CHAPTER II

And Eigenwillig he was called. There was no help for it. Even Queen Ninnilinda soon saw that. She flew into a violent passion, indeed, and called her husband an old goose, and told him that if he had as much sense in his whole body as a mite has in the tip of its tail, he would have contrived to have got rid of the Lady Abracadabra without affronting her.

“Shall I send her an excuse, my dear?” asked King Katzekopf meekly.

“Send her a fiddlestick!” cried the Queen indignantly, at the same time kicking over her footstool, and upsetting a basin of caudle, scalding hot, into her husband’s lap.—“How can you make such a ridiculous proposition? What but mischief can come of offending her? Will she not vent her spite on me, or the Arch-duchess? Or may not she make the poor dear baby a victim? May she not dart through the keyhole, and carry him off to Fairy-land, and substitute in his place some frightful, wide mouthed, squinting, red haired changeling, as much like your Majesty, and as little like me, as possible? Oh it is too vexatious, and ridiculous, and shocking, and foolish!”

And then Ninnilinda burst out a crying. But her Majesty’s tears and rages were so frequent that they had lost their effect. Nobody thought much about them; and besides, King Katzekopf was trying to take out the stains of the caudle, which had sadly damaged the appearance of the pea-green brocade that covered his knees.

So when her Majesty was tired of crying, she ceased: and, in the course of the afternoon, wrote a note to her “dearest Lady Abracadabra,” expressing the intensity of her satisfaction at the fact that her sweet baby had secured the protection of such an amiable and powerful patroness.

Then she sent for the Baroness Yellowlily, and told her that, as she had reason to fear that a malicious old Fairy was disposed to do the child a mischief, and, perhaps, carry him off altogether, she must immediately anoint him all over with an unguent, made of three black spiders, the gall of a brindled cat, the fat of a white hen, and the blood of a screech owl; and that his cradle must be watched night and day until after the christening. It was lucky for Queen Ninnilinda that the Lady Abracadabra wished nothing but well to the little prince, and knew nothing of these proceedings.

It is not necessary to fatigue the reader with the details of the fête, which was given a few weeks after the events which have just been recorded. There were firing of cannon, and ringing of bells, and beating of drums, and blowing of trumpets. And there were long processions of high officers of state, and nobles, and foreign ambassadors, dressed in gorgeous robes, and glittering with gold and jewels. And there was the arrival of the Fairy sponsor, in a coach made of a single pearl, and drawn by a matchless pair of white cockatrices from the mountains of Samarcand; and there was the flight of birds of Paradise that accompanied her, each bearing round its neck a chain of gold and diamonds, from which depended a casket, containing some costly offering for the Hope of the House of Katzekopf. And there was the Lady Abracadabra herself, no longer stamping the floor with anger, and wearing that frightful, unbecoming, ill-tempered dress of yellow and black, but arrayed in the most delicate fabrics of the fairy-loom, and bearing upon her shoulders a mantle of gossamer, spangled all over with dew-drops, sparkling with the colours of a hundred rainbows. No look of age or ill-nature had she. The refulgence of her veil had obliterated her wrinkles, and as she passed along the gallery of the palace, side by side with the Arch-duchess of Klopsteinhesseschloffengrozen, even Queen Ninnilinda herself was forced to confess that she looked very amiable, that her manners were exceedingly good, and that, on the whole, she was a captivating person,—when she chose it.

When the child was to be named, the Queen gave a supplicatory glance at her kinswoman, and gently whispered in an appealing tone, “Have you _really_ any objection to the charming name originally proposed? Conrad-Adalbert-Willibald....”

But the Lady Abracadabra cut the catalogue short, with saying the word “Eigenwillig” in so decided a tone, that the prince was named Eigenwillig directly, and there was an end of the matter.

And then followed the royal banquet, and then a ball, and then the town was illuminated, and at midnight the fête terminated with a most magnificent display of fireworks.

