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The Prince Who Would Seek Immortality |
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Once upon a time, in the very middle of the middle of a large
kingdom, there was a town, and in the town a palace, and in the
palace a king. This king had one son whom his father thought was
wiser and cleverer than any son ever was before, and indeed his
father had spared no pains to make him so. He had been very
careful in choosing his tutors and governors when he was a boy,
and when he became a youth he sent him to travel, so that he might
see the ways of other people, and find that they were often as good
as his own.
It was now a year since the prince had returned home, for his father
felt that it was time that his son should learn how to rule the
kingdom which would one day be his. But during his long absence
the prince seemed to have changed his character altogether. From
being a merry and light-hearted boy, he had grown into a gloomy
and thoughtful man. The king knew of nothing that could have
produced such an alteration. He vexed himself about it from
morning till night, till at length an explanation occurred to him--the
young man was in love!
Now the prince never talked about his feelings--for the matter of
that he scarcely talked at all; and the father knew that if he was to
come to the bottom of the prince's dismal face, he would have to
begin. So one day, after dinner, he took his son by the arm and led
him into another room, hung entirely with the pictures of beautiful
maidens, each one more lovely than the other.
'My dear boy,' he said, 'you are very sad; perhaps after all your
wanderings it is dull for you here all alone with me. It would be
much better if you would marry, and I have collected here the
portraits of the most beautiful women in the world of a rank equal
to your own. Choose which among them you would like for a wife,
and I will send an embassy to her father to ask for her hand.'
'Alas! your Majesty,' answered the prince, 'it is not love or marriage
that makes me so gloomy; but the thought, which haunts me day
and night, that all men, even kings, must die. Never shall I be
happy again till I have found a kingdom where death is unknown.
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Fairytales 
