buried his
face in his hands and wept, not like a child, but like a father. The
tears of a child are like the summer rain, large drops that are soon
dried up; the tears of a father are like the autumnal rain, which
falls slowly and soaks into the ground.

While the king wept, Carlino, mounted on a fine horse, rode on gaily,
his plume waving in the wind, like a hero about to conquer the world.
To find what he sought was not an easy task, however, and his journey
lasted more than one day. He crossed mountains and valleys, traversed
kingdoms, duchies, earldoms, and baronies, and visited cities,
villages, castles, and cottages, gazing at all the women, and gazed at
by them in turn; but all in vain: the treasure that he sought was not
to be found in old Europe.

At the end of four months he reached Marseilles, resolved to embark
for the Indies. At the sight of the raging sea, however, his brave and
faithful servants were seized with an epidemic, called by the
physicians stay-at-homeativeness in Hebrew, and the headache in the
feet in Latin. To the great regret of these honest people, they were
forced to quit their good master and remain quietly on shore, wrapped
in their warm blankets, while Carlino, embarked on a frail bark,
braved the winds and waves.

Nothing can stop a heart hurried away by passion. The prince roamed
over Egypt, India, and China, going from province to province, from
city to city, from house to house, and from cabin to cabin, everywhere
seeking the original of the fair image that was engraved on his heart,
but in vain. He saw women of all colors and shades, brown, blond,
olive, sandy, white, yellow, red, and black, but he did not see her
whom he loved.

Always seeking and never finding, Carlino at last reached the end of
the world. There was nothing more before him but the ocean and the
sky. His hopes were at an end; his dream had vanished. As he was
walking despairingly up and down the seashore, he spied an old man
warming himself in the sun. The prince asked him if there was nothing
beyond these waves that stretched as far as the eye could reach.

"No," said the old man; "no one has ever discovered anything in this
shoreless ocean, or, at least, those who have ventured on it have
never returned to tell the story. I remember, however, having heard
the old men among us say, when I was a child," he added, "that their
fathers had told them that yonder, a long, long way off, far beyond
the horizon,