Just, however, before the amusements of the evening were concluded, the old Fairy called her niece and the King into the royal closet, and thus addressed them: “Kinsmen mine,” said she, “I have shown you this day that I bear a most hearty good-will both to you and yours; and therefore if ye be wise,—which I think ye are not—you will listen to what I now say to you. You have got a fair son: for that you must thank Providence; and your son has got the fairest gifts that were to be found in all Fairy-land: for them you must thank me. But if, in spite of these gifts, your son turns out a wilful, disagreeable, selfish monkey, for that you will have to thank yourselves. Queen Ninnilinda, if ever I saw a mother that was likely to spoil a child, you are that person. King Katzekopf, if ever I saw a father who was likely to let his son lead him by the nose, you are that man. But attend to what I say,” continued the Fairy, with a look of great severity, “I don’t intend to have my godchild a selfish little brat, who shall be a bad man, and a bad king, and a bad son, whom everybody shall dislike, and whose faults shall be all attributed to his having a Fairy godmother. No: I have named the child according to his natural temper. I have called him Eigenwillig, because his disposition is to be self-willed. And of this it is fit that you should be reminded continually, even by his name, in order that you may discipline his mind, and make him the reverse of what he is now called. Poor child! he has everything around him to make him selfish. Let it be the object of your life, to make him unselfish. This is my injunction, and remember I have both the will and the power to enforce it. I am his godmother, and I am a Fairy besides, so I have a right to insist. And mark my words, I shall do _my_ duty by the prince, let who will neglect theirs. I shall watch over him night and day, and shall be among you when least you expect me. If you manage him properly, you may expect my help; if you show yourselves unfit for the charge, I shall take the reins of discipline into my own hands; and if you then resist me ... but I will not allow myself to imagine that such infatuation and insanity were possible. Sweet niece, I must take my leave. May I trouble your Majesty to open the window. Kiss my godchild for me. Good night.”

As the Lady Abracadabra took her leave, there was a rustling of wings in the air, the chariot of pearl, with its attendant cockatrices, appeared on a level with the window: the Fairy sprung into her seat, and, preceded by a cloud of lantern flies, each insect sparkling with a different coloured flame, blue, or crimson, or violet, or green, and followed by myriads of elves, each crowned with asteroids of lambent light, she wended on her way to Fairy-land, her track through the sky being marked by a long train of sparks, whose dazzling brilliancy waxed fainter and fainter as she receded from earth, till it mingled with, and became lost in the pallid hues of the Milky Way.

It is needless to say that Queen Ninnilinda did not relish the parting admonitions of her Fairy kinswoman. First, she (being a Queen) did not like to submit to dictation; next, she persuaded herself that she had a full right to do as she pleased, and to spoil her own child as much as she liked; lastly, being rather timid, she felt very uncomfortable at the notion of being watched by a Fairy, and still more so at the possibility of incurring that Fairy’s vengeance. So, as usual, she vented all her anger on her husband, and then went to bed and sobbed herself to sleep. King Katzekopf was not easily disturbed; and the chronicles of the kingdom assure us that he slept as well as usual on the night after the fête; but upon awaking next morning he felt the necessity of something being done, and therefore called together once more his trusty councillors, who, after much grave discussion, determined that the best method of securing the further favour of the Lady Abracadabra would be, by immediately appointing proper instructors for the royal infant.

Accordingly, a commission was issued to inquire who would be the proper persons to undertake so responsible an office, and after a year and a half of diligent investigation, it was decided that the three cleverest women in the kingdom should be charged with the prince’s education until such time as he should exchange his petticoats for jacket and trousers. So the Lady Brigida was appointed to teach him how to feed himself, and to instruct him in _Belles Lettres_, and the —ologies: the Lady Rigida was to make him an adept in prudence and etiquette: while the Lady Frigida was directed to enlighten his mind on the science of political economy, and to teach him the art of governing the country.

But alas! nobody thought of appointing a preceptress, who should instruct him in the art of governing _himself_.

Meanwhile, Queen Ninnilinda, finding that her husband had become highly popular in consequence of the pains he was taking to have his heir properly educated, determined that she would do something which should set her own character in a favourable light as a wise and discreet mother. She, therefore, after much careful consideration, drew up the following rules for the nursery, which were immediately printed in an Extraordinary Gazette, and which were received with so much applause, that almost all the ladies in the kingdom adopted them immediately in their own families, and have, in fact, been guided by them ever since, even though they have not followed Queen Ninnilinda’s plan of having them framed and glazed.

RULES FOR THE NURSERY.

1. The Prince Eigenwillig is never to be contradicted; for contradiction is depressing to the spirits.

2. His Royal Highness is to have everything he cries for; else he will grow peevish and discontented.

3. He is to be allowed to eat and drink when, what, and as much he pleases; hunger being a call of nature, and whatever nature dictates is natural.

4. His Royal Highness is to be dissuaded from speaking to any one below the rank of Baron; as it is highly desirable that he should acquire a proper pride.

5. It is to be impressed upon the Prince’s mind continually that he is an object of the first consequence, and that his first duty is to take good care of himself.

