'Do not forget your friendly custom, but tell me what fortune awaits Rosette.' Such was the name which had been given to the little princess. The fairies replied that they had left their magic books at home, but would come and see her some other time. 'Ah,' said the queen, 'that bodes ill. You are anxious not to distress me by an unhappy prophecy. But tell me all, I implore you, and hide nothing from me.' The fairies did their utmost to excuse themselves. But the queen became more and more eager to learn everything, and at last the chief of them made a declaration. 'We fear, Madam,' she said, 'that Rosette will bring disaster on her brothers, and that in some fashion she will be the cause of their death. This much and no more can we foretell of the pretty child, and we are grieved that we should have no better news to give you.' Then the fairies went away, and the queen was left grieving. So deep was her grief that the king saw it in her face, and asked what ailed her. She had gone too near the fire, she told him, and had burnt all the flax that was on her distaff. 'Is that all?' said the king, and going up to his storeroom he brought her more flax than she could have spun in a hundred years. But the queen continued sad, and again the king asked what ailed her. She declared that in walking by the river she had let her green satin slipper fall into the water. 'Is that all?' said the king, and summoning all the shoemakers in the kingdom he brought her ten thousand green satin slippers. Still she grieved, and once more he asked what ailed her. She told him that in eating with rather too vigorous an appetite she had swallowed her wedding-ring, which had been on her finger. The king knew at once that she was not telling the truth, for he had put away this ring himself. 'My dear wife,' he said, 'you lie; I put away your ring in my purse--here it is!' She was not a little confused at being caught telling a lie (for there is nothing in the world so ugly), and she saw that the king was displeased. She told him, therefore, what the fairies had prophesied of little Rosette, and implored him to say if he could think of any good remedy. The king was plunged in the deepest melancholy, so much so that he remarked on one occasion to the queen: 'I see no other means of saving our two sons but to bring about the death of our little child while she is still in long clothes.' But the queen exclaimed that she would rather suffer death herself. She would never consent, she declared, to such a cruel course, and he must think of something else. The royal pair were at their wits' end when the queen was told that in a forest near the city there lived an aged hermit. His habitation was a hollow tree, and folks were wont to seek his advice upon all manner of things. 'I too must go there,' said the queen; 'the fairies have warned me of the evil, but they have forgotten to tell me of the remedy.'