Corsair's wife, whose name was Corsine, was enchanted at the resolution her husband had come to, and loved the four infants so much the more for it. She named the Princess Belle-Etoile, her eldest brother Petit-Soleil, the second Heureux, and the son of the Princess, Cheri. The latter was much handsomer than either of the other two boys, so that, although he had neither star nor chain, Corsine loved him more than she did his cousins.
As she could not bring them all up without the aid of a nurse, she requested her husband, who was exceedingly fond of hunting, to catch her some very young fawns. This he soon found means of doing, as the forest in which they lived was extensive and well stocked with deer. Corsine, having acquired the fawns, tied them up to windward, and the Hinds smelling them, came to suckle them. Corsine then hid the fawns and put the infants in their place, who thrived admirably on the milk of the hinds. Four of them came twice a day to Corsine's dwelling, in search of the Princes and Princess, whom they took for fawns.
Thus passed the early infancy of these royal children. The Corsair and his wife were so passionately fond of them that they lavished upon them every attention. The man had been well educated. It was less from inclination than the caprice of fortune that he had become a Corsair. He had married Corsine when she was in the service of a Princess, in whose court she had happily cultivated her natural talents. She had excellent manners, and though she resided in a sort of wilderness, where she and her husband subsisted only on the plunder he brought home from his cruises, she had not forgotten the usages of polite society. They were highly delighted at being no longer obliged to expose themselves to the peril attending the trade of a Corsair. They had become sufficiently rich to discontinue it, for every three days there dropped, as I have already said, from the beautiful hair of the Princess and her brothers, jewels of great value, which Corsine disposed of in the nearest town, and always brought back from it a thousand pretty things for her four babies.
As they grew older, the Corsair applied himself seriously to the cultivation of the fine natural abilities with which heaven had endowed them, and as he felt convinced there were some great mysteries attached to their birth, and the
