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  Nor is that anything like a complete inventory of her talents. She deployed in the cause of truth and candour all those wiles, charms and subterfuges that have immemorially been placed at the service of duplicity; and such was her good judgement of things, such was her presence of mind, she never failed to find the means of extricating those dear to her from the greatest difficulties. Young as she was, for instance, she had cleverly discovered, in a treaty that was just about to be signed, that a perfidious foreign ambassador had laid a cunning trap for the king her father. To punish the treachery of this ambassador and his master, the king applied some invisible mending, as it were, to the small print of the treaty; by rewording it in terms dictated to him by his daughter, he so adroitly turned the tables that it was the deceiver who was deceived. In like fashion, she exposed a vile piece of roguery that a certain minister had a mind to play on the king; and, by the advice she gave her father, matters were arranged so that the traitor’s villainy would fall on his own head. On other occasions, too, the princess showed so subtle an intelligence that the people of her country gave her the nickname of Finessa.

  The king loved her so much more than her two sisters, and so much more relied on her good sense, that, if she had truly been his only child, he would have set out on his journey without the least unease. Yet he mistrusted the conduct of his elder daughters as implicitly as he trusted that of the younger. And so, to feel absolutely at ease about his family during his absence, and about his subjects too, he took the following steps:

  I’ve no doubt that you, dear Reader, my judge and sometime collaborator, well versed as you are in such tales, have heard about a hundred times of the marvellous power of fairies. The king I speak of, being an intimate of one of these paragons, went to visit his friend and acquainted her with the unease he felt about his daughters.

  It isn’t, he said, as if the two eldest, who alone worry me, have ever done anything truly contrary to their duty. But they have so little good sense, they’re so imprudent, and live so very idly, what I fear is that, in my absence, they will engage in some foolish intrigue or other, merely to amuse themselves. As for Finessa, though I have absolutely no fears on her account, I prefer to treat her exactly as I do her sisters, so that only I will ever know that she’s my darling of the three. For which reason, dear fairy, I wish you to make three glass bobbins for my daughters, and make them so skilfully that each of them will break if ever she to whom it belongs does anything to betray her honour.

  As she was one of the most expert of the genus faerium, she followed these instructions to the letter and at once presented him with three magic bobbins. Yet this precaution was still not enough for the king. He led the princesses off to a tower that stood, high and lonely and uninhabited, in the palace grounds, commanded them to take up residence there during his absence and charged them not to admit into it any person whatsoever, and for whatever the reason given. He gave temporary notice to their retinue of attendants, of both sexes. And, after handing a magic bobbin to each of his daughters, complete with a description of its properties, he kissed them goodbye, locked the doors of the tower, put the keys in his purse and departed.

  Now you may be forgiven for supposing, Reader, from what I’ve just said, that these princesses were in danger of starving to death. Nothing of the kind. Care was taken to fix a pulley to one of the tower’s windows: a rope was slipped through it, to which a basket was attached, and that basket lowered at least once a day for provisions. When it was drawn up again, the princesses carefully stowed the rope away in their chamber.

  Having never known solitude, Lackadaisy and Loquatia were soon driven to a state of utter despair; and, as the doubly terrible thing about loneliness is that it must be suffered alone, they fretted to such a degree that I can find no adequate words to express it. They forced themselves, nevertheless, to be patient, at least at first, for what the king had told them of their bobbins so terrified them they believed the slightest lapse on their part might cause them to break.

  As for Finessa, she wasn’t in the least put out. Her weaving, sewing and music-making were sufficient amusement for her; besides which, by order of the king’s regent, documents were put in their basket every day, documents designed to keep them well informed on everything that was happening, both inside the kingdom and out. This was done at the king’s own suggestion, and the minister in question, to ingratiate himself with the princesses, carried out his master’s orders as if his life were at stake (which it wasn’t quite). Finessa would read all the latest news with both attention and pleasure; but as for her sisters, well, they truly couldn’t have cared less if they tried. As Loquatia said to Finessa: We’re too much out of humour to amuse ourselves with such trifles. Now if only we had such a thing as a pack of cards …

  Thus they spent their time continually railing against their lot, sleeplessly tossing and turning in bed as if there were a pea under the mattress, except that this pea wasn’t under the mattress but right under their skin! How much better, they sighed, to be born happy than to be born the daughter of a king!

  They were frequently at the windows of the tower, to see what was happening underneath. And one day, while Finessa was busying herself about some pretty piece of needlework, her sisters, leaning out of the window, saw at the foot of the tower a poor woman clothed in rags and tatters, who cried up to them in a mournful tone, complaining of the wretchedness of her life in a voice that would have drawn tears from a philosopher. She implored them, with clasped hands, to let her enter the castle, telling them that she was but a miserable old woman who nevertheless had a thousand and one skills, all of them practical, and would serve her new mistresses with the utmost fidelity. At first the princesses called to mind their father’s warning not to let anyone, anyone at all, into the tower; but Lackadaisy was so weary of always waiting upon herself, and Loquatia just as weary of having no one but her sisters to talk to, that the desire of the one to have someone to twiddle her thumbs for her when she felt too lazy to twiddle them herself, and the desire of the other to have someone new to listen to all her twaddle, made them resolve to let in the poor stranger.

