But Prigio, very quietly asking for the head of the Firedrake, said he'd pour the magic water on that, and bring the Firedrake back to life again, unless His Majesty behaved rightly. This threat properly frightened King Grognio, and he apologized. Then me King shook hands with Prigio in public, and thanked him, and said he was proud of him. As to Lady Rosalind, the old gentleman quite fell in love with her, and he sent at once to the Chaplain Royal to get into his surplice, and marry all the young people off at once, without waiting for wedding cakes and milliners and all the rest of it.
Now, just as they were forming a procession to march into church, who should appear but the Queen* Her Majesty had been travelling by post all the time, and, luckily, had heard of none of the doings since Prigio, Benson, and the King left Gluckstein. I say luckily because if she had heard of them, she would not have believed a word of them. But when she saw Alphonso and Enrico, she was much pleased, and said:
"Naughty boys! Where have you been hiding? The King had some absurd story about your having been killed by a fabulous monster. Bah! don't tell me. I always said you would come back after a little trip-didn't I, Prigio?"
"Certainly, madam," said Prigio, "and I said so too.
Didn't I say so?" And all the courtiers cried: "Yes, you did"; but some added, to themselves, "He always says, 'Didn't 1 say so?' "
Then the Queen was introduced to Lady Rosalind, and she said it was "rather a short engagement, but she supposed young people understood their own affairs best." And they do! So the three pairs were married, with the utmost rejoicings; and Her Majesty never, her whole life long, could be got to believe that anything unusual had occurred.
The honeymoon of Prince Prigio and the Crown Princess Rosalind was passed at me castle, where the Prince had been deserted by the Court. But now it was delightfully fitted up; and Master Frank marched about the house with his tail in the air, as if the place belonged to him.
Now, on the second day of their honeymoon, the Prince and Princess were sitting in the garden together, and the Prince said: "Are you quite happy, my dear?" and Rosalind said: "Yes; quite."
But the Prince did not tike the tone of her voice, and he said: "No, there's something; do tell me what it is."
"Well," said Rosalind, putting her head on his shoulder, and speaking very low, "1 want everybody to love you as much as I do. No, not quite so very much-but I want them to like you. Now they can't, because they are afraid of you; for you are so awfully clever. Now, couldn't you take the wishing cap, and wish to be no cleverer than other people? Then everybody would like you!"
The Prince thought a minute, then he said: "Your will is law, my dear; anything to please you. Just wait a minute!"
Then he ran upstairs, for the last time, to the fairy garret, and he put on the wishing cap.
"No," thought he to himself, "I won't wish that. Every man has one secret from his wife, and this shall be mine."
Then he said aloud: "I WISH TO SEEM NO CLEVERER THAN OTHER PEOPLE."
Then he ran downstairs again, and the Princess noticed a great difference in him (though of course there was really none at alt), and so did everyone. For the Prince remained as clever as ever he had been; but, as nobody observed it, he became the most popular prince, and finally the best beloved king who had ever sat on the throne of Pantouflia.
But occasionally Rosalind would say: "I do believe, my dear, that you are really as clever as^-ever!"
And he was!
Gorgon
The gorgons appear m the Greek myths as terrifying monsters. The very word is from the Greek gorgos, meaning "terrifying." In some of the myths there are three gorgons, but the one that is usually the only one dealt with is the one named Medusa.
The most frightening aspect of the gorgon is Us hair. which is pictured as consisting of living snakes. The notion of snakes coiling and uncoiling on the head of a •woman, usually pictured as beautiful in a ghastly way, is indeed unnerving, but it is an easy thing to imagine. You have only to see a sea anemone or an octopus and you will find a creature that seems to have living snakes as part of itself. In fact, I have always thought the gorgons and other snake-haired monsters to be inspired by the octopus.
The gorgon is pictured as so terrifying thai people who unwittingly glance at the gorgon face turn into stone.
But, then, it is an instinct in some young animals to freeze when danger looms, for many predators will not see their prey if it does not move. Some animals will even feign death, if frightened, since some predators will not touch dead bodies. And we freeze, too, temporarily, when frightened, and if is an easy leap from that to suppose that if the fright were great and intense enough, we would freeze permanently.
The gorgon may also symbolize the nightmare. A very common nightmare is to have to catch someone or something, or to be pursued, and despite all possible efforts to be unable to move. I have always thought this to be a natural reaction to entanglement in the bedclothes. The inability to move, in reality, is shifted to the dream, which becomes a nightmare. So the nightmare-freezing becomes the Gorgon-freezing. -But see what the author in the following story does with the legend.
The Gorgon
by Tanith Lee
The small island, which lay off the larger island of Daphaeu, obviously contained a secret of some son, and day by day, and particularly night by night, began to exert an influence on me, so that I must find it out.
Daphaeu itself (or more correctly herself, for she was a female country, voluptuous and cruel by turns in the true antique fashion of the Goddess) was hardly enormous. A couple of roads, a tangle of sheep tracks, a precarious, escalating village, rocks and hillsides thatched by blistered grass.
All of which overhung an extraordinary sea, unlike any sea which I have encountered elsewhere in Greece. Water which might be mistaken for blueness from a distance, but which, from the harbour, or the multitude of caves and coves that undermined the island, revealed itself a clear and succulent green, like milky limes, or the bottle glass of certain spirits.
On my first morning, having come on to the natural' terrace, the only recommendation of the hovel-like accommodation, to look over this strange green ocean, I saw the smaller island, lying like a tittle boat of land moored just wide of Daphaeu's three hills. The day was clear, the water frilled with white where it hit the fangs in the interstices below the terrace. About the smaller island, barely a ruffle showed. It seemed to glide up from the sea, smooth as a mirror. The little island was verdant, also. Unlike Daphaeu's limited stands of stone-pine, cypress and cedar, the smaller sister was clouded by a still, lambent haze of foliage, that looked to be woods.
Visions of groves, springs, a ruined temple, a statue of Pan playing the panpipes forever in some glade-where only yesterday, it might seem, a thin column of aromatic smoke had gone up-these images were enough fancifully to draw me into inquiries about how the small island might be reached.
And when my inquiries met first with a polite bevy of excuses, next with a refusal, lastly with a blank wall of silence, as if whomever I mentioned the little island to had gone temporarily deaf or mad, 1 became, of course determined to get to it, to find out what odd superstitious thing kept these people away- Naturally, the Daphaeui were not friendly to me at any time, beyond the false friendship one anticipates extended to a man of another nationality and clime, who can be relied on to pay his bills, perhaps allow himself to be overcharged, even made a downright monkey of in order to preserve goodwill. In the normal run of things, I could have had anything I wanted, in exchange for a pack of local lies, a broad loca! smile, and a broader local price. That I could not get to the tittle island puzzled me. I tried money, and I tried barter. I even, in a reckless moment, probably knowing 1 would not succeed, offered Pitos, one of the younger fishermen, the gold and onyx ring he coveted. My sister had made it for me, the faithful copy of an intaglio belonging to the house of Borgia, no less. Generally, Pitos could not pass the time of day with me without mentioning the ring, adding something in the nature of: "If ever you want a great service, any great service, I will do it for that ring." I half believe he would have stolen or murdered for it, certainly shared the bed with me. But he would not, apparently, even for the Borgia ring, take me to the little island.