Stranica 151 [151]
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 hand¬
some, 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 peo¬
ple, the interest of the state, nothing could melt this stony
heart. Twenty preachers had wasted their eloquence
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