frog a year and four days to mount the ten thousand steps
that led to the upper world, but that was because she was still under
the spell of a wicked fairy. By the time she reached the top, she was so
tired that she had to remain for another year on the banks of a stream
to rest, and also to arrange the procession with which she was to
present herself before the king. For she knew far too well what was due
to herself and her relations, to appear at Court as if she was a mere
nobody. At length, after many consultations with her cap, the affair was
settled, and at the end of the second year after her parting with the
queen they all set out.

First walked her bodyguard of grasshoppers, followed by her maids of
honour, who were those tiny green frogs you see in the fields, each
one mounted on a snail, and seated on a velvet saddle. Next came the
water-rats, dressed as pages, and lastly the frog herself, in a litter
borne by eight toads, and made of tortoiseshell. Here she could lie at
her ease, with her cap on her head, for it was quite large and roomy,
and could easily have held two eggs when the frog was not in it.

The journey lasted seven years, and all this time the queen suffered
tortures of hope, though Muffette did her best to comfort her. Indeed,
she would most likely have died had not the Lion Fairy taken a fancy
that the child and her mother should go hunting with her in the upper
world, and, in spite of her sorrows, it was always a joy to the queen to
see the sun again. As for little Muffette, by the time she was seven
her arrows seldom missed their mark. So, after all, the years of waiting
passed more quickly than the queen had dared to hope.

The frog was always careful to maintain her dignity, and nothing would
have persuaded her to show her face in public places, or even along the
high road, where there was a chance of meeting anyone. But sometimes,
when the procession had to cross a little stream, or go over a piece
of marshy ground, orders would be given for a halt; fine clothes were
thrown off, bridles were flung aside, and grasshoppers, water-rats, even
the frog herself, spent a delightful hour or two playing in the mud.

But at length the end was in sight, and the hardships were forgotten in
the vision of the towers of the king's palace; and, one bright morning,
the cavalcade entered the gates with all the pomp and circumstance of
a royal embassy. And surely no ambassador had ever created such a
sens