seen the sun, or the stars, or a horse, or a monkey, or a lion, except
in pictures, and though the King and Queen tell me I am to be set
free when I am twenty, I believe they only say it to keep me amused,
when they never mean to let me out at all.'

And then she began to cry, and her nurse, and the nurse's
daughter, and the cradle-rocker, and the nursery-maid, who all loved
her dearly, cried too for company, so that nothing could be heard
but sobs and sighs. It was a scene of woe. When the Princess saw
that they all pitied her she made up her mind to have her own way.
So she declared that she would starve herself to death if they did
not find some means of letting her see Fanfaronade's grand entry
into the town.

`If you really love me,' she said, `you will manage it, somehow
or other, and the King and Queen need never know anything
about it.'

Then the nurse and all the others cried harder than ever, and
said everything they could think of to turn the Princess from her
idea. But the more they said the more determined she was, and at
last they consented to make a tiny hole in the tower on the side
that looked towards the city gates.

After scratching and scraping all day and all night, they presently
made a hole through which they could, with great difficulty, push a
very slender needle, and out of this the Princess looked at the daylight
for the first time. She was so dazzled and delighted by what
she saw, that there she stayed, never taking her eyes away from the
peep-hole for a single minute, until presently the ambassador's