n still see the angry look with which my father surveyed all these
people. He drove at once to the city, and on his return his clear eyes
were as untroubled as ever. A court official accompanied him, and only
that portion of the useless amount of luggage and number of persons that
my father desired remained.

"The princesses were to come the next morning--it was at the end of
February--flowers were blooming in the grass and on the bushes, while
the foliage of the trees glittered with the fresh green which the rising
sap gives to the young leaves. I was sitting on a strong bough of a
sycamore-tree, which grew opposite to the house, watching for them.
Their arrival was delayed and, as I gazed meanwhile over the garden, I
thought it must surely please them, for not a palace in the city had one
so beautiful.

"At last the litters appeared; they had neither runners nor attendants,
as my father had requested, and when the princesses alighted--both at
the same moment--I knew not which way to turn my eyes first, for the
creature that fluttered like a dragon-fly rather than stepped from the
first litter, was not a girl like other mortals--she seemed like a wish,
a hope. When the dainty, beautiful creature turned her head hither and
thither, and at last gazed questioningly, as if beseeching help, into
the faces of my father and mother, who stood at the gate to receive her,
it seemed to me that such must have been the aspect of Psyche when she
stood pleading for mercy at the throne of Zeus.

"But it was worth while to look at the other also. Was that Cleopatra?
She might have been the elder, for she was as tall as her sister, but
how utterly unlike! From the waving hair to every movement of the hands
and body the former--it was Cleopatra--had seemed to me as if she were
flying. Everything about the second figure, on the contrary, was solid,
nay, even seemed to offer positive resistance. She sprang from the
litter and alighted on the ground with both feet at once, clung firmly
to the door, and haughtily flung back her head, crowned with a wealth
of dark locks. Her complexion was pink and white, and her blue eyes
sparkled brightly enough; but the expression with which she gazed at my
parents was defiant rather than questioning, and as she glanced around
her red lips curled scornfully as though she deemed her surroundings
despicable and unworthy of her royal birth.

"This irritated me against the seven-year-old child, yet I said t