whose soul was a red mouse: we have in this place naught to do.
Besides, the Foolish Prince had put aside such commerce when the Fairy
came to guide him; so he, at least, could not in equity have grudged
the same privilege to his historian.

"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his
father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders--as
here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a
brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,--that many folk had
presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First
came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes,
uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's
gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon
their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced
backward; and now a corporal with an empty sleeve, who whistled as he
went.

"A butterfly guided every man of them along the highway. 'For the Lord
of the Fields is a whimsical person,' said the Fairy,' and such is his
very old enactment concerning the passage even of his cowpath; but
princes each in his day and in his way may trample this domain as
prompt their will and skill.'

"'That now is excellent hearing,' said the Foolish Prince; and he
strutted.

"'Look you,' said the Fairy, 'a man does not often stumble and break
his shins in the highway, but rather in the byway.'....

"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping on his