green arbours, where you might be cool in the hottest of the dog-days. In this place I was brought up by the Fairies with a care even beyond all they had promised the Queen. My dresses were made in the highest fashion, and so magnificent that any one to see me would have thought it was my wedding day. I was taught everything befitting my age and my rank. I did not give them much trouble, for there were few things I did not learn with the greatest ease. My docility was very agreeable to them, and as I had never seen, any other persons, I might have lived there in perfect tranquillity all the rest of my life.
"They always came to see me, mounted on the terrible Dragon I have already spoken of. They never talked to me about the King or the Queen. They called me their daughter, and I believed myself to be so. Nobody lived with me in the tower, but a parrot and a little dog, which they had given me to amuse me; for the creatures were endowed with reason, and spoke admirably.
"On one side of the tower was a hollow way, full of deep ruts and trees which choked up the road, so that I had not seen any one pass by since I had been shut up there. But one day that I was at the window, talking with my parrot and my dog, I heard a noise; I looked all about, and perceived a young cavalier who had stopped to listen to our conversation. I had never seen a young man before but in a painting. I was not sorry that an unlooked-for accident had afforded me this opportunity; so that, not dreaming of the danger that attends the gratification of contemplating a charming object, I came forward to gaze upon him, and the more I looked at him the more was I delighted. He made me a profound bow, fixed his eyes on me, and appeared greatly embarrassed to find some way of conversing with me, for my window was very high, and he feared being overheard, for he knew well enough that I was in the Fairies' Castle.
"The night came suddenly upon us, or, to speak more correctly, it came without our perceiving it; he blew his horn twice or thrice, and entertained me with a few flourishes upon it, and then took his departure without my being able to ascertain which way he went—so dark was the night. I remained very thoughtful; I no longer felt the same pleasure in talking to my parrot and my dog that I had been wont to
