Page 151 [151]
OCR
7 Thee Lr rom: 009 Af Peale Aza pons gf NCE upon a time there lived a king who was called the King of the Vermilion Towers. He had but one son, whom he loved as the apple of his eye, and who was the only hope of a royal line about to become extinct. The old king’s whole ambition was to marry this illustrious prince—to find him a princess at once handsome, noble, young, and rich. He could think of nothing but this wished-for marriage. Unhappily, among all the virtues in which the heir to a crown 1s never lacking, Carlino, for that was the young prince’s name, had the trifling fault of being shyer than a deer. He shook his head and fled to the woods at the mere sound of a woman’s name, to the great grief of his father, who was in despair at seeing his family about to die out. But his grief was in vain; nothing touched the heart of Carlino. The tears of a father, the prayers of a whole people, the interest of the state, nothing could melt this stony heart. Twenty preachers had wasted their eloquence 115
