Finally, he wanted something that he really could not have.  This time it was a most beautiful young girl, named Zelia; the prince saw her, and loved her so much that he wanted at once to make her his queen.  To his great astonishment, she refused.

“Am I not pleasing to you?” asked the prince in surprise.

“You are very handsome, very charming, prince,” said Zelia; “but you are not like the good king, your father; I fear you would make me very miserable if I were your queen.”

In a great rage, Prince Cherry ordered the young girl to be put in prison; and the key of her dungeon he kept.  He told one of his friends, a wicked man who flattered him for his own purposes, about the thing, and asked his advice.

“Are you not king?” said the bad friend.  “May you not do as you will?  Keep the girl in a dungeon till she does as you command, and if she will not, sell her as a slave.”

“But would it not be a disgrace for me to harm an innocent creature?” said the prince.

“It would be a disgrace to you to have it said that one of your subjects dared disobey you!” said the courtier.

He had cleverly touched the prince’s worst trait, his pride.  Prince Cherry went at once to Zelia’s dungeon, prepared to do this cruel thing.

Zelia was gone.  No one had the key save the prince himself; yet she was gone.  The only person who could have dared to help her, thought the prince, was his old tutor, Suliman, the only man left who ever rebuked him for anything.  In fury, he ordered Suliman to be put in fetters and brought before him.

As his servants left him, to carry out the wicked order, there was a clash, as of thunder, in the room, and then a blinding light.  Fairy Candide stood before him.  Her beautiful face was stern, and her silver voice rang like a trumpet, as she said, “Wicked and selfish prince, you have become baser than the beasts you hunt; you are furious as a lion, revengeful as a serpent, greedy as a wolf, and brutal as a bull; take, therefore, the shape of those beasts whom you resemble!”

With horror, the prince felt himself being transformed into a monster.  He tried to rush upon the fairy and kill her, but she had vanished with her words.  As he stood, her voice came from the air, saying, sadly, “Learn to conquer your pride by being in submission to your own subjects.”  At the same moment, Prince Cherry felt himself being transported to a distant forest, where he was set down by a clear stream.  In the water he saw his own terrible image; he had the head of a lion, with bull’s horns, the feet of a wolf, and a tail like a serpent.  And as he gazed in horror, the fairy’s voice whispered, “Your soul has become more ugly than your shape is; you yourself have deformed it.”

The poor beast rushed away from the sound of her words, but in a moment he stumbled into a trap, set by bear-catchers.  When the trappers found him they were delighted to have caught a curiosity, and they immediately dragged him to the palace courtyard.  There he heard the whole court buzzing with gossip.  Prince Cherry had been struck by lightning and killed, was the news, and the five favourite courtiers had struggled to make themselves rulers, but the people had refused them, and offered the crown to Suliman, the good old tutor.