A Tale Without a Name Read Online Free

pity…”
    Why a pity? What did the old woman mean?
    And with this thought he finally fell asleep.
    The room was flooded with sunlight when he woke up in the morning. He got up and ran to the couch, where Little Irene was still lying, lost in reverie, although thoroughly awake.
    “I was waiting for you,” she said. “Come, let us go outside. It is so very beautiful outside!”
    In her little kitchen garden, Mistress Wise was hanging the washed clothes out to dry, while her daughter, sitting on a little stool, was milking the cow.
    They both smiled when they saw the two siblings.
    “Knowledge, my good girl, give the children to drink some of the milk you have just milked, before it gets cold,” said the old woman. “Do sit you down, my young lord and lady. You will have fine weather for your journey.”
    The Prince remembered the words she had said to him the previous night.
    “Old mother,” he said, “why do you think it a pity that I should go away?”
    But the old woman had work to do in the house.
    “I have no time just now, my young lord,” she said. “Knowledge will answer your question. For she knows all such matters even better than I do myself.”
    And she went into her back kitchen to prepare the meal.
    “Well then, you tell me, Knowledge,” said again the Prince, “why does your mother say that it is a pity that I should be going away?”
    The young girl hesitated awhile. Then she said cautiously:
    “Because the King’s son ought not to leave his land.”
    The Prince was startled.
    “How can you tell who I am?” he asked.
    “My mother can tell, she knows you. Once upon a while we too lived in the palace. But many years have gone by since then.”
    “And why did you go away?”
    “Because other maids-in-waiting took my mother’s place, and we could no longer stay. We left the palace, and stayed in a little house in the capital, at the foot of the mountain. But the new maids-in-waiting drove us away from there too, and so we left and went farther away, and farther still, and in the end we came here, to the edge of the kingdom, where no man sees us, no man concerns himself with us. And we live all by ourselves, inthe solitude of the countryside, which used to be dense with green things and teeming with houses, and yet is now only barren stones and desolation.”
    “We too, we should come here!” said Little Irene. “It is so very peaceful and beautiful!”
    “This is not a choice that is given to you,” said Knowledge.
    “Why not?” asked the Prince.
    “Because you have to stay among your people.”
    “Oh, but I cannot!” said the Prince. “You cannot know what my people are like, the palace, this entire place…”
    “Then set your people right again,” replied the girl.
    “I? How? I am only a child, I know nothing, I have learnt nothing, I
am
nothing.”
    The maiden considered him pensively.
    “Why did you wish to leave?” she asked.
    “Because I was in too much pain amidst the corruption and the dissolution of the palace.”
    “Well, then, that shows that you have something inside you worth more than all the things you have not learnt.”
    “What
do
I have?”
    “You have an honourable soul, and dignity.”
    The Prince considered this for a while. Then he asked:
    “And what good are these things to me?”
    “They are good to you because you can use them to find in you the strength and the will to rebuild your nation.”
    “But how? How?!”
    “How would I know to tell you?… Yet, if I were you, I would go back, and travel everywhere in the realm. Donot remain locked up in the palace, go and talk with your people instead, come to know them, live by their side; listen to what the birds and the trees and the flowers have to say, the insects. If you only knew how many truths one may learn this way, how many examples one may find to show one the way!…”
    The Prince paused thoughtfully for a very long time.
    Then he said:
    “I
shall
go back, Knowledge, and I shall travel