the only thing he ever
did was to shoot at small birds with his bow and arrow.
Still, with all his practice he shot very badly, he was so fat and
heavy, and as he grew daily fatter, he was at last obliged to give up
walking, and be dragged about in a wheel-chair, and the people made fun
of him, and gave him the name of my Lord Tubby.
Now, the only trouble that Lord Tubby had was about his son, whom he
loved very much, although they were not in the least alike, for the
young Prince was as thin as a cuckoo. And what vexed him more than all
was, that though the young ladies throughout all his lands did their
best to make the Prince fall in love with them, he would have nothing
to say to any of them, and told his father he did not wish to marry.
Instead of chatting with them in the dusk, he wandered about the woods,
whispering to the moon. No wonder the young ladies thought him very
odd, but they liked him all the better for that; and as he had received
at his birth the name of Désiré, they all called him d’Amour Désiré.
‘What is the matter with you?’ his father often said to him. ‘You have
everything you can possibly wish for: a good bed, good food, and tuns
full of beer. The only thing you want, in order to become as fat as a
pig, is a wife that can bring you broad, rich lands. So marry, and you
will be perfectly happy.’
‘I ask nothing better than to marry,’ replied Désiré, ‘but I have never
seen a woman that pleases me. All the girls here are pink and white,
and I am tired to death of their eternal lilie and roses.
‘My faith!’ cried Tubby; ‘do you want to marry a negress, and give me
grandchildren as ugly as monkeys and as stupid as owls?’
‘No, father, nothing of the sort. But there must be women somewhere in
the world who are neither pink nor white, and I tell you, once for all,
that I will never marry until I have found one exactly to my taste.’