The old man was sitting on his low stool reading out of an immense book by a dim green light, but he raised his eyes as the Princess entered at the low doorway, and looked at her. She wore a blue and silver robe, but her bright hair was unbound, and fell in ripples to her waist. "Who are you, and what do you want with me?" he asked shortly. "I am the Princess Fernanda," she said, "and I wish to be your pupil. Teach me all you know." "Why do you wish for that?" said the Wizard: "you will not be better or happier for it." "I am not happy now," said the Princess sighing wearily. "Teach me and you shall find me an apt pupil, and I will pay you with gold." "I will not have your gold," said the Wizard, "but come to me every night at this hour, and in three years you shall know all I do." So every night the Princess went down to the Wizard's cave while all the court were sleeping. And the people wondered at her more and more, and said, "How much she knows! How wise she is!" When the three years had gone by the Wizard said to her, "Go! I can teach you no more now. You are as wise as I." Then the Princess thanked him and went back to her father's palace. She was very wise. She knew the languages of all animals. The fishes came from the deep at her call, and the birds from the trees. She could tell when the winds would rise, and when the sea would be still. She could have turned her enemies to stone, or given untold wealth to her friends. But for all that, when she smiled, her lips were very sad, and her eyes were always full of care. She said she was weary, and her father thought she was sick, and would have sent for the physicians, but she stopped him. "How should physicians help me, my father," she said, "seeing that I know more than they?" One night, a year after she had taken her last lesson from the Wizard, she arose and returned to his cave, and he raised his eyes and saw her standing before him as formerly. "What do you want?" he said. "I have taught you all I know." "You have taught me much," she said, falling on her knees beside him, "yet I am ignorant of one thing--teach me that also--_how to be happy_.' "Nay," said the Wizard with a very mournful smile; "I cannot teach you that, for I do not know it myself. Go and ask it of them who know and are wiser than I." [Illustration: "Then the Princess left the cave and wandered down to the sea-shore."--P. 178.] Then the Princess left the cave and wandered down to the sea-shore. All that night she spent sitting on a rock that jutted out into the sea, watching the wild sky and the moon coming and going behind the clouds. The sea dashed up around her, and the wind blew, but she did not fear them, and when the sun rose the waters were still and the wind fell. A skylark rose from the fields and flew straight up to heaven, singing as though his heart would burst with pure joy. "Surely that bird is happy," said the Princess to herself; and she called it in its own tongue.