So the King , without losing a moment , set his foot upon it heavily . With one terrific yell the cat sprang up and instantly changed into a tall man , who , fixing his angry eyes upon the King , said : `` You shall marry the Princess because you have been able to break the enchantment , but I will have my revenge . You shall have a son , who will never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long , and if you ever tell anyone what I have just said to you , you shall vanish away instantly , and no one shall ever see you or hear of you again . '' Though the King was horribly afraid of the enchanter , he could not help laughing at this threat . `` If my son has such a long nose as that , '' he said to himself , `` he must always see it or feel it ; at least , if he is not blind or without hands . '' But , as the enchanter had vanished , he did not waste any more time in thinking , but went to seek the Princess , who very soon consented to marry him . But after all , they had not been married very long when the King died , and the Queen had nothing left to care for but her little son , who was called Hyacinth . The little Prince had large blue eyes , the prettiest eyes in the world , and a sweet little mouth , but , alas ! his nose was so enormous that it covered half his face . The Queen was inconsolable when she saw this great nose , but her ladies assured her that it was not really as large as it looked ; that it was a Roman nose , and you had only to open any history to see that every hero has a large nose . The Queen , who was devoted to her baby , was pleased with what they told her , and when she looked at Hyacinth again , his nose certainly did not seem to her quite so large . The Prince was brought up with great care ; and , as soon as he could speak , they told him all sorts of dreadful stories about people who had short noses . No one was allowed to come near him whose nose did not more or less resemble his own , and the courtiers , to get into favor with the Queen , took to pulling their babies ' noses several times every day to make them grow long . But , do what they would , they were nothing by comparison with the Prince 's . When he grew sensible he learned history ; and whenever any great prince or beautiful princess was spoken of , his teachers took care to tell him that they had long noses . His room was hung with pictures , all of people with very large noses ; and the Prince grew up so convinced that a long nose was a great beauty , that he would not on any account have had his own a single inch shorter ! When his twentieth birthday was passed the Queen thought it was time that he should be married , so she commanded that the portraits of several princesses should be brought for him to see , and among the others was a picture of the Dear Little Princess ! Now , she was the daughter of a great king , and would some day possess several kingdoms herself ; but Prince Hyacinth had not a thought to spare for anything of that sort , he was so much struck with her beauty . The Princess , whom he thought quite charming , had , however , a little saucy nose , which , in her face , was the prettiest thing possible , but it was a cause of great embarrassment to the courtiers , who had got into such a habit of laughing at little noses that they sometimes found themselves laughing at hers before they had time to think ; but this did not do at all before the Prince , who quite failed to see the joke , and actually banished two of his courtiers who had dared to mention disrespectfully the Dear Little Princess 's tiny nose ! The others , taking warning from this , learned to think twice before they spoke , and one even went so far as to tell the Prince that , though it was quite true that no man could be worth anything unless he had a long nose , still , a woman 's beauty was a different thing ; and he knew a learned man who understood Greek and had read in some old manuscripts that the beautiful Cleopatra herself had a `` tip-tilted '' nose !
The Prince made him a splendid present as a reward for this good news , and at once sent ambassadors to ask the Dear Little XXXXX in marriage .
Cleopatra Hyacinth King Prince Princess Roman day left princesses twentieth