called
for his sleeping-draught. The head valet appeared, bearing a flavoured
mixture in a crystal goblet on a golden tray. The Prince drank it. By
its taste it was the draught, but, by its effect, it was not. No sleep
came to him, and the face of Truitonne grew uglier and uglier in his
mind. Presently he started up.

'What sound was that?'

It came from the next apartment--the sound of a woman weeping. He
listened, and in the stillness of the palace the sound came clearly. He
knew that voice: it was the voice of his dear Princess Florine, just as
he used to hear it when, as a Blue Bird, he spoke with her at her
window.

In a moment he arose and dressed himself in his royal robes. While he
was doing this, Florine in the next room took another egg from the box,
and, throwing it upon the floor, cried: 'I wish that, by storm and
lightning, all that is evil and ugly in this palace shall be destroyed,
and all that is good and beautiful left.'

As she spoke the rising wind wailed about the palace and died away; dull
thunder reverberated in the distance. The air grew stifling, and the
night flowers paid their perfumes out like threatened debtors. Another
rush of wind, then silence broken only by a peal of thunder nearer than
before. The splash of heavy drops was heard on the flagstones of the
courtyard below. The lightning was seen to flash through the windows,
and the thunder shook the castle to its foundations.

Nearer and nearer loomed the storm, growing more terrific every moment.
Every one was up and running about in panic. Those with ugly souls and
bodies, if their consciences were also wicked, went mad in the panic,
and fled in a body from the palace, thinking the end of the world had
come. But those whose consciences were clear, whose hearts were
true--those who could never be called ugly, no matter what they looked
like--they sought the Prince and gathered round him, while the palace
shuddered as all the storm gods poured out their wrath.

As the panic-stricken ones fled towards the hills, Florine looked out at
the window and saw them, a rushing group with terror in their heels.
There came a vivid flash of lightning, and the thunder split and rolled
and crashed. When Florine looked again she saw no fugitives: they had
disappeared for ever. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm
abated. The thunder rolled away into the distance, and the moon came out
and rode from cloud to cloud triumphant.

There was a