Fräulein

“ Who should not come out to dinner, but stay and mind the children? Who save Fräulein—Fräulein Friedenburg? It would have been a ludicrous position for Her Royal Highness Princess Vera of Boravia. Leave it to Fräulein Friedenburg!
So, as Fräulein Friedenburg, she passed into our ordinary lives, and out of our ordinary thoughts, as is the way with things when they become familiar. Mrs Thistleton’s courage and talent had saved the situation—and her own face. The Princess was forgotten, and the Thistletons’ nursery governess little heeded. Who does heed a nursery governess much? ”

“ Her aunt, however, is extremely rich. When, last spring, Fräulein came out of the convent, Frau von Waldfel sent for her to pay her a visit. She was very ambitious that her niece should make a brilliant match, for she is, as you must have guessed, an intensely proud woman. Indeed, so anxious was she that she offered to pay the dowry and introduce Fräulein into society. This offer was accepted with delight by the Hartmanns, and Fräulein made her début in Berlin, where her aunt had taken a fancy to spend the winter. Among other men whom she met was Lieutenant Blum. ”

“ As the result of that and several other half-hours of work, she covered two pages of foolscap; then, seeking out Miss Edith, she unfolded her scheme and begged for help.
"I'm afraid you'll think it fearful cheek of me," she began, "but you see the trouble at present in the singing class is that we all abominate those silly little songs. They really sound foolish for girls of our age. Of course Fräulein's composed them herself, and the tunes are very nice. Do you think she'd mind changing the words? It wouldn't matter to her what we were singing so long as the music was the same, would it? ”

“ Then the Fairy answered that the Princess would be as pretty, and clever, and well brought up as it was possible to be, and the old King growled to the Queen that it was lucky for her that it was so, as they would certainly have been hanged if it were otherwise. Then he stamped off, taking the Fairy with him, and leaving the poor Queen in tears.
‘How can I wish my little daughter to grow up pretty if she is to be married to that horrid little dwarf, the King’s son,’ she said to herself, ‘and yet, if she is ugly we shall both be killed. ”

“ The young Turkey-maiden turned her gentle eyes upon the old woman, and answered:
'Yet they wish me to leave them to become a miserable Queen! what is your advice upon the matter?' 'My child,' said the Fairy, 'a crown is a very pretty thing, but you know neither the price nor the weight of it.'
'I know so well that I have refused to wear one,' said the little maiden, 'though I don't know who was my father, or who was my mother, and I have not a friend in the world.'
'You have goodness and beauty, which are of more value than ten kingdoms,' said the wise Fairy. ”

“ No sooner had the Grasshopper and the Cricket touched it than they were restored to their natural forms, and their surprise and joy were great when they recognised each other. At this moment Florimond and the Fairy Douceline appeared in great splendour, and the Fairy, as she descended from her chariot, said with a smile:
‘So you two have found one another again, I see, but I have still a surprise left for you. Don’t hesitate, Princess, to tell your devoted shepherd how dearly you love him, as he is the very Prince your father sent you to marry. ”

“ Yet one old Fairy they left out, in pure forgetfulness.
And at the feast, the dishes fair were of the reddest gold;
But when the Fairy came, not one for her, so bad and old,
Angry was she, because her place and dish had been forgot,
And angry things she muttered long, and kept her anger hot.
Until the Fairy godmothers their gifts and wishes gave:
She waited long to spoil the gifts, and her revenge to have.
One gave the Princess goodness, and one gave her beauty rare;
One gave her sweetest singing voice; one, gracious mien and air;
One, skill in dancing; one, all cleverness ”

“ One of the young Fairies, who sat by her, overheard how she grumbled; and judging that she might give the little Princess some unlucky gift, went, as soon as they rose from the table, and hid herself behind the hangings, that she might speak last, and repair, as much as possible she could, the evil which the old Fairy might intend.
In the mean while all the Fairies began to give their gifts to the Princess. The youngest gave her for gift, that she should be the most beautiful person in the world; the next, that she should have the wit of an angel ”

