When they came to a
place where the poppies clustered thickest, the three princesses
insisted on stopping--Princess Adelaide, Princess Sophia, Princess
Victoire. They wished to gather the flowers to take with them to the
Chateau de Bove, where they were going to visit their _dame d'honneur_,
Madame de Narbonne, but their guards argued that already it was growing
late: they had better hurry on. At this the girls laughed silvery
laughter. What did time matter to them? This was _their_ road, made and
paved for their pleasure! They would not be hurried along it. No indeed;
to show that time as well as the road was theirs, to do with as they
liked, they would get down and make a chain of poppies long enough to
stretch across the whole plateau before it dipped to the valley of the
Aillette!
So, in Captain Devot's dream, the princesses descended, and they and all
their pretty ladies began weaving a chain of poppies. As they wove, the
flower-chain fell from their little white fingers and trailed along the
ground in a crimson line. The sun dropped toward the west, and thunder
began to roll: still they worked on! Their gentlemen-in-charge begged
them to start again, and at last they rose up petulantly to go; but they
had stayed too late. The storm burst. Lightning flashed; thunder roared;
rain fell in torrents; and--strange to see--the poppy petals melted, so
that the long chain of flowers turned to a liquid stream, red as a river
of blood.
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