into the bottom of the barge, lost his hold of his daughter; not,
however, before imparting to her the downward tendency of his own
person, though in a somewhat different direction; for, as the king
fell into the boat, she fell into the water. With a burst of
delighted laughter she disappeared in the lake. A cry of horror
ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down
before. Half the men were under water in a moment; but they had
all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath,
when--tinkle, tinkle, babble, and gush! came the princess's laugh
over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan.
Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter.
She was perfectly obstinate.

But at the same time she seemed more sedate than usual. Perhaps
that was because a great pleasure spoils laughing. At all events,
after this, the passion of her life was to get into the water, and
she was always the better behaved and the more beautiful the more
she had of it. Summer and winter it was quite the same; only she
could not stay so long in the water when they had to break the ice
to let her in. Any day, from morning till evening in summer, she
might be descried--a streak of white in the blue water--lying as
still as the shadow of a cloud, or shooting along like a dolphin;
disappearing, and coming up again far off, just where one did not
expect her. She would have been in the lake of a night, too, if she
could have had her way; for the balcony of her window overhung a
deep pool in it; and through a shallow reedy passage she could have
swum out into the wide wet water, and no one would have been any
the wiser. Indeed, when she happened to wake in the moonlight she
could hardly resist the temptation. But there was the sad
difficulty of getting into it. She had as great a dread of the air