Such being the plan laid down for Prince Eigenwillig’s education, it is not to be wondered at that, by the time he was two years old, he had a very fair notion of the drift of his mother’s rules, and that they found great favour in his eyes; insomuch that at three, when the Ladies Brigida, Frigida, and Rigida commenced the task of tuition, he contrived to inspire them with the notion that their office, for the present, at least, was likely to be a sinecure. He even resisted the efforts which the Lady Brigida made to induce him to feed himself with a fork and a spoon, and adhered upon principle to the use of his fingers, lest, by yielding the point, he should seem to allow himself to be contradicted.

At four years old the precocity of his talents had greatly developed themselves. He had mingled mustard with the Lady Frigida’s chocolate; he had pulled the chair from under his father, just as the King was about to sit down, whereby his Majesty got a tumble, and the Prince got his ears boxed; he had killed nurse Yellowlily’s cockatoo by endeavouring to ascertain whether it was as fond of stewed mushrooms as he was himself, and he had even gone the length of singing in her presence, and of course in allusion to her bereavement,

“Dame what made your ducks to die? Ducks to die? ducks to die? ducks to die? Eating o’ polly-wigs! Eating o’ polly-wigs.”

But if the truth must be told, the prince had acquired by this time many worse habits than that of mischief. And these had their origin in his being permitted to have his own way in everything. For, indeed, it might be said, that this spoilt child was the person who ruled the entire kingdom. The prince ruled his nurse, and his three instructresses; they ruled the Queen; the Queen ruled the King; the King ruled his Ministers; and the Ministers ruled the country.

O Lady Abracadabra, Lady Abracadabra, how could you allow things to come to such a pass? You must have known right well that Queen Ninnilinda was very silly; and that King Katzekopf was one of those folks who are too indolent to exert themselves about anything which is likely to be troublesome or unpleasant; and you must have been quite sure that the nurses and governesses were all going the wrong way to work; you must have foreseen that at the end of four years of mismanagement the poor child would be a torment to himself and to everybody else. Why did you not interfere?

This is a hard question to answer; but perhaps the Lady Abracadabra’s object was to convince both parties of this fact by actual experience, as being aware that in such experience lay the best hope of a remedy.

A torment, however, the child was; there could be no mistake about that. Though he had everything he asked for, nothing seemed to satisfy him; if he was pleased one moment, he was peevish the next: he grew daily more and more fractious, and ill-humoured, and proud, and greedy, and self-willed, and obstinate. It is very shocking to think of so young a child having even the seeds of such evil tempers; but how could it be otherwise, when he was taught to think only of himself, and when he was allowed to have his own way in all things? Unhappy child! yet happy in this, that he was likely to find out for himself that, in spite of having all he wished for, he was unhappy! Unhappy parents! yet happy in this, that, if so disposed, they might learn wisdom, from the obvious failure of their foolish system of weak indulgence!

Prince Eigenwillig had nearly completed his fifth year, when, one day that the Lady Rigida was endeavouring to explain to his Royal Highness her cleverest theory on the subject of the Hyscos, or Shepherd Kings (he, meanwhile, being intently absorbed in a game of bilboquet), a Lord of the Bedchamber entered the apartment, and announced that the Queen desired the Prince’s presence in her boudoir.

“Ha!” exclaimed the little boy, with a start of pleasure and surprise, as he entered the apartment, “what a beautiful creature you’ve got in that cage. Whose is it? I should like to have it.”

“Well, my sweet pet,” replied his mother, “so you shall, if you wish for it.”

“Of course I do,” said the Prince; “what a sleek gray coat! what strange, orange-coloured eyes! what curious rings of black and white fur on its tail! What is it?”

“It is a ring-tailed macauco, love,” answered the Queen, “your papa has just made me a present of it. I don’t know how much money he gave for it.”

“Well, mamma, it’s mine now; that’s one comfort,” observed the Prince. “Let it out,” continued he, addressing the Lord of the Bedchamber.

“I am afraid, sir,” replied Baron Puffendorf, “that it might do mischief. I believe it isn’t tamed yet.”

“Oh, we’ll tame it, then,” replied the Prince; “call Lady Rigida; she’ll tame it directly, I’m sure. Lady Rigida, here’s a monkey wants taming; talk to it about the shepherd kings, will you?”

The Lady Rigida drew up with offended dignity.

“Ha! ha! my good Rigida,” said the Queen, laughing, “you mustn’t be angry with these sallies of wit. What a clever child it is!”

“Is nobody going to open the door of the cage?” asked the boy impatiently. “I want to see the creature loose.”

“Oh, my sweet child, leave it where it is. You’ll frighten me to death, if you let it out,” cried the Queen in alarm.

The Prince immediately threw himself down on the floor, and began to roar.