“ But the old Queen laughed, and said to her son: ‘Don’t worry, my child; you see, the Fairy has protected you so far, and the Sun has found no one to kill you. So cheer up and be happy.’
After a time the Prince forgot all about his adventure, and married a beautiful Princess, with whom he lived very happily for some time. But one day when he was out hunting he felt very thirsty, and coming to a stream he stooped down to drink from it, and this caused his death, for a crab came swimming up, and with its claws tore out his tongue. ”

“ This terrible gift made the whole company tremble, and every body fell a-crying.
At this very instant the young Fairy came out from behind the hangings, and spake these words aloud:
"Be reassured, O King and Queen; your daughter shall not die of this disaster: it is true, I have no power to undo intirely what my elder has done. The Princess shall indeed pierce her hand with a spindle; but instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last a hundred years; at the expiration of which a king's son shall come and awake her." ”

“ Then, turning to the terrified King and Queen, she said, in a loud voice:
"When the Princess is fifteen years old she shall prick her finger with a spindle and die!" Having said this she flew away as noisily as she came. [66]
The King and Queen were in despair, and the courtiers stood aghast at the terrible disaster; while the little Princess began to cry piteously, as if she knew the fate in store for her. Then the twelfth fairy stepped forward.
"Do not be afraid," she said, "I have not yet given my gift. I cannot undo the wicked spell, but I can soften the evil. ”

“ The poor frightened old woman called for help; shortly came the ladies in wait [14] ing, who tried every means to restore their young mistress, but all their care was useless. She lay, beautiful as an angel, the colour still lingering in her lips and cheeks; her fair bosom softly stirred with her breath: only her eyes were fast closed. When the king her father and the queen her mother beheld her thus, they knew regret was idle—all had happened as the cruel fairy meant. ”

“ Phyllis looked up quickly. Her face was white, and a look, half of fear, half of [Pg 138] reproach, came to her eyes. She sank down and hid her face in her hands. Both my arms were around her and I even laughed.
"Dear little princess," I whispered, "don't give way yet. The best is still to come. For you must remember that this is a fairy-tale and all fairy-tales have a good ending. And, to make a long story short, this wicked old troll was not a troll at all, but a fairy-godmother, who had taken the form for good purposes. ”

“ Now we know from Freud that the mother herself may be the sexual rival of the daughter. The infantile egoism of the dream and the fairy-tale does not delay having the good mother die (first, an infantile wish, see "Interpretation of Dreams," second, it signifies: the good mother no longer exists for the heroine, the child or the infantile component of the grown wife as daughter, because she has become a bad figure, a rival) . She is substituted by the wicked stepmother, which means that the mother has become this figure to the fairy-tale heroine or the dreamer. ”

“ The ironical and stinging element in the man made every marriage—even that of souls—to him as well as to other world's people as disagreeable in the end as the spines of the hedgehogs make theirs. He lays up, therefore, in the future for the Princess only a cold, politic, coquettish, courtly love, such as she herself haply has, and such as he has occasion for, in order less to gain her than to gain from her, and to gain first of all the entire Prince. I promise myself cosmopolitan readers, who, I hope, find no offence to this personage in Froulay's partiality for his lady ”

“ Suspecting something wrong, he tries it on his dog, which at once swells up and bursts. This is a Saxon saga from Transylvania; an Irish saga brings us to the same catastrophe. There a girl meets a frog which is painfully bloated, and kicks it unfeelingly aside, with the words: "May you never be delivered till I am midwife to you!" Now the frog was a water-fairy dwelling in a lake, into which the girl soon after was conveyed and compelled to become the fairy's midwife. By way of reward she is presented with a red cloak, which, on her way home, she hangs up in admiration on a tree. ”

“ Here you see him by the river; how tired his Frog looks! He is talking to the Water Fairy. Well, he and the Water Fairy had a long talk, and the end of it was that the Fairy found only one way of{20} saving the Princess. She flew to the King, and said, “I can only help you by making the Princess vanish clean away. I have a bird here on whose back she can fly away in safety. The Dwarf will not get her, but you will never see her again, unless a brave Prince can find her where she is hidden, and guarded by my Water Fairies.” ”

