Though the Fairy was extremely busy, she left everything she was about, and, getting into her fiery chariot, which went faster than the sun, she came to the Queen, who was impatiently awaiting her. She consulted the Fairy on several matters touching the regency of the kingdom, begging her to accept it, and take charge of the little Princess Constancia. "If anything," she added, "can calm the anxiety I feel at leaving her an orphan at so early an age, it is the hope that you will prove the friendship which you have always manifested for me by extending it to my child; that she will find in you a mother, who has the power of rendering her much more happy and perfect than I could have done, and that you will select a husband for her so charming, that she will never love anybody but him." "Great Queen," said the Fairy, "thou desirest nothing that thou art not justified in desiring, and I will neglect no means of befriending thy daughter; but I have cast her nativity, and it appears as if Fate, angry with Nature for having exhausted all her treasures in the formation of the Princess, had resolved to make her suffer; and thy royal Majesty must be aware, that Destiny pronounces some sentences so imperatively, that it is impossible to evade their execution." "At least," rejoined the Queen, "alleviate her misfortunes, and do all in your power to prevent them. By vigilant attention, the greatest evils may sometimes be avoided." The Sovereign Fairy promised to do all she desired; and the Queen, having embraced her dear Constancia a hundred times over, expired in tolerable tranquillity.
The Fairy read the stars as easily as we do the new stories that every day issue from the press. She saw that the Princess was threatened with the fatal love of a giant, whose dominions were not far distant from the Kingdom of Deserts. She was fully aware that it was above all things necessary to avoid him, and she saw no better mode of doing so, than by concealing her dear ward at some extreme corner of the earth, so far distant from the territory over which the Giant ruled, that there would be little probability of his coming to trouble their repose.
As soon as the Sovereign Fairy had selected ministers capable of governing the state she intended to confide to them, and had established such excellent laws, that all the
