The very next moment the showman, who now had to bring the lady on the scene, reached down his hand without looking, and seizing the princess in lieu of the wooden doll, brought her upon the stage. "Cease your broils," shouted the pigmy princess in her tiny voice. "Is it thus that noble knights waste their precious blood for the love of a woman? Is not the love of a woman at her own disposal--to be granted to the man she pleases? Will she necessarily love the victor, or will he have the arrogance to think that he can conquer her heart as he could conquer a foe? Cease, madmen, and spare your blood to grace the battlefield, or to defend the rights of woman. Ye are not too plentiful, my noble knights. The realm has much need of ye. "Wrongs enough ye have to redress. What say ye to the grievous wrong they are trying to do the Princess Bertha, by pushing her aside, who is the firstborn, because they deem her too small to take her own part? But ye noble knights, who love justice, will assert her claim to the crown throughout the kingdom, and defeat the insolent champions hired by her envious sisters, who would defraud their own royal sovereign. "Proclaim throughout the land that ye will have none other to rule over you but the rightful heiress--the Princess Bertha." After the princess's harangue, the showman, who had long dropped the other puppets in amazement, believing that none other than a fairy trod his stage, stood with his eyes and mouth wide open, knowing not what to do. The spectators were in ecstasies at so beautiful and so natural-looking a puppet, while the crowd increased ten-fold. The serving man in whose pocket Bertha had hidden herself had never seen the princess, for he was not one of the servants of the palace; besides which, the diminutive princess was usually hidden from the vulgar gaze, the family being rather ashamed of her than otherwise; but one among the crowd, who happened to have seen the princess once or twice on rare occasions at the palace, cried out, "By my troth, that is the Princess Bertha herself, and none other! How comes it that she is made a puppet of in this man's vile show? Citizens, I arrest this man for high treason!" The little princess, seeing the showman in danger, said to the gentleman, "No, worthy sir; do this man no harm, seeing I came here by my own free will, without his knowledge, for the purpose of making the country acquainted with its future sovereign." The gentleman pushed his way through the crowd, and was about to lay his hand on the princess to bring her back to the palace, when a monkey near at hand, also the property of the showman, and who happened at that moment to be loose, seized the diminutive princess in his arms, and clambering up the side of a house by the water spout, was soon out of sight.