“Don’t cry, there’s a love,” said his wise mother, soothingly, “and the Baron shall see if he can’t hold it while you look at it. Wrap your handkerchief round your hand, Baron; it won’t bite, I’m sure.”

The Baron did as he was bid, and, in considerable trepidation, opened the door of the cage, and made an effort to seize the macauco. The animal immediately darted at his hand, bit it with all its strength, and dashed out of the cage in an instant. “Sess! sess! sess!” cried Prince Eigenwillig, springing up from the floor, and clapping his hands. “Now for a chase! Sess! macauco! Hie at them! Good monkey! Bite Rigida! Bite Puffendorf!”

Away ran the instructress, away ran the Lord of the Bedchamber, and after them pursued the macauco round and round the room, now biting at the Baron’s heels, and now at the Lady Rigida’s; while the Queen ran screaming out of the apartment, and the author of all the mischief stood in the midst, laughing with all his might. In another moment, the agile monkey had scrambled up the Lady Rigida’s back, and, having half strangled her in its attempts to tear off her head-dress, took a flying leap to the top of a cabinet, whence, having dashed down a most precious vase of rose-coloured chrystal, it proceeded to tear the cap to tatters.

But Prince Eigenwillig was too highly delighted with the more active freaks of the animal, and too much pleased at the opportunity of terrifying and tormenting the Lady Rigida, to allow it to remain long at the top of the cabinet. So snatching up a book which lay on a table beside him, he threw it at the macauco for the purpose of dislodging it.

And therein he succeeded, but at a cost which by no means entered into his calculations, for the animal, irritated by the blow, now turned on the naughty boy, and springing on his shoulders, laid hold of one of his ears with his teeth.

It was now the Prince’s turn to scream, and the more he screamed and struggled, the more the macauco bit him, and the child would soon have fainted with fright and pain; but, just at the critical moment, when he had fallen to the ground, the sound of many voices was heard outside the door, which was immediately flung open, and, together with a number of members of the household, in rushed a great black mastiff, which immediately flew at the monkey, who, thereupon, quitted its hold of the Prince’s ear, and retreated to its cage.

The whole palace was by this time in confusion; messengers were rushing in all directions for surgeons and physicians; and even King Katzekopf, who had now grown so fat, that he never left his arm-chair when he could help it, ran up-stairs, three steps at a time, to know what was the matter.

“Ah!” exclaimed the Lord Chamberlain, as soon as he had recovered sufficient presence of mind to shake his head. “Ah,” quoth he.

“Yea, forsooth!” replied the Chancellor, with the air of one who _could_ say a great deal if he chose.

The Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, who never spoke at all, if he could help it, and who never allowed his countenance to indulge itself in any particular expression, shrugged his shoulders slightly, but with what particular intention no one ventured to imagine.

The old ladies of the household (including his grace the Keeper of the Records) were, however, by no means so prudent or taciturn.

“I knew how it would be!” cried one.

“I always guessed as much,” rejoined another.

“I anticipated it from the first,” ejaculated the third.

“This comes of Fairy-godmothers,” groaned forth he of the Records.

“No doubt, it is some malicious prank of hers!” said Nurse Yellowlily, with a shudder.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if henceforth the poor child were possessed,” added the first speaker.

“Or squinting and blear-eyed,” continued the second.

“Or if his ears mortified, and turned into pigs’ feet!” sobbed out the third.

“Oh, too true! too true!” exclaimed the Queen. “I see it all. Unhappy mother that I am! All the poor child’s misfortunes, past, present, and to come, are owing to my peevish, spiteful, malicious, capricious, old, ugly witch of an aunt, Lady Abracadabra! Oh, that I had been turned into a tadpole, and the Grand Duchess of Klopsteinhesseschloffengrozen had been the only sponsor!”

It was a long while before anything like tranquillity was restored; but when the King and the Queen had been assured by the medical attendants that the Prince’s wound was by no means serious, and the child himself had ceased screaming, and the macauco had been hanged, the black mastiff began to attract attention.

“Whose dog is it?” asked one.

“Where did it come from?” said another.

But nobody could answer the question. At this moment the King called the hound to him, for the purpose of patting it. The mastiff approached, and laid its heavy fore-paws on the royal knee, and looked very wisely at the King; and then his Majesty looked as wisely as ever he could (how could he do less?) at the dog. But what was the King’s amazement, when, all of a sudden, he perceived the tan portion of the glossy hide changing into a yellow satin petticoat, and the black part into a black velvet jacket; the canine features resolving themselves into a human countenance; the fore-paws becoming hands, and hind-paws a woman’s feet, enveloped in high-heeled shoes fastened with diamond buckles?

