ad her portrait taken and sent to all the great courts of the
world. And so it happened that one Prince, when he saw it, took it and
shut it up in his cabinet and talked to the portrait as though it was
the Princess herself in the flesh.

The courtiers heard him and went and told his father that his son had
gone mad, and that he was shut up in his room, talking all day long to
something or somebody who wasn't there.

The King immediately sent for his son and told him what the courtiers
had said about him; then he asked him if it was true, and what had come
over him to act like this.

The Prince thought this a favourable opportunity, so he threw himself at
the feet of the King and said:

'You have resolved, sire, to marry me to the Black Princess, but I love
the Princess Desiree.'

'You have not seen her,' said the King. 'How can you love her?'

'Neither have I seen the Black Princess, but I have both their
portraits,' replied the Warrior Prince (he was so named because he had
won three great battles), 'but I assure you that I have such a love for
the Princess Desiree, that if you do not withdraw your word to the Black
Princess and allow me to have Desiree, I shall die, and I shall be very
glad to do so if I am unable to have the Princess I love.'

'It is to her portrait, then, that you have been speaking?' said the
King. 'My son, you have made yourself the laughing-stock of the whole
court. They think you are mad.'

'You would be as much struck as I am if you saw her portrait,' replied
the Prince firmly.

'Fetch it and show it to me, then,' said the King, equally firmly.

The Prince went, and returned with the Princess's portrait as requested;
and the King was so struck with her beauty that he gave the Prince leave
there and then to marry her, and promised to withdraw his word from the
other Princess.

'My dear Warrior,' said he, 'I should love to have so beautiful a
Princess in my court.'

The Prince kissed his father's hand and bowed his knee, for he could not
conceal his joy. He begged the King to send a messenger not only to the
Black Princess but also to Princess Desiree; and he hoped that in regard
to his own Princess, he would choose a man who would prove the most
capable; and he must be rich, because this was a special occasion and
called for all the elaborate preparation it was possible to show in such
a diplomatic mission.

The King's choice fell on Prince Becafigue; he was a young Prince who