The Laughing Prince | Page 5

for something!"
"Poor child!" groaned the Tsar. "No wonder she wants a change! Oh,
what fools you all are in spite of your learning! Don't you know that a
young girl is a young girl even if she is a Princess!"
Well, the scholars weren't any more help to the Tsar than the councilors,
and finally in desperation he sent heralds through the land to announce
that to any one who could make the Princess laugh he would give three
bags of gold.
Three bags of gold don't grow on the bushes every day and instantly all
the youths and men and old men who had stories that their sweethearts
and their wives and their daughters laughed at hurried to the castle.
One by one they were admitted to the Princess's chamber. They entered
hopefully but when they saw the Tsar sitting at one side of the door
muttering, "Wow! Wow!" in his beard, and the old first lady-in-waiting
at the other side of the door watching them scornfully, and the Princess
herself in bed with her lovely hair spread out like a golden fan on the
pillow, they forgot their funny stories and hemmed and hawed and
stammered and had finally, one after another, to be turned out in
disgrace.
One day went by and two and three and still the Princess refused to eat.

In despair the Tsar sent out his heralds again. This time he said that to
any one who would make the Princess laugh he would give the
Princess's hand in marriage and make him joint heir to the kingdom.
"I had expected to wed her to the son of some great Tsar," he sighed,
"but I'd rather marry her to a farmer than see her die of starvation!"
The heralds rode far and wide until every one, even the people on the
most distant farms, had heard of the Tsar's offer.
"I won't try again," said Mihailo, the oldest son of the farmer I've
already told you about. "When I went there the day before yesterday I
began telling her a funny story out of my Latin book but instead of
laughing she said: 'Oh, send him away!' So now she'll have to starve to
death for all of me!"
"Me, too!" said Jakov, the second son. "When I tried to tell her that
funny story of how I traded the moldy oats for the old widow's fat pig,
instead of laughing she looked me straight in the face and said:
'Cheat!'"
"Stefan ought to go," Mihailo suggested. "Maybe she'd laugh at him!
Everybody else does!"
He spoke sneeringly but Stefan only smiled.
"Who knows? Perhaps I will go. If I do make her laugh then, O my
brothers, the laugh will be on you for I shall become Tsar and you two
will be known as my two poor brothers. Ho! Ho! Ho! What a joke that
would be!"
Stefan laughed loud and heartily and his little sister joined him, but his
brothers looked at him sourly.
"He grows more foolish all the time!" they told each other.
When they were gone to bed, Militza slipped over to Stefan and
whispered in his ear:

"Brother, you must go to the Princess. Tell her the story that begins: In
my young days when I was an old, old man.... I think she'll just have to
laugh, and if she laughs then she can eat and she must be very hungry
by this time."
At first Stefan said no, he wouldn't go, but Militza insisted and finally,
to please her, he said he would.
So early the next morning he dressed himself in his fine Sunday shirt
with its blue and red embroidery. He put on his bright red Sunday sash
and his long shiny boots. Then he mounted his horse and before his
brothers were awake rode off to the Tsar's castle.
There he awaited his turn to be admitted to the Princess's chamber.
When he came in he was so young and healthy and vigorous that he
seemed to bring with him a little of the freshness of outdoors. The first
lady-in-waiting looked at him askance for without doubt he was a
farmer lad and his table manners probably were not good. Well, he was
a farmer lad and for that reason he didn't know that she was first
lady-in-waiting. He glanced at her once and thought: "What an ugly old
woman!" and thereafter he didn't think of her at all. He glanced
likewise at the Tsar and the Tsar reminded him of a bull of his own. He
wasn't afraid of the bull, so why be afraid of the Tsar?
Suddenly he saw the Princess lying in bed with her lovely hair spread
out on the pillow like a golden fan and for a