All the royal apartments were filled with pictures and portraits
having this peculiarity, so that at last Prince Wish began to regard
the length of his nose as his greatest perfection, and would not have
had it an inch less even to save his crown.
When he was twenty years old his mother and his people wished him to
marry. They procured for him the likenesses of many princesses, but
the one he preferred was Princess Darling, daughter of a powerful
monarch and heiress to several kingdoms. Alas! with all her beauty,
this princess had one great misfortune, a little turned-up nose,
which, every one else said, made her only the more bewitching. But
here, in the kingdom of Prince Wish, the courtiers were thrown by it
into the utmost perplexity. They were in the habit of laughing at all
small noses; but how dared they make fun of the nose of Princess
Darling? Two unfortunate gentlemen, whom Prince Wish had overheard
doing so, were ignominiously banished from the court and capital.
After this, the courtiers became alarmed, and tried to correct their
habit of speech; but they would have found themselves in constant
difficulties, had not one clever person struck out a bright idea. He
said that though it was indispensably necessary for a man to have a
great nose, women were different; and that a learned man had
discovered in a very old manuscript that the celebrated Cleopatra,
Queen of Egypt, the beauty of the ancient world, had a turned-up nose.
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