Page:Fairytales00auln.djvu/152

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PRINCESS PRINTANIERE.

have been as enviable as mine. Who loves, incurs the greatest of misfortunes! Poor princess, thou wilt find in the hollow of that tree a honeycomb; take it: but do not be simple enough to give any to Fanfarinet." The princess ran to the tree, scarcely knowing whether she was in a dream or wide awake. She found the honey, and the moment she had it, she took it to her ungrateful lover. "Here," said she, "is a honeycomb; I could have eaten it all by myself, but I preferred sharing it with you." Without thanking, or even looking at her, he snatched it from her and ate it all up, refusing to give her the least morsel of it. He added sarcasm even to his brutality, saying that it was too sweet, and would spoil her teeth, and a hundred similar impertinences. Printaniere, more than ever afflicted, sat down under an oak, and addressed it in much the same strain as she had the rose-bush. The oak, touched with compassion, bent down to her some of its branches, and said, "'Twere pity thou shouldst perish, lovely princess; take that pitcher of milk, and drink it, without giving one drop to thy ungrateful lover." The princess, perfectly astonished, looked behind her, and immediately perceived a large pitcher full of milk. She could think of nothing from that moment, but the thirst which Fanfarinet might be enduring after eating more than fifteen pounds of honey. She ran to him with the pitcher: "Quench your thirst, handsome Fanfarinet," said she; "but don't forget to leave me a little, for I am parched and famishing!" He took the pitcher rudely from her, made but one draught of its contents, and then, flinging it on some stones, broke it to pieces, saying, with a malicious smile, "When one hasn't eaten one isn't thirsty."

The princess clasped her hands, and raising her beautiful eyes to heaven, exclaimed, "Ah! I have well deserved this! I am justly punished for having left the king and queen!—for having so thoughtlessly loved a man of whom I knew nothing!—for having fled with him without considering my rank, or reflecting on the misfortunes with which I was threatened by Carabossa!" She then began to weep more bitterly than she had ever done in her life, and plunging into the thickest part of the wood, she sank, exhausted, at the foot of an elm, on a branch of which sat a nightingale that sang marvellously the following words, flapping his wings, as if