vows he had made to the Queen, and
defied his counsellors to find a Princess more beautiful and better
fashioned than was she, thinking this to be impossible. But the
Council treated the promise as a trifle, and said that it mattered
little about beauty if the Queen were but virtuous and fruitful. For
the State needed Princes for its peace and prosperity, and though, in
truth, the Princess, his daughter, had all the qualities requisite for
making a great Queen, yet of necessity she must choose an alien for
her husband, and then the stranger would take her away with him. If,
on the other hand, he remained in her country and shared the throne
with her, their children would not be considered to be of pure native
stock, and so, there being no Prince of his name, neighbouring peoples
would stir up wars, and the kingdom would be ruined.

The King, impressed by these considerations, promised that he would
think over the matter. And so search was made among all the
marriageable Princesses for one that would suit him. Every day
charming portraits were brought him, but none gave promise of the
beauty of his late Queen; instead of coming to a decision he brooded
over his sorrow until in the end his reason left him. In his delusions
he imagined himself once more a young man; he thought the Princess his
daughter, in her youth and beauty, was his Queen as he had known her
in the days of their courtship, and living thus in the past he urged
the unhappy girl to speedily become his bride.

The young Princess, who was virtuous and chaste, threw herself at the
feet of the King her father and conjured him, with all the eloquence
she could command, not to constrain her to consent to his unnatural
desire.

The King, in his madness, could not understand the reason of her
desperate reluctance, and asked an old Druid-priest to set the
conscience of the Princess at rest. Now this Druid, less religious
than ambitious, sacrificed the cause of innocence and virtue to the
favour of so great a monarch, and instead of trying to restore the
King to his right mind, he encouraged him in his delusion.

[Illustration: "HE THOUGHT THE PRINCESS WAS HIS QUEEN"]

The young Princess, beside herself with misery, at last bethought her
of the Lilac-fairy, her godmother; determined to consult her, she set
out that same night in a pretty little carriage drawn by a great sheep
who knew all the roads. When she arrived the Fairy, who loved the
Princess, told her