Princess

“ You must choose, the princess or the girl. You can’t have the princess; you may worship her from the distance but you may not kiss her hand, and you must not ask her whether she loves you. A princess may not do such things; she has behind her a thousand years of noble blood. Did you know that we used to be kings? Ah, you know nothing, but you ought to know at least that a princess lives in a glass case and you may not touch her. But you can have the ordinary woman, this dark girl. ”

“ CRANMER. She shall be, to the happiness of England, An aged princess; many days shall see her, And yet no day without a deed to crown it. Would I had known no more! But she must die- She must, the saints must have her-yet a virgin; A most unspotted lily shall she pass To th' ground, and all the world shall mourn her. KING. O Lord Archbishop, Thou hast made me now a man ”

“ DIEGO
Well, and to be beautiful, young, radiant; to be a woman; is not that the office of a wife?
PRINCESS
I have not much experience. But my father told me, and I have gathered from books, that in the wives of princes, such gifts are often thrown away; that other women, supplying them, seem to supply them better. Look at my cousin's mother. I can remember her still beautiful, young, and most tenderly loving. Yet the Duke, my uncle, disdained her, and all she got was loneliness and heartbreak. An honourable woman, a princess, cannot compete with those who study to please and to please only. ”

“ One day when she had grown up, her father looked at her, and saw that she was exactly like her mother, so he said to his councillors, ‘I will marry my daughter to one of you, and she shall be queen, for she is exactly like her dead mother, and when I die her husband shall be king.’ But when the Princess heard of her father’s decision, she was not at all pleased, and said to him, ‘Before I do your bidding, I must have three dresses; one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one as shining as the stars. ”

“ So the boy set forth on his journey home, with his friends for company; his heart full of gladness when he thought of the promise of the princess. But, one by one, his comrades dropped off at the places where they had first met him, and he was quite alone when he reached his native town and the gates of the palace. With the golden hen under his arm he presented himself before the king, and told his adventures, and how he was going to have for a wife a princess so wonderful and unlike all other princesses, that the star on her forehead could turn night into day. ”

“ Now the princess, the daughter of the king of that town, was the most beautiful in all the world, but so proud and haughty that her like was not to be found within the bounds of all the seven rivers. So proud was she and so haughty that she would neither look upon a young man nor allow any young man to look upon her. ”

“ Could the Princess hurry away from the heart upon which her being bloomed and took root,—she, like a torn-up rosemary twig, whose roots, at the same time with those of a germinating wheat-grain, take a double hold of the earth? ”

“ The princess, as she left me to go down a long corridor to the dining apartment, took leave of me in a manner the most gracious, honouring me with a message to her majesty the queen of England, of her most respectful homage, and with her kind and affectionate remembrance to all the princesses, with warm assurances of her eternal attachment. ”

“ QUEEN (discovering the worst) . No! No! Not bread!
YELLOW PRINCE. Bread, madam, the staff of life. Come, madam, will you not eat? (She tries desperately.) What can be more delightful than a crust of bread by the wayside?
(The QUEEN shrieks and falls back in a swoon. The KING rushes out to her.)
KING (to YELLOW PRINCE) . Quick, quick, find the Princess.
YELLOW PRINCE. The Princess—find the Princess! (He goes vaguely off and we shall not see him again. But the WOODCUTTER and the PRINCESS do not need to be found. They are here.) ”

“ Doth it contain a complaint of oppression or demand for the price of the stuff?' 'Out on thee!' answered the princess. 'There is none of this in it, nought but words of love and gallantry. This is all through thee: else how should this devil know me?' 'O my lady,' rejoined the old woman, 'thou sittest in thy high palace and none may win to thee, no, not even the birds of the air. God keep thee and keep thy youth from blame and reproach! Thou art a princess, the daughter of a king, and needest not reck of the barking of dogs. ”

