The Green Fairy Book | Page 7

be imprisoned like this?
And was I not unhappy enough before, that you must needs come and
taunt me with the happiness your daughter is enjoying now she is King
Charming's bride?'
The Blue Bird, greatly surprised, waited impatiently for the dawn, and
the moment it was light flew off to see who it could have been who
spoke thus. But he found the window shut, and could see no one. The
next night, however, he was on the watch, and by the clear moonlight
he saw that the sorrowful lady at the window was Fiordelisa herself.
‘My Princess! have I found you at last?' said he, alighting close to her.
‘Who is speaking to me?' cried the Princess in great surprise.
‘Only a moment since you mentioned my name, and now you do not
know me, Fiordelisa,' said he sadly. ‘But no wonder, since I am nothing
but a Blue Bird, and must remain one for seven years.'
‘What! Little Blue Bird, are you really the powerful King Charming?'
said the Princess, caressing him.

‘It is too true,' he answered. ‘For being faithful to you I am thus
punished. But believe me, if it were for twice as long I would bear it
joyfully rather than give you up.'
‘Oh! what are you telling me?' cried the Princess. ‘Has not your bride,
Turritella, just visited me, wearing the royal mantle and the diamond
crown you gave her? I cannot be mistaken, for I saw your ring upon her
thumb.'
Then the Blue Bird was furiously angry, and told the Princess all that
had happened, how he had been deceived into carrying off Turritella,
and how, for refusing to marry her, the Fairy Mazilla had condemned
him to be a Blue Bird for seven years.
The Princess was very happy when she heard how faithful her lover
was, and would never have tired of hearing his loving speeches and
explanations, but too soon the sun rose, and they had to part lest the
Blue Bird should be discovered. After promising to come again to the
Princess's window as soon as it was dark, he flew away, and hid
himself in a little hole in the fir-tree, while Fiordelisa remained
devoured by anxiety lest he should be caught in a trap, or eaten up by
an eagle.
But the Blue Bird did not long stay in his hiding-place. He flew away,
and away, until he came to his own palace, and got into it through a
broken window, and there he found the cabinet where his jewels were
kept, and chose out a splendid diamond ring as a present for the
Princess. By the time he got back, Fiordelisa was sitting waiting for
him by the open window, and when he gave her the ring, she scolded
him gently for having run such a risk to get it for her.
‘Promise me that you will wear it always!' said the Blue Bird. And the
Princess promised on condition that he should come and see her in the
day as well as by night. They talked all night long, and the next
morning the Blue Bird flew off to his kingdom, and crept into his
palace through the broken window, and chose from his treasures two
bracelets, each cut out of a single emerald. When he presented them to
the Princess, she shook her head at him reproachfully, saying--

‘Do you think I love you so little that I need all these gifts to remind me
of you?'
And he answered--
‘No, my Princess; but I love you so much that I feel I cannot express it,
try as I may. I only bring you these worthless trifles to show that I have
not ceased to think of you, though I have been obliged to leave you for
a time.' The following night he gave Fiordelisa a watch set in a single
pearl. The Princess laughed a little when she saw it, and said--
‘You may well give me a watch, for since I have known you I have lost
the power of measuring time. The hours you spend with me pass like
minutes, and the hours that I drag through without you seem years to
me.'
‘Ah, Princess, they cannot seem so long to you as they do to me!' he
answered. Day by day he brought more beautiful things for the
Princess--diamonds, and rubies, and opals; and at night she decked
herself with them to please him, but by day she hid them in her straw
mattress. When the sun shone the Blue Bird, hidden in the tall fir-tree,
sang to her so sweetly that all the passersby wondered, and said that the
wood was inhabited by a spirit. And so two years slipped away, and
still the Princess was a prisoner,