Their father, who was king of the whole country, married a wicked queen, who was not at all kind to the poor children. On the very first day this became apparent to them. There were great festivities all over the palace, and the children were playing at "having company," but instead of their getting, as usual, all the cakes and roasted apples that could be had, the queen gave them only sand in a tea-cup and said they might pretend it was something nice.
The following week she sent their little sister, Elisa, away to some peasants in the country, and before long she succeeded in getting the king to believe all sorts of things about the poor princes, so that he did not trouble himself any more about them.
"Fly out into the world and shift for yourselves!" said the wicked queen; "fly away like great birds without the power of speech!" but she could not, however, carry out her bad intentions as far as she wished, for the princes were turned into eleven beautiful wild swans. With a strange cry they flew out through the palace windows and away over the park and the forest.
It was still quite early in the morning when they passed the peasant's cottage where their sister lay asleep; here they hovered over the roof, twisting their long necks and flapping their wings, but nobody heard or saw them; they had to set out again, high up toward the clouds, till they came to a great, gloomy forest which reached right down to the shore.
Poor little Elisa was standing in the peasant's parlor, playing with a green leaf, the only plaything she had; she made a hole in the leaf, looked up at the sun through it, and fancied she saw the bright eyes of her brothers, and every time the warm sunbeams shone upon her cheek she thought of all their kisses.
One day passed just like another. When the wind blew through the big hedges of roses outside the cottage, it would whisper to the roses, "Who can be more beautiful than you?" But the roses shook their heads and said, "Elisa!" And when the old woman on a Sunday sat in the doorway reading her hymn-book, the wind would turn over the leaves and say to the book, "Who can be better than you?" "Elisa!" answered the hymn-book; and it was the real truth that the roses and the hymn-book had said.
When she was fifteen years old she was to return home; and when the queen saw how beautiful she was, she became filled with anger" and hatred against her. She would have liked to turn her into a wild swan like her brothers, but she dared not do so at once, as the king would, of course, want to see his daughter.
Early in the morning the queen went into the bath, which was built of marble and adorned with soft cushions and the most beautiful carpets, and she took three toads, kissed them, and said to one of them, " Sit on Elisa's head when she gets into her bath, so that