“ You, Princess, you shall remain with your white mantle on every road traversed by your husband; you, young women, shall remain by the roadside, habited in blue, so that the prince must see you everywhere. ”

“ I brought you here to inform me whether the queen will have a daughter or son?" "She is pregnant of a daughter," replied the fairy, "who will be the most beautiful and most accomplished princess that has ever been seen, and the queen will wish to see her placed in the highest possible situation of rank and honour." "If she is not very beautiful and accomplished," said the king, "I will hang her mother to a tree, with the child at her neck, and nothing shall prevent it." ”

“ I have watched over the Princess carefully all these years and saw that no stranger came near her, but all my magic power lay in my beard, and now that you have taken it away I am helpless, and can no longer hold the beautiful Princess in her enchanted sleep, but am forced to reveal my treasured secret to you. ”

“ It is dreadful!’
Now they perceived that she was a true Princess, because she had felt the pea through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down quilts.
No one but a true Princess could be so sensitive. ”

“ When she entered, so beautiful she was that all the people turned to look at her. "Some high-born Princess has come!" they whispered to each other; and in her splendid gown and head-dress even her two sisters did not recognize her as the one they had left in her little attic room. ”

“ Thy mother will soon be here; thy father will sit on the throne of the Prince as he deserves; thou wilt be a Princess, and I will strive and struggle till I am high enough to sue for thee, and then I will lay my glory and renown at thy feet, and thou shalt be my bride, my queen, my guardian angel. ”

“ For if ye be the Princess, I will love ye,
Indeed I will, and honour ye, fight for ye,
Come, wipe your eyes; by Heaven she stinks; who art thou?
Stinks like a poyson'd Rat behind a hanging?
Woman, who art? like a rotten Cabbage.
2 Capt. Y'are much to blame, Sir, 'tis the Princess. ”

“ I am a princess, but yet a woman. In me there are two, the woman and the princess. The princess is proud and ambitious; to gain her ends she stops at nothing. As a princess she may stoop to trickery and deceit, and step back untouched. ”

“ But you will, my princess, if you take the crown, have an opportunity of doing so much good, that, if you continue virtuous, you will have perpetual pleasures; for power, if made a right use of, is indeed a very great blessing.’
The princess answered, that if the queen, her mother, thought it her duty to take the crown, she would cheerfully submit, though a private life would be otherwise her choice. ”

“ My Princess—my beloved,—the Gods rule. In all life is sorrow, whether in Kashmir or Jamu. But the Gods abide. In the hollow of Their hand lay this Queen, and in the darkness the King’s eyes could not pierce They smiled. ”

“ There is sure to be a prince or princess in disguise; a good fairy and a bad one; an army extravagantly armed, murders by the score, magical fruit or something else, a strange discovery, and the prince and princess married at last, in spite of the villain, all his wiles and all his passion. ”

“ And the old woman who had been the prince's nurse became nurse to the prince's children—at least she was called so; though she was far too old to do anything for them but love them. Yet she still thought that she was useful, and knew that she was happy. And happy, indeed, were the prince and princess, who in due time became king and queen, and lived and ruled long and prosperously. ”

“ Herald. Pardon me, ladies, but the orders of the Prince are that every lady, young or old, must try on the slipper, and when the owner is found she must go with me to the palace.
[55] Cinderella. Give it to me, please. See how easily it slips on my foot—and here is the mate to the glass slipper in my pocket. Dear Mother, I am the fairy princess you saw at the ball.
Mother. You, my dear! and I did not know you!
Herald. Now, lady, please come with me to the Prince's palace. You shall be a princess.
Cinderella. Good-by, dear sisters! Good-by, dear mother! I am going to the Prince's palace. ”

