r hands to seize her; but
the gray mantle melted from between their fingers like air; and, before
anybody had time to do anything more, there came a heavy, muffled,
startling sound.

The great bell of the palace the bell which was only heard on the death
of some one of the royal family, and for as many times as he or she was
years old--began to toll. They listened, mute and horror-stricken. Some
one counted: one--two--three--four--up to nine-and-twenty--just the
Queen's age.

It was, indeed, the Queen. Her Majesty was dead! In the midst of the
festivities she had slipped away out of her new happiness and her old
sufferings, not few nor small. Sending away all her women to see the
grand sight,--at least they said afterward, in excuse, that she had done
so, and it was very like her to do it,--she had turned with her face
to the window, whence one could just see the tops of the distant
mountains--the Beautiful Mountains, as they were called--where she was
born. So gazing, she had quietly died.

When the little Prince was carried back to his mother's room, there was
no mother to kiss him. And, though he did not know it, there would be
for him no mother's kiss any more. As for his godmother,--the little old
woman in gray who called herself so,--whether she melted into air, like
her gown when they touched it, or whether she flew out of the chapel
window, or slipped through the doorway among the bewildered crowd,
nobody knew--nobody ever thought about her.

Only the nurse, the ordinary homely one, coming out of the Prince's
nursery in the middle of the night in search of a cordial to quiet his
continual moans, saw, sitting in the doorway, something which she would
have thought a mere shadow, had she not seen shining out of it two eyes,
gray and soft and sweet. She put her hand before her own, screaming
loudly. When she took them away the old woman was gone.

CHAPTER II

Everybody was very kind to the poor little prince. I think people
generally are kind to motherless children, whether princes or peasants.
He had a magnificent nursery and a regular suite of attendants, and was
treated with the greatest respect and state. Nobody was allowed to talk
to him in silly baby language, or dandle him, or, above all to kiss him,
though perhaps some people did it surreptitiously, for he was such a
sweet baby that it was difficult to help it.

It could not be said that the Prince missed his mother--children of his
age cannot d