Leander, seeing that they did not understand his signs, humbled himself still more before Furibon, and the ambassadors and their suite, thinking he was playing, laughed like to split their sides, and wanted to tweak the prince by the noise, after the fashion of their country. They did not know what he was saying, and unfortunately the interpreter had gone to await them by the king. He made every effort to make them understand that it was the king's son they were treating in this fashion. Then, looking at Furibon, thinking he must be the prince's dwarf, they took him by the arm, and twirled him round and round in spite of himself. As soon as the ambassadors saw Leander they came forward and made profound bows before him, showing in every way their admiration. One day, when ambassadors from a far country were expected, the prince and Leander were waiting in a gallery to see them go past. "The ladies are always praising you, but they behave very differently to me." "My lord," said Leander, modestly, "the respect they have for you prevents their being on such familiar terms." "It is just as well for them they do feel so," he said "for otherwise I would beat them to a jelly to teach them their duty." "You are very lucky," he said, looking at him sulkily. He knew it, and he took his revenge on young Leander. All this made them hate Furibon with a deadly hatred. He would get to know their secrets, only to tell them to the queen, who scolded them, and as a punishment cut short their rations. Furibon, however, only seemed to them the more hideous now that he appeared side by side with Leander, for he never came near the ladies except to say rude things to them: sometimes to tell them they were badly dressed, or that they were like country cousins, or-and this before everybody-that their faces were painted. And they laid siege to him to make him change his manner towards them, but for all that he hardly ever left Furibon. The ladies looked on him with much interest, but as he paid no special attention to any of them, they called him the Fair Indifferent. The tutor's son was called Leander, and every body liked him. The king having chosen this great lord to be the guide of Furibon's youth, told his Son to be very obedient, but Furibon was a naughty urchin to whom a hundred floggings made no difference. Everything he said had a happy turn and a special grace of its own, and in his person he was charming. Never was there a lad gifted with a finer nature, a quicker or keener mind, or a gentler, meeker spirit. But he had long given up all thought of this, and his whole time was occupied with the education of his only son. When he was old enough to have a tutor, the king chose for this purpose a prince who had ancient claims on the crown, and who would have maintained them like a man of spirit, if his affairs had been in a better state. She wished to give him a name that would inspire respect and fear, and after racking her brains for a long time she called him Furibon. To gain favour with this princess you had but to tell her that her son was hand some and clever. From his earliest childhood the king had noticed this, but the queen was foolishly blind to his faults, and helped to spoil him still more by her excessive indulgence, which let him plainly see the power he had over her. He was a self-willed little wretch, and a nuisance to everybody.
But the ugliness of his face and the deformity of his body were as nothing compared to his evil disposition. He was as stout as the biggest man and as short as the tiniest dwarf. ONCE upon a time there lived a king and a queen who had only one son, of whom they were passionately fond, though he was a very ill-shapen boy.
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