Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia: Being the Adventures of Prince Prigio's Son

“Hi, Ross!” he shouted, “just weigh this beast’s head. I’ve had a splendid day with a sea-monster. Get the head stuffed, will you? We’ll have it set up in the billiard-room.”

“Yes, Master Dick – I mean your Royal Highness,” said Ross, a Highland keeper, who had not previously been employed by a Reigning Family. “It’s a fine head, whatever,” he added, meditatively.

Prince Ricardo now came beneath the library window, and gave his parents a brief account of his adventure.

“I picked the monster up early in the morning,” he said, “through the magic telescope, father.”

“What country was he in?” said the king.

“The country people whom I met called it Ethiopia. They were niggers.”

“And in what part of the globe is Ethiopia, Ricardo?”

“Oh! I don’t know. Asia, perhaps,” answered the prince.

The king groaned.

“That boy will never understand our foreign relations. Ethiopia in Asia!” he said to himself, but he did not choose to make any remark at the moment.

The prince ran upstairs to dress. On the stairs he met the Princess Jaqueline.

“Oh, Dick! are you hurt?” she said, turning very pale.

“No, not I; but the monster is. I had a capital day, Jack; rescued a princess, too.”

“Was she – was she very pretty, Dick?”

“Oh! I don’t know. Pretty enough, I daresay. Much like other girls. Why, you look quite white! What’s the matter? Now you look all right again;” for, indeed, the Princess Jaqueline was blushing.

“I must dress. I’m ever so late,” he said, hurrying upstairs; and the princess, with a little sigh, went down to the royal drawing-room.

CHAPTER II.

Princess Jaqueline Drinks the Moon

When dinner was over and the ladies had left the room, the king tried to speak seriously to Prince Ricardo. This was a thing which he disliked doing very much.

“There’s very little use in preaching,” his Majesty used to say, “to a man, or rather a boy, of another generation. My taste was for books; I only took to adventures because I was obliged to do it. Dick’s taste is for adventures; I only wish some accident would make him take to books. But everyone must get his experience for himself; and when he has got it, he is lucky if it is not too late. I wish I could see him in love with some nice girl, who would keep him at home.”

The king did not expect much from talking seriously to Dick. However, he began by asking questions about the day’s sport, which Ricardo answered with modesty. Then his Majesty observed that, from all he had ever read or heard, he believed Ethiopia, where the fight was, to be in Africa, not in Asia.

“I really wish, Ricardo, that you would attend to your geography a little more. It is most necessary to a soldier that he should know where his enemy is, and if he has to fight the Dutch, for instance, not to start with his army for Central Asia.”

“I could always spot them through the magic glass, father,” said Dick; “it saves such a lot of trouble. I hate geography.”

“But the glass might be lost or broken, or the Fairies might take it away, and then where are you?”

“Oh, you would know where to go, or Mr. Belsham.”

Now Mr. Belsham was his tutor, from Oxford.

“But I shall not always be here, and when I die – ”

“Don’t talk of dying, sire,” said Dick. “Why, you are not so very old; you may live for years yet. Besides, I can’t stand the notion. You must live for ever!”

“That sentiment is unusual in a Crown Prince,” thought the king; but he was pleased for all that.

“Well, to oblige you, I’ll try to struggle against old age,” he said; “but there are always accidents. Now, Dick, like a good fellow, and to please me, work hard all to-morrow till the afternoon. I’ll come in and help you. And there’s always a splendid evening rise of trout in the lake just now, so you can have your play after your work. You’ll enjoy it more, and I daresay you are tired after a long day with the big game. It used to tire me, I remember.”

“I am rather tired,” said Dick; and indeed he looked a little pale, for a day in the inside of a gigantic sea-monster is fatiguing, from the heat and want of fresh air which are usually found in such places. “I think I’ll turn in; goodnight, my dear old governor,” he said, in an affectionate manner, though he was not usually given to many words.

