Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in
love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into
anything is a difficulty--perhaps THE difficulty.

As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that
there was such a beehive of honey and stings to be fallen into. But
now I come to mention another curious fact about her.

The palace was built on the shores of the loveliest lake in the
world; and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother.
The root of this preference no doubt, although the princess did not
recognise it as such, was, that the moment she got into it, she
recovered the natural right of which she had been so wickedly
deprived--namely, gravity. Whether this was owing to the fact that
water had been employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do
not know. But it is certain that she could swim and dive like the
duck that her old nurse said she was. The manner in which this
alleviation of her misfortune was discovered was as follows.

One summer evening, during the carnival of the country, she had
been taken upon the lake by the king and queen, in the royal barge.
They were accompanied by many of the courtiers in a fleet of little
boats. In the middle of the lake she wanted to get into the lord
chancellor's barge, for his daughter, who was a great favourite
with her, was in it with her father. Now though the old king rarely
condescended to make light of his misfortune, yet, Happening on
this occasion to be in a particularly good humour, as the barges
approached each other, he caught up the princess to throw her into
the chancellor's barge. He lost his balance, however, and, dropping