The Laughing Prince | Page 4

old
men and silly old women and I'm tired of them! I want to be amused! I
want to laugh!"
"Wow! Wow! Wow!" roared the Tsar. "A fine princess you are! Go
straight back to the schoolroom and behave yourself!"
So the little Princess marched out of the throne room holding her head
very high and looking so much like the Tsar that the first

lady-in-waiting was positively frightened.
The Princess went back to the schoolroom but she did not behave
herself. She was really very naughty. When the poor man who knew
more than anybody in the world about the influence of the stars upon
the destinies of nations came to give her a lesson, she threw his book
out the window. When the superannuated old general who was teaching
her military manoeuvers offered her a diagram on which the enemy was
represented by a series of black dots and our soldiers by a series of red
dots, she took the paper and tore it in two. And worst of all when the
old scholar who was teaching her Turkish--for a princess must be able
to speak all languages--dropped his horn spectacles on the floor, she
deliberately stepped on them and broke them.
When the Tsar heard all these things he just wow-wowed something
terrible.
"Lock that young woman in her chamber!" he ordered. "Feed her on
bread and water until she's ready to apologize!"
But the Princess, far from being frightened by this treatment, calmly
announced:
"I won't eat even your old bread and water until you send me some one
who will make me laugh!"
Now this frightened the Tsar because he knew how obstinate the
Princess could be on occasions. (He ought to know, too, for the
Princess had that streak of obstinacy direct from himself.)
"This will never do!" he said.
He hurried to the Princess's chamber. He found her in bed with her
pretty hair spread out on the pillow like a golden fan.
"My dear," the Tsar said, "I was joking. You don't have to eat only
bread and water. You may have anything you want."

"Thank you," the Princess said, "but I'll never eat another bite of
anything until you send me some one who will make me laugh. I'm
tired of living in this gloomy old castle with a lot of old men and old
women who do nothing but instruct me and with a father who always
loses his temper and says, 'Wow! Wow!'"
"But it's a beautiful castle!" the poor Tsar said. "And I'm sure we're all
doing our very best to educate you!"
"But I want to be amused as well as educated!" the little Princess said.
And then, because she felt she was going to cry, she turned her face to
the wall and wouldn't say another word.
What was the Tsar to do? He called together his councilors and asked
them how was the Princess to be made to laugh. The councilors were
wise about state matters but not one of them could suggest a means of
amusing the Princess. The Master of Ceremonies did indeed begin to
say something about a nice young man but instantly the Tsar roared out
such a wrathful, "Wow! Wow!" that the Master of Ceremonies coughed
and pretended he hadn't spoken.
Then the Tsar called together the scholars and the teachers and the first
lady-in-waiting. He glared at them savagely and roared:
"Wow! Wow! A nice lot you are! I put you in charge of my daughter
and not one of you has sense enough to know that the poor child needs
a little amusement! I have a good mind to have you all thrown into the
dungeon!"
"But, Your Majesty," quavered one poor old scholar, "I was not
employed as a buffoon but as a teacher of astrology!"
"And I," another said, "as a teacher of languages!"
"And I as a teacher of philosophy!"
"Silence!" roared the Tsar. "Between you all you have about killed my
poor child! Now I ask you: With all your learning doesn't one of you

know how to make a young girl laugh?"
Apparently not one of them did, for no one answered.
"Not even you?" the Tsar said, looking at the first lady-in-waiting.
"When you called me to Court," the first lady-in-waiting answered,
drawing herself up in a most refined manner, "you said you wished me
to teach your daughter etiquette. As you said nothing about amusement,
quite naturally I confined myself to the subject of behavior. If I do say
it myself, no one has ever been more devoted to duty than I. I am
constantly saying to her: 'That isn't the way a princess should act!' In
fact for years there has hardly been a moment in the day when I haven't
corrected her