Then he went and kissed his mother and the Princess Jaqueline, whom he engaged to row him on the lake next evening, while he fished.

“And don’t you go muffing them with the landing-net, Jack, as you generally do,” said his Royal Highness, as he lit his bedroom candle.

“I wish he would not call me Jack,” said the princess to the queen.

“It’s better than Lina, my dear,” said her Majesty, who in late life had become fond of her little joke; “that always sounds as if someone else was fatter, – and I hope there is not someone else.”

The princess was silent, and fixed her eyes on her book.

Presently the king came in, and played a game with Lina at picquet. When they were all going to bed, he said:

“Just come into the study, Lina. I want you to write a few letters for me.”

The princess followed him and took her seat at the writing table. The letters were very short. One was to Herr Schnipp, tailor to the king and royal family; another was to the royal swordmaker, another to the bootmaker, another to the optician, another to the tradesman who supplied the august family with carpets and rugs, another to his Majesty’s hatter. They were all summoned to be at the palace early next morning. Then his Majesty yawned, apologised, and went to bed. The princess also went to her room, or bower as it was then called, but not to sleep.

She was unhappy that Dick did not satisfy his father, and that he was so careless, and also about other things.

“And why does the king want all these tailors and hatters so suddenly, telescope-makers and swordmakers and shoemakers, too?” she asked herself, as she stood at the window watching the moon.

“I could find out. I could turn myself into a dog or a cat, and go into the room where he is giving his orders. But that is awkward, for when the servants see Rip” (that was the dog) “in two places at once, they begin to think the palace is haunted, and it makes people talk. Besides, I know it is wrong to listen to what one is not meant to hear. It is often difficult to be a magician and a good girl. The temptations are so strong, stronger than most people allow for.” So she remained, with the moon shining on her pretty yellow hair and her white dress, wondering what the king intended to do, and whether it was something that Dick would not like.

“How stupid of me,” she said at length, “after all the lessons I have had. Why, I can drink the moon!”

Now, this is a way of knowing what anyone else is thinking of and intends to do, for the moon sees and knows everything. Whether it is quite fair is another matter; but, at all events, it is not listening. And anyone may see that, if you are a magician, like the Princess Jaqueline, a great many difficult questions as to what is right and wrong at once occur which do not trouble other people. King Prigio’s secret, why he sent for the tailor and the other people, was his own secret. The princess decided that she would not find it out by turning herself into Rip or the cat (whose name was Semiramis), and, so far, she was quite right. But she was very young, and it never occurred to her that it was just as wrong to find out what the king meant by drinking the moon as by listening in disguise. As she grew older she learned to know better; but this is just the danger of teaching young girls magic, and for that very reason it has been given up in most countries.

However, the princess did not think about right and wrong, unluckily. She went to the bookcase and took down her Cornelius Agrippa, in one great tall black volume, with silver clasps which nobody else could open; for, as the princess said, there are books which it would never do to leave lying about where the servants or anybody could read them. Nobody could undo the clasps, however strong or clever he might be; but the princess just breathed on them and made a sign, and the book flew open at the right place – Book IV., chapter vi., about the middle of page 576.

The magic spell was in Latin, of course; but the princess knew Latin very well, and soon she had the magic song by heart. Then she closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then she threw open the window and drew back the curtains, and put out all the lights except two scented candles that burned with a white fire under a round mirror with a silver frame, opposite the window. And into that mirror the moon shone white and full, filling all the space of it, so that the room was steeped in a strange silver light. Now the whole room seemed to sway gently, waving and trembling; and as it trembled it sounded and rang with a low silver music, as if it were filled with the waves of the sea.

Then the princess took a great silver basin, covered with strange black signs and figures raised in the silver. She poured water into the basin, and as she poured it she sang the magic spell from the Latin book. It was something like this, in English:

“Oh Lady Moon, on the waters riding,
On shining waters, in silver sheen,
Show me the secret the heart is hiding,
Show me the truth of the thought, oh Queen!

“Oh waters white, where the moon is riding,