It was even so. The Lady Abracadabra stood before him, not, however, as when he last beheld her, all smiles and affability, but stern, grave, and angry. Her eyes gleamed like coals of fire, her wrinkles were deeper than ever, and gave her face a most harsh and severe expression,—nay, her black jacket had acquired a most ominous sort of intensity, and the yellow petticoat seemed shot with a lurid flame-colour.

“So!” said she, “you have not only disobeyed all my injunctions, neglected my advice, and thwarted all my benevolent intentions, but now, when you are reaping the fruit of your misconduct, you have audacity enough to charge me with being the cause of it!”

King Katzekopf declared that he had never suspected her ladyship of anything but good will towards the prince; and had never attributed to her agency the mishaps of a spoilt boy.

“Spoilt boy!” she exclaimed with indignation, “and how comes he to be spoilt? Yes,” she continued with increasing vehemence, “who has spoilt him? What is it that makes everybody dislike him? What makes him a plague and a torment to himself and everybody else? Why is he impatient, and greedy, and wilful, and ill-tempered, and selfish? Is it not because Queen Ninnilinda encourages him in all these vices, and because King Katzekopf, though he knows that everything is going wrong, is too lazy and indolent to interfere and set them right? You are neither of you fit to be trusted with your own child. You are doing all you can to make him wicked and miserable, a bad man, and a bad king.”

“I’m sure there’s not a child in the kingdom that has such pains taken with him,” replied the Queen angrily. “He has instructors in all the different branches of useful knowledge, and if he is a little mischievous, or self-willed at times, are not all children so?”

“Niece, niece,” replied the Fairy, “you speak like a fool. What good is there in knowledge, unless a right use be made of it? And how is he likely to make a right use of it, if he be mischievous and self-willed? And how can you expect him to be otherwise than mischievous and self-willed, if you encourage, instead of checking, his propensities that way?”

“I’m sure I cannot check his propensities,” retorted Ninnilinda in a huff.

“I never thought you could,” said Lady Abracadabra quietly, “for you have not yet learned to control your own temper.”

The Queen coloured and bit her lip.

“I wish, kinswoman,” said the King in a conciliating tone, “since you thought the Prince was being so ill brought up, that you would have told us so a little sooner?”

“And where would have been the good of that? You know very well that you would not have listened to me. Nay, I don’t believe that you will listen to me now. No, no, when I promised to befriend your child, I ought to have taken the matter into my own hands at once, and carried him off to Fairy-land, and superintended his education there.”

When the Queen heard these words, she trembled from head to foot, and threw herself on her knees before her aunt, exclaiming—“Nay, Lady Abracadabra, anything but that! anything but that! I know your power, but oh! as you are powerful, be merciful likewise, and do not take my child from me!”

The Fairy saw that Queen Ninnilinda was now in a disposition to submit to any conditions which might be imposed upon her, and therefore she answered her kindly:

“I do not want to separate you from your child, if only you will do your duty by him.”

“I will do anything you desire, aunt!”

“Teach him not to be selfish, then!” replied the Lady Abracadabra. “If you really are in earnest, I will give you one more trial; _but remember it is the last_.”

The Queen grew more frightened than ever, for she felt as if she were a fly in a spider’s web; that the Lady Abracadabra was spreading toils for her, and that the little Eigenwillig was already as good as lost to her.

“But how can I teach him not to be selfish?” she asked at length.

“By making him consider others as much as himself; by teaching him to bear contradiction, and to yield up his own wishes and inclinations; and by letting him associate with his equals.”

“You forget he is a prince, Lady,” replied the Queen proudly.

“No, I do not,” answered the Fairy. “A prince may have his equals in age, I suppose, if not in rank.”

“Ah! Lady Abracadabra!” cried King Katzekopf. “I believe you have hit the right nail on the head. I’ve often wished the boy could have had somebody to play with,—somebody who would set him a good example, and would not flatter him, as these courtiers do.”

“Suppose I could find such a companion for him,” said the Fairy, “would you befriend him, and treat him as you do your own child?”

“Gladly will I,” answered the King. The Queen could not bring herself to say that she would do it gladly, but she submitted with as good a grace as she could.

“Well then,” said the Lady Abracadabra, “upon those terms I will give you a fresh trial. I know a fair, gentle boy, whose temper and disposition the Prince will do well to imitate. His father, foolish man! is anxious to get him a place at court,—little knowing what he desires for him. Methinks it would be well that he should see the experiment tried. It may be of benefit to both parties. So I shall set about it at once.”

And thereupon the Lady Abracadabra gradually faded away, or at any rate seemed to do so, till she wholly disappeared.