The Laughing Prince | Page 4

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 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