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Once upon a time a lovely princess was walking by herself in the royal gardens. She paused for a moment by a large lilly pond and gazing down she beheld a frog. The frog gazed at her in return. The princess was well worth gazing at for no where else in the lands was there a princess as fair as she. As the princess had seen frogs before she was not dumbstruck with awe, unlike the frog, especially since she was then engaged to marry a wealthy duke who, for all his wealth and connections, might just as well be a frog as he resembled an ape of large girth and had a mind to match.

As the princess reflected on this, something about the frog drew her notice. She began thinking of the tales about frogs and remembering one in particular that she had often heard she bent down and lightly kissed the frog.

A few moments later the royal court was placed into an uproar by the princess rushing in and exclaiming in a loud voice, “I’ve found the one that I love and I want to marry!” The King stood up in surprise and quickly asked “Who?”.

“It is he!” The princess said motioning with her hand in the general direction of the left. Three knights who happened to be standing in the direction of where her hand pointed to immediately fainted.

“Them?” the King asked puzzled. “No of course not!” the princess replied and two young lords also standing in that direction fainted. The princess began to get impatient with the wondering looks of all the court, “Don’t you see?” she said.

“How can they see when you’re not even pointing in my direction?” a strange voice that seemed to come out of no where said. The princess hastily turned to her right.

“Would you mind explaining clearly what is going on?” the King asked.

“Well,” the princess said her eyes gleaming with either love or amusement, “I was walking by the lilly frog, I mean lilly pond, when I saw this frog!” She motioned in the direction where the voice had been heard to come from.

“You want to marry a frog?” The queen said in voice that made one uncertain as to whether or not it was a question or a horrified exclamation.

The princess, who decided to treat it as a question, replied, “Of course not. Don’t you remember the fairy tale where the princess kisses the frog and he turns into a handsome prince?”

This seemed to clarify matters for most of them but since the puzzled looks were not removed from all of the faces the princess spoke again, “Only this time, it’s an invisible handsome prince!”

With this explanation the matter was entirely settled for everyone, except for three or four of the scholars and philosophers who debated for three days on whether or not anybody who was invisible could be called “handsome”.

So it was that the princess married the invisible handsome prince and seemed quite happy for several years, especially since the Duke of Wide Girth moved away shortly after. Several years after her marriage a handsome prince came to the land and seemed very disappointed that lovely princess was already married. However, only a week after the handsome prince arrived at the castle, a terrible(debatable) tragedy befell the princess. Her husband, the invisible handsome frog prince, died of a heart attack. This caused great sorrow in the land as might be expected. But after a month of mourning all hearts were gladdened to hear of the beautiful princess’s engagement to the visiting handsome prince. Since he could be seen he was quite preferable to an invisible prince for no one in the kingdom had ever been quite sure of the previous prince’s location and had lived in the fear of his walking up to them and their not bowing properly.

A short while later there was a grand wedding at which all attended who could. The princess seemed even more pleased with her second marriage than she had at her first and as the years passed she became the happy mother of many children. Once as she sat pleasantly surrounded be her family her husband asked her about the invisible handsome frog prince. With a smile she told him about her engagement with the Duke of Wide Girth and about that day on by the lilly pond. And then with a laugh she whispered into his ear a few sentences which made the handsome prince throw back his head and roar with laughter. I’m not quite sure what passed between them that was so funny for the only word I could catch was “ventriloquism”

But they all lived happily ever after.

MORAL: Never underestimate the value of a great imagination and skill at ventriloquism.