own home; compliments and caresses were redoubled at their separation, and the Queen remaining eight days longer at the baths, did not fail to revisit the palace of the fairies with her coquettish old lady, who always appeared first as a crab and then took her natural form.
The Queen returned to court, and was in due time confined of a Princess, to whom she gave the name of Désirée; she immediately took the bouquet she had received, and named all the flowers, one after the other, and forthwith all the fairies arrived. Each of them had a different sort of chariot; one was of ebony drawn by white pigeons, others were of ivory drawn by young ravens, others of cedar and eagle-wood.[1] This was their equipage of alliance and peace; for, when they were angry, they had nothing but flying-dragons, adders which darted fire from their mouths and eyes, lions, leopards, and panthers, upon which they transported themselves from one end of the world to another, in a shorter time than one could say "Good day," or "Good night;" but at this moment they were in the best possible humour.
The Queen saw them enter her chamber with a lively and majestic air; their dwarfs followed them, loaded with presents. After they had embraced the Queen, and kissed the little Princess, they displayed the baby's clothes; the linen of which was so fine and so good, that it might be used for a hundred years without wearing it out—the fairies had spun it themselves in their leisure hours. As to the lace, it surpassed even what I have said of the linen; all the history of the world was represented either in point or in bone-lace.
After that, they showed her the blankets and coverlids which they had embroidered expressly for the princess with representations of a thousand different games that children play at. Since the existence of embroiderers and embroideresses nothing so wonderful was ever seen; but, when the cradle appeared, the Queen positively screamed with admiration; for it surpassed everything they had shown her before: it was made of a wood so rare that it cost a hundred thousand crowns a pound; four little Cupids supported it; they were four masterpieces, wherein art had so far surpassed the material, although it was of diamonds and rubies, that no one could say enough about them. These little Cupids had
- ↑ Vide note, page 179.
