When he attained his sixteenth birthday, he was declared to be of age, for princes mature earlier than other men.  Soon afterwards he was crowned, not duke, but king, and it was remarked that he held his lace handkerchief oftener than ever to his mouth.

The state prospered under his government; for his mother and councillors knew how to choose men who understood their work and did it well.  These men acted as privy council to the king.  One of them was put in charge of the army, a second of the Executive, a third of the customs and taxes, a fourth of the schools, a fifth exercised the king’s right of pardon, a sixth, who bore the title the Chancellor of the Council, was obliged to do the king’s thinking.  To this experienced man was also confided the responsibility of choosing a wife for the young king.  He acquitted himself wonderfully well of this duty, for the princess whom Wendelin XVI. espoused on his twentieth birthday, was the daughter of a powerful king, and so beautiful that it seemed as if the good God must have made a new mould in which to form her.  No more regular features were to be seen in any collection of wax figures; the princess also possessed the art of keeping her face perfectly unmoved.  If anything comic occurred, she smiled slightly, and where others would have wept, and thus distorted their features, she only let her eyelids fall.  She was moreover very virtuous and, though but seventeen, was already called “learned.”  She never said anything silly, and also, no doubt out of modesty, refrained from expressing her wise thoughts.  Wendelin approved of her silence, for he did not like to talk; but his mother resented it.  She would have liked to pour her heart out to her daughter-in-law, and to make her son’s wife her friend and confidante.  But such a relationship was impossible; for, when she tried to share with her daughter the emotions which crowded upon her, they rolled off the queen like water off the breast of a swan.

The people adored the royal pair.  They were both so beautiful, and looked so noble and princely as they leaned back in the corners of their gilt coach during their drives and gazed into vacancy, as if their interests were above those of ordinary mortals.

Years passed, and the choice of the Chancellor of the Council did not turn out to be so fortunate as had at first appeared, for the queen gave her husband no heir, and the house of Greylock was threatened with the danger of dying out with Wendelin XVI.  This troubled the duchess indeed, but not so much as one would have supposed, for she knew that yet another Greylock lived, and the mother’s heart ceased not to hope that he would return one day, and hand down the name of her husband.

She therefore persisted in sending messengers to those lands where, to judge by the costume of the people, the appearance of the country and buildings, as shown in the magic mirror, George was most likely to be found.