'No, my Princess; but I love you so much that I feel I cannot
express it, try as I may. I only bring you these worthless
trifles to show that I have not ceased to think of you, though I
have been obliged to leave you for a time.' The following night
he gave Fiordelisa a watch set in a single pearl. The Princess
laughed a little when she saw it, and said--

'You may well give me a watch, for since I have known you I have
lost the power of measuring time. The hours you spend with me
pass like minutes, and the hours that I drag through without you
seem years to me.'

'Ah, Princess, they cannot seem so long to you as they do to me!'
he answered. Day by day he brought more beautiful things for the
Princess--diamonds, and rubies, and opals; and at night she
decked herself with them to please him, but by day she hid them
in her straw mattress. When the sun shone the Blue Bird, hidden
in the tall fir-tree, sang to her so sweetly that all the
passersby wondered, and said that the wood was inhabited by a
spirit. And so two years slipped away, and still the Princess was
a prisoner, and Turritella was not married. The Queen had offered
her hand to all the neighbouring Princes, but they always
answered that they would marry Fiordelisa with pleasure, but not
Turritella on any account. This displeased the Queen terribly.
'Fiordelisa must be in league with them, to annoy me!' she said.
'Let us go and accuse her of it.'

So she and Turritella went up into the tower. Now it happened
that it was nearly midnight, and Fiordelisa, all decked with
jewels, was sitting at the window with the Blue Bird, and as the