ld her; but I will be revenged on you. You
shall have a son with a nose as long as--that;" he made in the air a
curve of half a foot; "yet he shall believe it is just like all other
noses, and shall be always unfortunate till he has found out it is not.
And if you ever tell anybody of this threat of mine, you shall die on
the spot." So saying the magician disappeared.

The king, who was at first much terrified, soon began to laugh at this
adventure. "My son might have a worse misfortune than too long a nose,"
thought he. "At least it will hinder him neither in seeing nor hearing.
I will go and find the princess and marry her at once."

He did so, but he only lived a few months after, and died before his
little son was born, so that nobody knew anything about the secret of
the nose.

The little prince was so much wished for that when he came into the
world they agreed to call him Prince Wish. He had beautiful blue eyes
and a sweet little mouth, but his nose was so big that it covered half
his face. The queen, his mother, was inconsolable; but her ladies tried
to satisfy her by telling her that the nose was not nearly so large as
it seemed, that it would grow smaller as the prince grew bigger, and
that if it did not a large nose was indispensable to a hero. All great
soldiers, they said, had great noses, as everybody knew. The queen was
so very fond of her son that she listened eagerly to all this comfort.
Shortly she grew so used to the princes's nose that it did not seem to
her any larger than ordinary noses of the court; where, in process
of time, everybody with a long nose was very much admired, and the
unfortunate people who had only snubs were taken very little notice of.

Great care was observed in the education of the prince; and as soon as
he could speak they told him all sorts of amusing tales, in which all
the bad people had short noses, and all the good people had long ones.
No person was suffered to come near him who had not a nose of more than
ordinary length; nay, to such an extent did the countries carry their
fancy, that the noses of all the little babies were ordered to be pulled
out as far as possible several times a day, in order to make them grow.
But grow as they would, they never could grow as long as that of Prince
Wish. When he was old enough his tutor taught him history; and whenever
any great king or lovely princess was referred to, the tutor always took
care to mention that he or she had a l