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THE WILD SWANS
FAR away from here, in the land where the swallows fly to when we have winter, lived a king who had eleven sons and one daughter, whose name was Elisa. The eleven brothers, who were all princes, went to school with a star on their breast and a saber by their side; they wrote on golden slates with diamond pencils, and knew their lessons by heart just as well as if they had read them from a book. One could see at once that they were princes. Elisa, the sister, sat on a small footstool of plate glass and had a picture-book which cost as much as half the kingdom.
Yes, those children led indeed a happy life, but it was not always to be so.
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