As the Queen was chatting with the Lord Chancellor of the Enchanted Islands, she happened to notice--for like a good hostess she had been keeping an eye to the comfort of her guests--that nobody on the right-hand side of the hall had been served with strawberry-tart. Almost at the same moment, the chief cook, looking rather pale and worried, bustled through the throng and whispered in her ear, "Your Majesty, the strawberry-tart has given out!" The Queen turned pale. At length she managed to ask in a weak voice, "Have you plenty of other pastries?" "Yes, Your Majesty," replied the cook. "Then let them be served at once." The cook withdrew, and the Queen, though somewhat shaken, took up the conversation again. Ten minutes passed, and she was beginning to forget her start, when a voice, rising clear and rasping over the hubbub of the hall, said suddenly, "Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?" Everybody turned toward the speaker, an elderly fairy from the Kingdom of the Black Mountains, named Malvolia. She stood up in her place, her arms akimbo, glowering at her plate, on which an attendant had just deposited a small chocolate eclair. "Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?" she repeated. The Queen rose. "I am very sorry, Madam Malvolia," said she in her sweetest voice, "but the strawberry-tart has given out." "Hoity-toity," answered Malvolia rudely; "you mean that you only baked enough for your own personal friends." At this several guests cried, "Sh! Sh!" and the King began to look worried. "We will send for some at once," announced His Majesty. "Oh yes,--strawberry-tart baked by the Queen's own hands for her own dear friends," said Malvolia sneeringly; "but for me, a fairy of age and distinction, an ordinary, low baker's eclair. The Kingdom of the Black Mountains has been deliberately insulted in my person!" "No, no, no, no!" cried the King and the Queen. "We assure you, madam, that it was a simple mischance." "Pish and tush!" replied Malvolia, who, like a great many people, secretly enjoyed feeling herself aggrieved. "I consider the affair an affront, a deliberate affront. And you shall pay dear for this humiliation," she screamed, quickly losing control of her temper. "Every time the Prince sneezes something shall change until--" At this very moment, alas, a northeast wind blew gustily through the open windows of the hall, shaking the tapestries from the walls, and carrying away the last of Malvolia's sentence. The angry fairy turned herself into a great black raven and flew, cawing hoarsely, over the heads of the banqueters and out of the window with the wind. A baby's cry was heard, and the King and the Queen rushed panic-stricken to where their little son lay in his cradle on a raised platform at the head of the hall. The little Prince's fat, pink face was twisted into dreadful lines; he opened his mouth wide several times and half closed it again; then, opening it wider than ever, he sneezed a terrible sneeze.