Then Rosamond felt very sorry, and wondered how she could win back Alfred's love. At length she took all her money, with which she had intended to buy her old nurse a warm cloak for the winter, and bought a golden _feronière_ with a purple stone in it, to wear around her head in the place of the vanished flame. Then she walked into the picture gallery with a proud step. “O Rosamond!” exclaimed her cousin, “can you believe that bit of purple glass can replace the dancing flame that shone with, such a lovely violet light over your golden hair? Pray take it off, for it seems mere tinsel to me.” But neither he nor Rosamond could unclasp the _feronère;_ and she had to go back to the jeweller, of whom she bought it, to ask him to file it off, which he tried in vain to do; and at last he said, “The pedler who sold it to me must be right. He said that, once clasped, it could only be loosened by dipping it into a hidden fountain. What fountain it is I do not know; but some old priest, who lives in a town on the mouth of a river, knows.” This was discouraging for Rosamond, there are so many towns and rivers, and so many old priests, in the world. She looked on the map, and thought it must be Paris, for that is not so very far from the sea, and there they know every thing. So, with her mother's leave, and some jewels she gave her, she went off to Paris, taking a bit of the mirror set in a gilt frame. When she arrived there, what was her surprise to find the city entirely inhabited by birds and animals! Parrots and peacocks prevailed, but ospreys and jackdaws, vultures and cormorants, crows and cockerels, and many, many other kinds of birds were also fluttering about, making a perpetual whizzing. Then there were hundreds of monkeys, all jauntily dressed, with little canes in their hands, and a great many camels and spaniels, and other animals, wild and tame, in neat linen blouses. What bewildered her still more, was to see that they were all skating about on the thinnest possible ice. Why it did not crack, to let them all through, she could not imagine. At first she was afraid even to set her foot upon it, but soon found herself skating merrily about, enjoying it as much as any of them. Another queer thing was, that, reflected in the ice, all these birds and animals appeared to be men and women; and she saw that in her own reflection she was a nice little girl. She wondered how she looked in her mirror, and took it out to see. “What kind of an animal am I?” she exclaimed. “O, I see--an ibex. What neat little horns, and how bright my eyes are! What would Alfred say if he knew I was an ibex?”