Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE
By Miss Mulock [Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik]
CONTENTS
THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE
THE INVISIBLE PRINCE
PRINCE CHERRY
THE PRINCE WITH THE NOSE
THE FROG-PRINCE
CLEVER ALICE
THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE
CHAPTER I
Yes, he was the most beautiful Prince that ever was born.
Of course, being a prince, people said this; but it was true besides.
When he looked at the candle, his eyes had an expression of earnest
inquiry quite startling in a new born baby. His nose--there was not
much of it certainly, but what there was seemed an aquiline shape;
his complexion was a charming, healthy purple; he was round and fat,
straight-limbed and long--in fact, a splendid baby, and everybody was
exceedingly proud of him, especially his father and mother, the King and
Queen of Nomansland, who had waited for him during their happy reign of
ten years--now made happier than ever, to themselves and their subjects,
by the appearance of a son and heir.
The only person who was not quite happy was the King's brother, the
heir presumptive, who would have been king one day had the baby not been
born. But as his majesty was very kind to him, and even rather sorry for
him--insomuch that at the Queen's request he gave him a dukedom almost
as big as a county--the Crown-Prince, as he was called, tried to seem
pleased also; and let us hope he succeeded.
The Prince's christening was to be a grand affair. According to the
custom of the country, there were chosen for him four-and-twenty
god-fathers and godmothers, who each had to give him a name, and promise
to do their utmost for him. When he came of age, he himself had to
choose the name--and the godfather or god-mother--that he liked the
best, for the rest of his days.
Meantime all was rejoicing. Subscriptions were made among the rich to
give pleasure to the poor; dinners in town-halls for the workingmen;
tea-parties in the streets for their wives; and milk-and-bun feasts for
the children in the schoolrooms. For Nomansland, though I cannot point
it out in any map, or read of it in any history, was, I believe, much
like our own or many another country.
As for the palace--which was no different from other palaces--it was
clean “turned out of the windows,” as people say, with the preparations
going on. The only quiet place in it was the room which, though the
Prince was six weeks old, his mother the Queen had never quitted. Nobody
said she was ill, however--it would have been so inconvenient; and as
she said nothing about it herself, but lay pale and placid, giving no
trouble to anybody, nobody thought much about her. All the world was
absorbed in admiring the baby.
The christening-day came at last, and it was as lovely as the Prince
himself. All the people in the palace were lovely too--or thought
themselves so--in the elegant new clothes which the Queen, who thought
of everybody, had taken care to give them, from the ladies-in-waiting
down to the poor little kitchen-maid, who looked at herself in her pink
cotton gown, and thought, doubtless, that there never was such a pretty
girl as she.
By six in the morning all the royal household had dressed itself in
its very best; and then the little Prince was dressed in his best--his
magnificent christening robe; which proceeding his Royal Highness did
not like at all, but kicked and screamed like any common baby. When he
had a little calmed down, they carried him to be looked at by the Queen
his mother, who, though her royal robes had been brought and laid upon
the bed, was, as everybody well knew, quite unable to rise and put them
on.
She admired her baby very much; kissed and blessed him, and lay looking
at him, as she did for hours sometimes, when he was placed beside her
fast asleep; then she gave him up with a gentle smile, and, saying she
hoped he would be very good, that it would be a very nice christening,
and all the guests would enjoy themselves, turned peacefully over on
her bed, saying nothing more to anybody. She was a very uncomplaining
person, the Queen--and her name was Dolorez.
Everything went on exactly as if she had been present. All, even the
king himself, had grown used to her absence; for she was not strong,
and for years had not joined in any gayeties. She always did her royal
duties, but as to pleasures, they could go on quite well without her, or
it seemed so. The company arrived: great and notable persons in this
and neighboring countries; also the four-and-twenty godfathers and
godmothers, who had been chosen with care, as the people who would be
most useful to his royal highness should he ever want friends, which did
not seem likely. What such want could possibly happen to the heir of the
powerful monarch of Nomansland?
They came, walking two and two, with their coronets on their
heads--being dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses, or the like;
they all kissed the child and pronounced the name each had given him.
Then the four-and-twenty names were shouted out with great energy by
six heralds, one after the other, and afterward written down, to be
preserved in the state records, in readiness for the next time they were
wanted, which would be either on his Royal Highness' coronation or his
funeral.
Soon the ceremony was over, and everybody satisfied; except, perhaps,
the little Prince himself, who moaned faintly under his christening
robes, which nearly smothered him.
In truth, though very few knew, the Prince in coming to the chapel had
met with a slight disaster. His nurse,--not his ordinary one, but the
state nurse-maid,--an elegant and fashionable young lady of rank, whose
duty it was to carry him to and from the chapel, had been so occupied
in arranging her train with one hand, while she held the baby with
the other, that she stumbled and let him fall, just at the foot of the
marble staircase.
To be sure, she contrived to pick him up again the next minute; and the
accident was so slight it seemed hardly worth speaking of. Consequently
nobody did speak of it. The baby had turned deadly pale, but did not
cry, so no person a step or two behind could discover anything wrong;
afterward, even if he had moaned, the silver trumpets were loud enough
to drown his voice. It would have been a pity to let anything trouble
such a day of felicity.
So, after a minute's pause, the procession had moved on. Such a
procession t Heralds in blue and silver; pages in crimson and gold; and
a troop of little girls in dazzling white, carrying baskets of flowers,
which they strewed all the way before the nurse and child--finally the
four-and-twenty godfathers and godmothers, as proud as possible, and so
splendid to look at that they would have quite extinguished their small
godson--merely a heap of lace and muslin with a baby face inside--had it
not been for a canopy of white satin and ostrich feathers which was held
over him wherever he was carried.
