were all arranged, and their majesties had admired their fresh complexions, white teeth, and fine persons, they beheld, advancing in a wheelbarrow, propelled by two filthy little dwarfs, an ugly little woman, whose feet turned in, whose knees touched her chin, who had a great hump on her back, squinting eyes, and a skin blacker than ink. She held in her arms a little monkey, which she suckled, and spoke a jargon nobody could understand. She approached to offer herself in her turn; but the queen, repelling her, cried, "Hence, you great fright!—You are an ignorant creature to come before me dressed as you are!—If you do not immediately retire, I will have you removed by force." The nasty old woman passed on grumbling excessively, and, dragged by her frightful little dwarfs, went and placed herself in the hollow of a large tree, from whence she could see everything that occurred.
The queen, who had ceased to think about her, chose a handsome nurse: but the instant she was appointed, a horrible serpent, which was concealed beneath some grass, bit her foot, and she fell down as if dead. The queen, much grieved at this accident, cast her eyes on another. Immediately an eagle came flying with a tortoise in its talons, and dropped it on the head of the poor nurse, which was shivered to pieces like a glass. The queen, still more afflicted, called forward a third nurse, who, in her hurry to advance, stumbled against a thicket, full of long thorns, and knocked out one of her eyes. "Ah!" cried the queen, "I am most unfortunate to-day. It is impossible for me to choose a nurse without causing her some mischief. I must leave the affair to my physician." As she arose to return to the palace, she heard peals of laughter. She looked and saw behind her the wicked old humpbacked woman, who sat like an ape with her swaddled monkey in the wheelbarrow, mocking the whole company, and particularly the queen. Her majesty was so enraged that she would have flown at and beaten her, feeling assured that she was the cause of all this mischief to the nurses; but the humpback, with three taps of her wand, changed the dwarfs into winged griffins, the wheelbarrow into a chariot of fire, and rose with it into the air, uttering loud threats and horrible shrieks.
"Alas, my darling, we are lost," said the king; "it is the Fairy Carabossa! The wicked creature has hated me ever since I was a little boy, on account of a trick I played her,
