occurred, the guides having missed their way, the cavalcade arrived at a large and beautiful city totally unknown to them, but perceiving a beautiful garden, the gate of which was open, they entered and ravaged it as if it was a conquered country. One cracked nuts, another swallowed cherries, a third stripped a plum-tree; in short, down to the smallest monkey in the train, there was not one that did not go plundering and pocketing.
Now, you must know that this city was the capital of the kingdom in which Babiole was born, that the Queen her mother, resided in it, and that ever since she had the misfortune to see her daughter changed into an ape by the sprig of hawthorn, she had never suffered in her dominions any ape, monkey, baboon, or anything in fact that could recal the fatal circumstance to her mind. A monkey was looked upon there as a disturber of the public peace. What, then, was the astonishment of the people at the arrival of a card coach, a chariot of painted straw, and all the rest of the most extraordinary equipage that has ever been seen since stories were stories, and fairies fairies.
The news flew to the palace. The Queen was appalled; she imagined that the monkey people had designs against her throne. She called a council immediately, and the whole of the intruders were pronounced guilty of high treason: determined, therefore, to make such an example of them as should be a warning to all for the future, she sent her guards into the garden with orders to seize all the monkeys. They threw large nets over the trees; the hunt was soon over, and notwithstanding the respect due to the quality of an ambassador, the character was sadly outraged in the person of Mirlifiche, whom they consigned without the least remorse to the depths of a dungeon, in which he was placed under a large empty puncheon with the rest of his comrades, together with the lady apes and miss monkeys who accompanied Babiole. Babiole herself experienced a secret gratification in this new misfortune. When unhappiness attains a certain point, nothing further alarms us, and even death, perhaps, is looked forward to as a boon. Such was her situation—her heart, tortured by the recollection of the Prince, who had despised her, and her mind by the frightful image of King Magot, whose wife she was about to become.
