The Laughing Prince; A Book of Jugoslav Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. Fillmore Parker
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and because she loved her father tried to spend all her time in study. But the dry old scholars whom the Tsar employed as teachers were not amusing companions for a young girl and the first lady-in-waiting who was in constant attendance was scarcely any better for she, too, was old and thin and very prim.
If the poor little Princess between her geography lesson and her arithmetic lesson would peep for a moment into a mirror, the first lady-in-waiting would tap her arm reprovingly and say:
“My dear, vanity is not becoming in a princess!”
One day the little Princess lost her temper and answered sharply:
“But I’m a girl even if I am a princess and I love to look in mirrors and I love to make myself pretty and I’d love to go to a ball every night of my life and dance with handsome young men!”
“You talk like the daughter of a farmer!” the first lady-in-waiting said.
Then the Princess, because she lost her temper still further, said something she should not have said.
“I wish I were the daughter of a farmer!” she declared. “Then I could wear pretty ribbons and go dancing and the boys would come courting me! As it is I have to spend all my time with funny old men and silly old women!”
Now even if her tutors and teachers were funny looking old men, even if the first lady-in-waiting was a silly old woman, the Princess should not have said so. It hurt the feelings of the first lady-in-waiting and made her angry and she ran off to the Tsar at once and complained most bitterly.
“Is this my reward after all my years of loving service to your daughter?” she asked. “It is true that I’ve grown old and thin looking after her manners and now she calls me a silly old woman! And all the learned wise men and scholars that you have gathered from the far corners of the earth—she points her finger at them and calls them funny old men!”
The fact is they were funny looking, most of them, but yet the first lady-in-waiting was right: the Princess should not have said so.
“And think of her ingratitude to yourself, O Tsar!” the first lady-in-waiting continued. “You plan to make her the heir to your throne and yet she says she wishes she were a farmer’s daughter so that she could deck herself out in ribbons and have the boys come courting her! A nice thing for a princess to say!”
The Tsar when he heard this fell into an awful rage. (The truth is whatever temper the Princess had she inherited direct from her father.)
“Wow! Wow!” he roared, just that way. “Send the Princess to me at once. I’ll soon have her singing another tune!”
So the first lady-in-waiting sent the Princess to her father and as soon as he saw her he began roaring again and saying:
“Wow! Wow! What do you mean—funny old men and silly old women?”
Now whenever the Tsar began roaring and saying, “Wow! Wow!” the Princess always stiffened, and instead of being the sweet and obedient daughter she usually was she became obstinate. Her pretty eyes would flash and her soft pretty face would harden and people would whisper: “Mercy on us, how much she looks like her father!”
“That’s just what I mean!” the Princess said. “They’re a lot of funny old men and silly old women and I’m tired of them! I want to be amused! I want to laugh!”
“Wow! Wow! Wow!” roared the Tsar. “A fine princess you are! Go straight back to the schoolroom and behave yourself!”
So the little Princess marched out of the throne room holding her head very high and looking so much like the Tsar that the first lady-in-waiting was positively frightened.
The Princess went back to the schoolroom but she did not behave herself. She was really very naughty. When the poor man who knew more than anybody in the world about the influence of the stars upon the destinies of nations came to give her a lesson, she threw his book out the window. When the superannuated old general who was teaching her military manœuvers offered her a diagram on which the enemy was represented by a series of black dots and our soldiers by a series of red dots, she took the paper and tore it in two. And worst of all when the old scholar who was teaching her Turkish—for a princess must be able to speak all languages—dropped his horn spectacles on the floor, she deliberately stepped on them and broke them.
When the Tsar heard all these things he just wow-wowed something terrible.
“Lock that young woman in her chamber!” he ordered. “Feed her on bread and water until she’s ready to apologize!”
But the Princess, far from being frightened by this treatment, calmly announced:
“I won’t eat even your old bread and water until you send me some one who will make me laugh!”
Now this frightened the Tsar because he knew how obstinate the Princess could be on occasions. (He ought to know, too, for the Princess had that streak of obstinacy direct from himself.)
“This will never do!” he said.
He hurried to the Princess’s chamber. He found her in bed with her pretty hair spread out on the pillow like a golden fan.
“My dear,” the Tsar said, “I was joking. You don’t have to eat only bread and water. You may have anything you want.”
“Thank you,” the Princess said, “but I’ll never eat another bite of anything until you send me some one who will make me laugh. I’m tired of living in this gloomy old castle with a lot of old men and old women who do nothing but instruct me and with a father who always loses his temper and says, ‘Wow! Wow!’”
“But it’s a beautiful castle!” the poor Tsar said. “And I’m sure we’re all doing our very best to educate you!”
“But I want to be amused as well as educated!” the little Princess said. And then, because she felt she was going to cry, she turned her face to the wall and wouldn’t say another word.
What was the Tsar to do? He called together his councilors and asked them how was the Princess to be made to laugh. The councilors were wise about state matters but not one of them could suggest a means of amusing the Princess. The Master of Ceremonies did indeed begin to say something about a nice young man but instantly the Tsar roared out such a wrathful, “Wow! Wow!” that the Master of Ceremonies coughed and pretended he hadn’t spoken.
Then the Tsar called together the scholars and the teachers and the first lady-in-waiting. He glared at them savagely and roared:
“Wow! Wow! A nice lot you are! I put you in charge of my daughter and not one of you has sense enough to know that the poor child needs a little amusement! I have a good mind to have you all thrown into the dungeon!”
“But, Your Majesty,” quavered one poor old scholar, “I was not employed as a buffoon but as a teacher of astrology!”
“And I,” another said, “as a teacher of languages!”
“And I as a teacher of philosophy!”
“Silence!” roared the Tsar. “Between you all you have about killed my poor child! Now I ask you: With all your learning doesn’t one of you know how to make a young girl laugh?”
Apparently not one of them did, for no one answered.
“Not even you?” the Tsar said, looking at the first lady-in-waiting.
“When you called me to Court,” the first lady-in-waiting answered, drawing herself up in a most refined manner, “you said you wished me to teach your daughter etiquette. As you said nothing about amusement, quite naturally I confined myself to the subject of behavior. If I do say it myself, no one has ever been more devoted to duty than I. I am constantly saying to her: ‘That isn’t the way a princess should act!’ In fact for years there has hardly been a moment in the day when I haven’t corrected her for something!”
“Poor child!” groaned the Tsar. “No wonder she wants a change! Oh, what fools