"Pardon me, Madam!" replied the fair Constancia. "I am the bearer of the Girdle of Friendship, which I requested her to give me in your name." "Have you not put it on?" asked the Queen. "It is too fine for a poor shepherdess like me," replied Constancia. "No, no," said the Queen, "I give it you for your trouble; do not omit to wear it: but, tell me, what did you see on your road?" "I saw," she replied, "some elephants, who were so intelligent, and displayed so much ingenuity, that there is not a country in the world where they would not excite admiration. It seems that forest is their kingdom, and that there are in it some that rule the rest." The Queen was greatly mortified, and did not say all she thought, but she was still in hopes that nothing on earth would prevent the girdle from burning the Princess. "Though the elephants have spared thee," she muttered to herself, "the girdle will avenge me! Thou shalt see, wretch, the friendship I bear thee, and the reward due to thee for having fascinated my son."
Constancia had retired to her little chamber, where she wept the absence of her dear Prince. She dared not write to him, for the Queen had spies abroad who stopped the couriers, and she had already, by these means, intercepted her son's letters. "Alas! Constancio," said she, "you will shortly receive sad tidings of me. You ought not to have gone and abandoned me to the fury of your mother!—you might have protected me, or you would have received my last sigh in lieu of my being delivered over to her tyrannical power, and bereft of every consolation!" She went to her work in the garden at day-break as usual; she found in it still a thousand venomous reptiles, from which, however, her ring preserved her. She had put on the blue velvet girdle, and when the Queen saw her gathering flowers as calmly as if she had only a thread round her waist; nothing had ever equalled her vexation. "What mysterious power interests itself for this shepherdess!" cried she; "she bewitches my son by her beauty, and restores him to health by the application of innocent simples. Snakes and asps crawl at her feet without stinging her. The wild elephants become gentle and kind at her sight. The fairy-girdle, which should have reduced her to ashes, serves but to adorn her. I must have recourse, then, to more certain remedies."