  Do you really suppose, said Loquatia to her sister, that the king’s order extends to this unfortunate wretch? I think we can allow her in without any consequence to ourselves.

  Fifter, answered Lackadaisy, who had a lisp, you muft do as you pleafe.

  Loquatia needed no more encouragement. She immediately lowered the basket, the poor woman climbed into it, and the princesses drew her up with the help of the pulley.

  When they had had some time to inspect her more closely, the putrid state of her clothes quite turned their stomachs. They would have given her others at once if she hadn’t told them that she would change them the next day: for the moment, she insisted, her only consideration was for the work at hand. And, just as she was uttering these words, Finessa entered the room, startled to see a totally unknown creature in her sisters’ company. They told her the reasons which had induced them to pull her up into the tower, and Finessa, realising that what was done was done, could scarcely conceal her vexation at such an imprudent action.

  In the meantime, the princesses’ new servant took a hundred turns around the castle on the pretence of going about her chores, but in reality to observe how everything was laid out in it. For, my dear Reader (and I can’t help thinking you’re already a step or two ahead of me in my own narrative), this so-called beggar-woman was as dangerous an intruder in the tower as Count Ory7 in the nunnery that he contrived to enter disguised as a fugitive abbess.

  To keep you no longer in suspense, I shall tell you that, tattered as she was, aged as she was, she was none other than the son – indeed, the young son! – of a powerful king, whose kingdom chanced to be just next door to that of the princesses’ father. This prince was one of the craftiest and most underhand persons of his time and he had the king his father entirely under his sway; which, in truth, wasn’t difficult, the latter being so sweet-tempered and easygoi
ng a monarch that his nickname was The Lamb. As for The Lamb’s son, what with all his artifice and cunning, he was given the name Rich-in-Craft; or, for short (and no doubt, too, for quite another reason and rhyme), Richcraft.

  As it happens, Richcraft had a younger brother with as many virtues as he himself had flaws. Yet, however different their temperaments, there was between these two princes such a close sibling affection that nobody in the kingdom could understand it. The younger, you see, was possessed of high moral qualities that seemed to find their transparent reflection in the remarkable beauty of his face and the comeliness of his body – beauty and comeliness so very remarkable, indeed, that he generally went by the name of Belavoir, or Beauteous to Behold.

  Now it was Richcraft who had put his father’s ambassador up to the wording of that perfidious treaty which had been so neatly foiled by Finessa’s wit and good sense that it had rebounded on its perpetrators. And ever since that time the prince, who had never had any great love for the princesses’ father, held him in the utmost loathing; so that when he heard of the precautions that the king had taken in relation to his daughters, he immediately set out to deceive, if possible, the prudence of so suspicious a father. Accordingly, he got permission from his own indulgent father to leave the kingdom on some invented pretext and took the measures that I’ve already related to gain entrance to the tower in which, as you’ve also been informed, the three princesses were confined.

  Examining the castle, and observing how easy it was for these princesses to make themselves heard by anyone passing by on the road underneath, Richcraft concluded that it would be best for him to remain in disguise for the time being; because they certainly could, had they a mind to it, call out to such passers-by and have him instantly punished for his rash and tasteless enterprise. He therefore remained all day in his stinking rags and very cleverly pretended to act the part of a poor old beggar-woman. That same night, however, just after they had had their supper, Richcraft suddenly cast off his rags with a flourish to reveal to his astonished dupes that, underneath, he was dressed like a perfect young knight in rich, sumptuous apparel, so dripping with diamonds and pearls you might have supposed he’d been caught in a hailstorm of precious stones.

  The poor princesses were much alarmed at this apparition (as who wouldn’t be), and recoiled in horror from it. Finessa and Loquatia, who were very nimble both, managed to scurry back to their chambers; but Lackadaisy, who scarcely knew how to put one foot in front of the other, was all too quickly overtaken by the prince.

  He at once threw himself at her feet, declaring who he was and persuading her that the reputation of her beauty, and the merest glimpse of her portrait, had induced him to up and leave the pleasures of his own delightful court in order to come and offer her his vows. Lackadaisy was so much at a loss for words she simply didn’t know what to say to the prince, who thus had to continue kneeling while she fumbled for an appropriate response. But since, showering her with a thousand tender endearments, he ardently begged her to take him at that very moment for her husband, and since, too, she remembered an old proverb of her kingdom – to wit, that it’s no use locking the bedroom door if the thief is already under the bed – she told Richcraft, in a very indolent and nonchalant voice, that she believed him after all to be sincere and would accept his vows. I have to report that these were the only marriage formalities she saw fit to observe – and, to nobody’s surprise but her own, she lost her bobbin, which suddenly broke into a hundred pieces.