“ Surely he will abstain and return not to the like of this.’ ‘I fear,’ said the princess, ‘that, if I write to him, he will conceive hopes of me.’ Quoth the old woman, ‘When he reads thy threats and menace of punishment, he will desist.’ So the princess called for inkhorn and paper and pen of brass and wrote the following verses:
O thou who feignest thee the prey of love and wakefulness And plainst of that thou dost endure for passion and distress,
Thinkst thou, deluded one, to win thy wishes of the moon? Did ever any of a moon get union and liesse? ”

“ When the princess heard that, she cast a sidelong glance, and beheld that noble lover of hers* [10] standing in the midst of his companions, looking like the moon having descended from heaven begirt by the planets, like the standard by which beauty is tested in others, raining nectar into the eyes. ”

“ Looking at the princess, studying the shape of her head, the arrangement of those sweet features, her figure, her hand, so finely modelled, closer than when he accompanied his friend in their wild rush through the streets, he was struck by the surprising phenomenon of the moral second-sight which a man exalted by love invariably finds within him. ”

“ I have often spent the hours, which the princess gave to my own disposal, in adjusting ceremonies and regulating the court; I have repressed the pride of the powerful, and granted the petitions of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence of royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had almost forgotten to bow down before her. ”

“ The Princess.
Are you absolutely certain that that is the princess?
Strübel.
Why, who else could it be?
The Princess.
Oh, 'round about a princess like that--there are such a lot of people. For instance, there is her waiting-woman, there's the seamstress and her assistants, there's----
Strübel.
But my dear young lady, if you only understood anything about these matters, you would have been certain at the very first glance that it was she--and no one else. Observe the nobility in every motion--the queenly grace with which she bends over the embroidery-frame----
The Princess. ”

“ Deign, therefore, beautiful princess, to look kindly on my suit, and then let both your father and yourself be at rest respecting your future fate, which cannot fail to be both glorious and happy; for as soon as the news of your marriage is spread abroad in the world, all the kings of the earth will stand in awe of the father-in-law of so powerful a monarch, and every princess will envy your fate. ”

“ The princess had admired his good looks and his self-devotion from the first, but when she found him so admired and courted by all the world too, her esteem and her love for him grew every day, till at last she consented to fulfil the king’s wish, and they were married with great pomp and rejoicing. Never was there a handsomer pair; and never was there a braver procession of lords and ladies and attendants, than that which followed them that day, with music and with bells, and the Three Black Dogs behind. ”

“ The princess is loveliest of the lovely, the villains craftiest of the crafty; gallant deeds are done and gallant words are spoken, and the whole flows smoothly on to a happy conclusion, leaving the reader under a debt of gratitude for a pleasing entertainment. ”

“ The Princess and her ama travelled quickly with the prince to the kingdom which claimed to possess the most beautiful princess in the world. It was already the night of the appointed festa when they arrived. The king’s army was drawn up to slay the prince. No one dreamed that the poor fisherman would be able to bring any princess at all with him, much less a beautiful one. The prince hid the princess in the box which the old ama carried on top of her head. ”

“ The princess is one of those impenetrable women; she can make herself what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of being a gentle, simple woman, to whom life was known only through its deceptions: a woman full of soul, and calumniated, but resigned,—in short, a wounded angel. ”

“ The princess laughed scornfully and exclaimed, "What a foolish girl! She's giving herself trouble for nothing. No one who is not a princess can ever grow wings."
The princess turned the matter over in her mind, and when she arrived at her father's palace she went into her chamber, anointed herself with sweet-smelling perfumes, and then went down into the palace garden to wait for her wings to come. ”

“ Thou must sit here and watch for them; and when thou seest them coming, do thou hide near the pavilion, whereas thou mayst see them, without being seen of them, and beware lest thou show thyself, or we shall all lose our lives. When they put off their clothes, note which is the feather-suit of the princess, her of whom thou art enamoured, and take it, and it only, for this it is that carries her to her country, and when thou hast it, thou hast her. And beware lest she beguile thee, saying, “O thou who hast stolen my dress, restore it to me, for I am here in thine hands and at thy mercy!” ”