which she had brought upon
herself.

'You have neglected all my warnings,' said the queen, speaking more
sternly than any fairy had ever heard her; 'and my sentence is that
during two hundred years you lose all your privileges as a fairy, and
under the form of an ostrich shall become the slave of the lowest and
wickedest of the genii whom you have made your friends. As for these
children, I shall keep them with me, and they shall be brought up at
my court.'

And so they were, until they grew up and were old enough to be
married. Then the Fairy of the Fields took them back to the kingdom of
the old queen, where Petaldo was now reigning. But the cares of state
proved too heavy both for him and Gillette, after the quiet life they
had led for so many years, and they were rejoiced to be able to lay
aside their crowns, and place them on the heads of Cadichon and his
bride, who was as good as she was beautiful, though she _was_ the
niece of the wicked Gangana! And so well had Cadichon learned the
lessons taught him at the court of the fairy queen, that never since
the kingdom _was_ a kingdom had the people been so well governed or so
happy. And they went about the streets and the fields smiling with joy
at the difference between the old times and the new, and whispering
softly to each other:

'Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.'

(From _Le Cabinet des Fees_.)

_THE SILENT PRINCESS_

Once upon a time there lived in Turkey a pasha who had only one son,
and so dearly did he love this boy that he let him spend the whole day
amusing himself, instead of learning how to be useful like his
friends.

Now the boy's favourite toy was a golden ball, and with this he would
play from morning till night, without troubling anybody. One day, as
he was sitting in the summer-house in the garden, making his ball run
all along the walls and catching it again, he noticed an old woman
with an earthen pitcher coming to draw water from a well which stood
in a corner of the garden. In a moment he had caught his ball and
flung it straight at the pitcher, which fell to the ground in a
thousand pieces. The old woman started with surprise, but said
nothing; only turned round to fetch another pitcher, and as soon as
she had disappeared, the boy hurried out to pick up his ball.

Scarcely was he back in the summer-house when he beheld the old woman
a second time, approaching the well with the pitcher on her shoulder.
She had ju