  Meanwhile, Loquatia and Finessa felt profoundly uneasy at what had happened. They had got away separately into their apartments and hurriedly locked themselves in. But, as these apartments were at some distance from one another, and as all three princesses were ignorant of their sisters’ fates, they didn’t sleep a wink the whole night long.

  Next morning the wicked young prince led Lackadaisy down into an apartment on the ground floor at the end of the garden. It was there (whilst secretly dropping artificial tears into her eyes, it being far too much trouble to shed real ones) she told him how very disturbed she was about her sisters and how she dared not see them, for fear they would take her to task for her marriage. The prince assured her he would undertake to make them approve of it; and after a few more consoling words, locked Lackadaisy in, without her noticing that he’d done so, and went off to look for the two other princesses. It took him quite a long time to discover where their chambers were, and he might not have found them at all had Loquatia’s unquenchable inclination always to be prattling away to someone or other not got the better of her and caused her to start talking to herself, for want of a second party, and loudly bewail her fate. Happening just to wander that way, the prince heard her and, approaching the door, spied on her through its keyhole.

  Richcraft spoke to her through the door, saying to her exactly what he’d said to her sister, which was in essence that it was solely the desire to offer her his heart and his hand that had prompted him to enter the tower in so underhand a style. He praised (by that I mean he grossly flattered) her wit and beauty; and Loquatia, who’d never met anyone before so uncannily echoing her own high opinion of her charms, was foolish enough to believe everything he said. She answered him in a positive torrent of words, and not, I must say, in a manner that would have pleased her father. It was a remarkable exploit in its way, her talking as she did, for she was most terribly faint; having been chattering away to herself from the moment she got up, she had left no room for anything to pass through in the other direction and hadn’t tasted a morsel of food all day. Besides, as she was extremely lazy, she was utterly lacking in foresight. Generally, if she wanted for anything, she would trot off to Finessa; who, as industrious and provident as her sisters were the contrary, always had in her chamber a selection of biscuits, pies and macaroons, sweetmeats and savouries, all the product of her own two hands. Loquatia, then, who had no such natural gifts, and was by now almost swooning with hunger, opened her door at last to the young prince, and he, born seducer as he was, wasted no time in pressing home his advantage.

  Then they both left her apartment and entered the castle’s pantry, where all kinds of refreshments were laid out, for the basket furnished the princesses day after day with more than enough for their needs. Loquatia, to be absolutely fair to her, was still a trifle anxious about her sisters and what might have become of them, and the notion came to her, why I cannot precisely say, that they’d both no doubt locked themselves into Finessa’s chamber, where they would certainly want for nothing. Richcraft used every argument he knew to reinforce such a notion in her empty head, and promised to go looking for them that same evening. No, she replied, with the sincerity of the moment, that wasn’t quite good enough; rather, they must go just as soon as they had done eating.

  In short, the prince and princess heartily fell to their supper; and when they’d eaten their fill, Richcraft expressed a wish to see the very finest apartment in the castle. He gave his hand to the princess to take him there; and, once inside, he started to exaggerate the tender passion he felt for her and the advantages that would fall to her if she were to marry him. He told her, too, just as he had told Lackadaisy, that it would be better for her to accept his hand that very moment; because, were she to see her sisters before taking him for her husband, she would find that they would most certainly oppose her. Being, as he unquestionably was, the most powerful prince in the entire region, he would impress them as so far fitter a husband for her elder sister than for her that that sister in particular would never, ever, consent to such a match.

  Loquatia, after a great deal of this, and other nonsense just as sophistical, acted as rashly as Lackadaisy had done. She accepted the prince’s proposal and never gave a second’s thought to the effect it might have on her glass bobbin.

  That same evening, however, she returned to her chamber with the prince and the first thing she saw there was her bobbin lying shattered in a hundred fragments. She was so disturbed at the sight of it that the puzzled prin
ce asked her why; and as her fancy for babbling rendered her incapable of keeping mum on any subject, the more so if it were a secret, she foolishly told Richcraft all about the bobbin and what was peculiar to it. The prince positively gloated to hear what she had to say, since it meant that the father of these three princesses could not fail to learn just how much his daughters’ conduct left to be desired.

  As Loquatia, now, was no longer in a mood to go in search of her sisters, having good reason to fear their disapproval of what she had done, her new husband kindly offered to perform this duty himself and told her that he would find a way of winning them over to her cause. The princess, reassured, and not having closed her eyes all night, grew quite drowsy; and while she was asleep, Richcraft neatly turned the key on her, just as he had on Lackadaisy.

  Isn’t it true, Reader, that this Richcraft is such a great blackguard you would like to boo the very page on which his name is imprinted? And isn’t it equally true, alas, that our two elder princesses, with their feet of human, of too human, clay, are such ninnies, both of them, that you can scarcely contain your anger and irritation at their conduct and are perhaps even now on the point of throwing this book away in disgust? But don’t, I pray, not yet. They will all be treated according to their deserts: no one will triumph save the wise and courageous Finessa.