You may well believe that the people came in crowds, for nearly every one wished to be king or queen, as the case might be. This music had a very singular effect upon most of those who did not succeed in singing it. They nearly all went crazy. The first few notes were easy, and they were so beautiful, that it was enough to make any one crazy to think that they could not sing the rest of it,--not to mention missing the crown. The Prime Minister had, on this account, a great asylum built, to which the disappointed candidates were immediately conveyed, and the house was very soon filled. Indeed, it was often necessary to build extensions to the main building, and it was not long before this was the largest edifice in the country. It is true, that although every one failed to sing the music, they did not all go crazy; but they were taken to the asylum the same as the rest, and if they were not crazy when they got there, they soon became so, and thus it amounted to pretty much the same thing in the end. Well, the judges sat in their chairs until they died at a good old age, and they were succeeded by others just as learned. Latterly there were not so many applications as there used to be, but still, every few days, some one went out to the asylum. Years passed, and the offices of the judges became sinecures; but they had to sit there all the same, just as if they expected to be busy; and they might have been seen, whenever anybody chose to step in during the day, sitting there with their chins on their breasts, fast asleep. The Prime Minister, and after him his son, ruled the country very well, and people began to feel as if they didn't care if they never had a king or a queen to govern them. As a rule, they all felt very comfortable without anything of the kind. Now it so happened that about this time a certain young Prince, accompanied by an old gentleman (to take care of him), was travelling in this great kingdom. His father's dominion was very many miles away; but the Prince had been journeying in this direction for quite a long time, taking things easily, and seeing everything that was to be seen. His mother had died when he was quite young, and his father had lately married the daughter of a gnome, probably because their estates joined,--his stretching for many miles over the surface of the earth, while hers lay immediately beneath them. The Prince did not like his gnome step-mother (who was, you know, one of those large underground fairies, who are more like human beings than any others), and when a little gnome-baby was born, he could stand it no longer, and so obtained permission of his father to travel for the good of his body and mind. So he had been going from country to country until he reached the capital city of the great kingdom. [Illustration]