“ One day a cruel witch whom he had offended had changed him into an ugly yellow man, and had sworn that he should only regain his shape if he was eaten by a Griffin when under the form of a tabby kitten; which you know was precisely what happened. Well, Prince Orange Plushikins at once asked the Princess flea to marry him, and the minute the flea said “Yes,” the Princess reappeared. She and the Prince were married next morning; and all the cats went to the steam laundry and were washed and bleached and had their tails crimped and their whiskers starched ”

“ Most frequently it was women, not yet risen from childbed, and their babes that the Fairies abducted. On every occasion of a birth, therefore, the utmost anxiety prevailed to guard the mother and child from their attacks. It is said that the Fairy women are unable to suckle their own children, and hence their desire to secure a human wet-nurse. ”

“ The spell that has nearly cost me my life, is at length broken! That terrible old ogress was not my mother, but a wicked fairy who, because she thought my mother had not treated her as well as the other fairies at my christening, condemned me as soon as my mother died, to serve her and obey all her behests as long as she lived. Now that your brave boy has killed her, I am freed from her wicked spells. And now, oh my king, punish me for the harm I have so unwillingly done ”

“ I am rather a gossip, and I can tell you some surprising things that you will like to hear. Don’t imagine that you are the daughter of the poor laborer who brought you up; your mother was a queen who had six girls already, and the King threatened that unless she had a son who could inherit his kingdom she should have her head cut off.
“So when the Queen had another little daughter she was quite frightened, and agreed with her sister (who was a fairy) to exchange her for the fairy’s little son. ”

“ One was bright and glittering, and drawn by swans and peacocks, while the Fairy who sat in it was beautiful as a sunbeam; but the other was drawn by bats and ravens, and contained a frightful little Dwarf, who was dressed in a snake's skin, and wore a great toad upon her head for a hood. The chariots met with a frightful crash in mid-air, and the Princess looked on in breathless anxiety, while a furious battle took place be
tween the lovely Fairy with her golden lance, and the hideous little Dwarf and her rusty pike. ”

“ The situation, of course, you have met with before, but as remodelled you might call it—
THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE; or, The Bad Fairy Foiled.
A certain King and Queen had one daughter, to whose christening they invited a large company, forgetting as usual a particularly important and bad-tempered Fairy, who signified her annoyance in the usual manner.
The attendants of the little Princess (having read their story-books) were preparing dolefully enough to fall asleep for a hundred years, when the Fairy, with a contemptuous sniff, remarked that the spell would not take effect for some time yet. ”

“ I guessed your favorite flower. Now I find that I was wrong. Surely, this is your choice. So fair, so pure,—a Princess herself could choose no better."
Fleurette smiled brightly at him, shaking her hair from side to side in a golden shower. "One cannot so easily read my thoughts as he may suppose," she cried saucily.
"Dear maiden," said Joyeuse, coming nearer and taking her hand, "I have no wonderful garden like this where I can invite you to dwell as its little princess. ”

“ Major Colquhoun muttered.
"Oh, but you see—the poor misguided child considers that she made the vow under a misapprehension," Mrs. Frayling explained, her maternal instinct acting on the defensive when her offspring's integrity was attacked, and making the position clear to her. "Don't you think, dear,"—to her husband—"that if you asked the bishop, he would talk to her."
"The bishop!" Mr. Frayling ejaculated with infinite scorn. "I know what women are when they go off like this. Once they set up opinions of their own, there's no talking to them. ”

“ Be open before everything, and stand upon your dignity. Things have come to a pretty pass, indeed, when an honourable woman only dares to write to her own daughter surreptitiously, as if she were doing something she should be ashamed of."
Poor Mrs. Frayling was not equal to such opposition. She would rather have faced a thunderstorm than her husband in his wrath, so she concealed Evadne's letter from him, and wrote to her again surreptitiously in order to reproach her for seeming to insinuate that she, her mother, would stoop to do anything underhand. ”