Thus, with the sun shining on them through the painted windows, they
stood; the king and his train on one side, the Prince and his attendants
on the other, as pretty a sight as ever was seen out of fairyland.
“It's just like fairyland,” whispered the eldest little girl to the next
eldest, as she shook the last rose out of her basket; “and I think the
only thing the Prince wants now is a fairy god-mother.”
“Does he?” said a shrill but soft and not unpleasant voice behind; and
there was seen among the group of children somebody,--not a child, yet
no bigger than a child,--somebody whom nobody had seen before, and who
certainly had not been invited, for she had no christening clothes on.
She was a little old woman dressed all in gray: gray gown; gray
hooded cloak, of a material excessively fine, and a tint that seemed
perpetually changing, like the gray of an evening sky. Her hair was
gray, and her eyes also--even her complexion had a soft gray shadow over
it. But there was nothing unpleasantly old about her, and her smile was
as sweet and childlike as the Prince's own, which stole over his pale
little face the instant she came near enough to touch him.
“Take care! Don't let the baby fall again.”
The grand young lady nurse started, flushing angrily.
“Who spoke to me? How did anybody know?--I mean, what business has
anybody----” Then frightened, but still speaking in a much sharper tone
than I hope young ladies of rank are in the habit of speaking--“Old
woman, you will be kind enough not to say 'the baby,' but 'the Prince.'
Keep away; his Royal Highness is just going to sleep.”
“Nevertheless I must kiss him. I am his god-mother.”
“You!” cried the elegant lady nurse.
“You!” repeated all the gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting.
“You!” echoed the heralds and pages--and they began to blow the silver
trumpets in order to stop all further conversation.
The Prince's procession formed itself for returning,--the King and his
train having already moved off toward the palace,--but on the top-most
step of the marble stairs stood, right in front of all, the little old
woman clothed in gray.
She stretched herself on tiptoe by the help of her stick, and gave the
little Prince three kisses.
“This is intolerable!” cried the young lady nurse, wiping the kisses
off rapidly with her lace handkerchief. “Such an insult to his Royal
Highness! Take yourself out of the way, old woman, or the King shall be
informed immediately.”
“The King knows nothing of me, more's the pity,” replied the old woman,
with an indifferent air, as if she thought the loss was more on his
Majesty's side than hers. “My friend in the palace is the King's wife.”
“King's have not wives, but queens,” said the lady nurse, with a
contemptuous air.
“You are right,” replied the old woman. “Nevertheless I know her Majesty
well, and I love her and her child. And--since you dropped him on the
marble stairs (this she said in a mysterious whisper, which made the
young lady tremble in spite of her anger)--I choose to take him for my
own, and be his godmother, ready to help him whenever he wants me.”
“You help him!” cried all the group breaking into shouts of laughter,
to which the little old woman paid not the slightest attention. Her soft
gray eyes were fixed on the Prince, who seemed to answer to the look,
smiling again and again in the causeless, aimless fashion that babies do
smile.
“His Majesty must hear of this,” said a gentleman-in-waiting.
“His Majesty will hear quite enough news in a minute or two,” said
the old woman sadly. And again stretching up to the little Prince, she
kissed him on the forehead solemnly.
“Be called by a new name which nobody has ever thought of. Be Prince
Dolor, in memory of your mother Dolorez.”
“In memory of!” Everybody started at the ominous phrase, and also at a
most terrible breach of etiquette which the old woman had committed.
In Nomansland, neither the king nor the queen was supposed to have any
Christian name at all. They dropped it on their coronation day, and it
never was mentioned again till it was engraved on their coffins when
they died.
“Old woman, you are exceedingly ill-bred,” cried the eldest
lady-in-waiting, much horrified. “How you could know the fact passes
my comprehension. But even if you did know it, how dared you presume to
hint that her most gracious Majesty is called Dolorez?”
“WAS called Dolorez,” said the old woman, with a tender solemnity.
The first gentleman, called the Gold-stick-in-waiting, raised it to
strike her, and all the rest stretched out their hands to seize her; but
the gray mantle melted from between their fingers like air; and, before
anybody had time to do anything more, there came a heavy, muffled,
startling sound.
The great bell of the palace the bell which was only heard on the death
of some one of the royal family, and for as many times as he or she was
years old--began to toll. They listened, mute and horror-stricken. Some
one counted: one--two--three--four--up to nine-and-twenty--just the
Queen's age.
It was, indeed, the Queen. Her Majesty was dead! In the midst of the
festivities she had slipped away out of her new happiness and her old
sufferings, not few nor small. Sending away all her women to see the
grand sight,--at least they said afterward, in excuse, that she had done
so, and it was very like her to do it,--she had turned with her face
to the window, whence one could just see the tops of the distant
mountains--the Beautiful Mountains, as they were called--where she was
born. So gazing, she had quietly died.
When the little Prince was carried back to his mother's room, there was
no mother to kiss him. And, though he did not know it, there would be
for him no mother's kiss any more. As for his godmother,--the little old
woman in gray who called herself so,--whether she melted into air, like
her gown when they touched it, or whether she flew out of the chapel
window, or slipped through the doorway among the bewildered crowd,
nobody knew--nobody ever thought about her.
Only the nurse, the ordinary homely one, coming out of the Prince's
nursery in the middle of the night in search of a cordial to quiet his
continual moans, saw, sitting in the doorway, something which she would
have thought a mere shadow, had she not seen shining out of it two eyes,
gray and soft and sweet. She put her hand before her own, screaming
loudly. When she took them away the old woman was gone.