my performances. I might as well shut my incantations up, and allow things to take their natural course.
“There were my two young goddaughters, King Savio’s wife and Duke Padella’s wife: I gave them each a present, which was to render them charming in the eyes of their husbands, and secure the affection of those gentlemen as long as they lived. What good did my Rose and my Ring do these two women? None on earth. From having all their whims indulged by their husbands, they became capricious, lazy, ill-humored, absurdly vain, and leered and languished, and fancied themselves irresistibly beautiful, when they were really quite old and hideous, the ridiculous creatures! They used actually to patronize me when I went to pay them a visit;—me, the Fairy Blackstick, who knows all the wisdom of the necromancers, and who could have turned them into baboons, and all their diamonds into strings of onions, by a single wave of my rod!” So she locked up her books in her cupboard, declined further magical performances, and scarcely used her wand at all except as a cane to walk about.
So when Duke Padella’s lady had a little son (the Duke was at that time only one of the principal noblemen in Crim Tartary), Blackstick, although invited to the christening, would not so much as attend; but merely sent her compliments and a silver papboat for the baby which was really not worth a couple of guineas. About the same time the Queen of Paflagonia presented his Majesty with a son and heir; and guns were fired, the capital illuminated, and no end of feasts ordained to celebrate the young prince’s birth. It was thought the Fairy, who was asked to be his godmother, would at least have presented him with an invisible jacket, a flying horse, a Fortunatus’s purse, or some other valuable token of her favor; but instead Blackstick went up to the cradle of the child Giglio, when everybody was admiring him and complimenting his royal papa and mamma, and said, “My poor child, the best thing I can send you is a little misfortune”; and this was all she would utter, to the disgust of Giglio’s parents, who died very soon after; when Giglio’s uncle took the throne, as we read in Chapter I.
In like manner, when Cavolfiore, King of Crim Tartary, had a christening of his only child, Rosalba, the Fairy Blackstick, who had been invited, was not more gracious than in Prince Giglio’s case. Whilst everybody was expatiating over the beauty of the darling child, and
