‘Without doubt,’ replied the old woman. ‘He is a very good prince, who loves his subjects as much as he is loved by them, and I am very sur­prised that you have not heard speak of our good King Altoun-Khan, for the reputation of his kind­ness has spread throughout the world.’

‘By the portrait you have drawn me of him,’ replied Prince Calaf, ‘I gather that he must be the happiest and most contented monarch of the world.’

‘He is not so, however,’ replied the widow. ‘One may even say that he is very unhappy. Firstly, he has no prince to succeed him: he has had no male child, pray and do good works as he will. I must tell you, however, that the sorrow of having no son does not constitute his greatest trouble. What troubles his life is the Princess Tourandot, his only daughter.’

‘And why,’ replied Calaf, ‘is she a trouble to him?’

‘I am going to tell you,’ replied the widow. ‘I can talk of that with authority, because it has often been told me by my daughter, who has the honour to be in the palace, among the slaves of the princess.

‘The Princess Tourandot,’ pursued the old hostess of the Prince of the Nogaïs, ‘is in her nineteenth year. She is so beautiful that the painters who have drawn her portrait, although the most skilful in the East, have all admitted that they were ashamed of their work, and that the brush which best succeeded in doing justice to the charms of a beautiful face could not depict all those of the Princess of China. However, the divers portraits which have been made of her, although inferior to the original, have not failed to produce terrible effects. She unites with her ravishing beauty such a cultivated mind that she not only knows everything which it is customary to teach persons of her rank, but even the sciences which are only learned by men. She knows how to write the different characters of several languages, she knows arith­metic, geography, philosophy, mathematics, and, above all, theology. She has read the laws and precepts of our legislator, Confucius. In fact, she is as clever as all the doctors together. But her fine qualities are effaced by an unex­ampled harshness of soul. She tarnishes her merits by a detestable cruelty. Two years ago the King of Thibet sent to ask her in marriage for the prince his son, who had become enamoured of her from a portrait he had seen of her. Altoun-Khan, delighted with this alliance, pro­posed it to Tourandot. This proud princess, to whom all men appear contemptible, so vain has her beauty made her, rejected the proposal with disdain. The king became angry with her, and declared that he would be obeyed. But, instead of submitting with a good grace to the wishes of her father, she wept with rage at the idea of being constrained. She was immoderately incensed, as though they had wished to do her some great wrong. In fact, she fretted so that she became ill. The physicians, knowing the cause of her malady, told the king that all their remedies were useless, and that the princess would inevitably lose her life if he persisted in wishing to make her marry the Prince of Thibet. Then the king, who loved his daughter devotedly, alarmed at the danger she was in, went to see her, and assured her that he would send away the ambassador of Thibet with a refusal.

‘“It is not enough, my lord,” said the princess; “I have resolved to let myself die unless you grant me what I am going to ask you. If you wish me to live, you must take an inviolable oath not to oppose my sentiments, and publish an edict by which you will declare that of all the princes who seek my hand, none shall be able to marry me till he has first replied pertinently to the questions which I shall put to him, before all the legal men in this town; that if he answers well, I consent to take him as my husband, but that if he replies ill, his head shall be cut off in the courtyard of your palace. By this edict,” she added, “which will be made known to the foreign princes who arrive at Pekin, all desire to ask me in marriage will be taken from them, which is what I wish; for I hate men and do not wish to marry.”

‘“But, my daughter,” said the king; “if anyone, despising my edict, presents himself, and answers your questions correctly——”

‘“Oh! I do not fear that,” she interrupted with precipitation. “I know how to frame such difficult ones that I should embarrass the greatest doctors. I willingly run the risk.”

‘Altoun-Khan reflected for some time on what the princess exacted from him. “I quite see,” he said to himself, “that my daughter does not wish to marry, and that this edict will effectually alarm all her lovers; so I hazard nothing in giving her this satisfaction; no harm can come of it. What prince would be fool enough to face such a frightful peril?” Finally the king, persuaded that his edict would have no evil effects, and that the entire recovery of his daughter depended on it, had it published, and swore by the laws of China to observe it exactly. Tourandot, reassured by this sacred oath, which she knew the king, her father, would not dare violate, took strength again and enjoyed perfect health. However, the rumour of her beauty attracted several young foreign princes to Pekin. In vain was the tenour of the edict made known to them. As everyone has a good opinion of his own intel­ligence, and young people especially, they had the audacity to present themselves to reply to the questions of the princess, and not being able to discover their obscure meaning, they all perished miserably one after the other. The king, to whom this justice must be done, seems much touched by their fate. He repents of having taken an oath which binds him, and with all the affection he has for his daughter he would rather have let her die than have preserved her at that price. He does all that he can to prevent these misfortunes. When a lover whom the edict cannot restrain comes to ask him for the hand of the princess, he tries to deter him from his resolution, and he only consents regretfully to his exposing his life. But it generally happens that he cannot persuade these bold young men. They think only of Tourandot, and the hope of winning her makes them indifferent to the difficulty of obtaining her. But if the king at least appears sensible to the destruction of these unhappy princes, it is not so with his barbaric daughter. She delights in the bloody spectacles which her beauty affords the Chinese. She has so much vanity that the most amiable prince appears not only unworthy of her, but even very insolent to dare to raise his thoughts to alliance with her, and she looks upon his death as a just punishment of his temerity. What is still more deplorable is that Heaven often permits princes to come and sacrifice them­selves to this inhuman princess. It is not long since a prince who flattered himself that he was intelligent enough to reply to her questions, lost his life; and to-night another must perish who has, unfortunately for him, come to the court of the King of China in the same hope.’

Calaf was very attentive to what the old woman told him. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, when she had finished speaking, ‘how there are found princes ill-judged enough to go and ask the hand of the Princess of China. What man can be other­wise than alarmed at the condition without which it cannot be obtained! Moreover, whatever the artists who have painted her portrait may say of her, although they assert that their work is only an imperfect reflection of her beauty, I believe they have lent her charms, and that their paintings are flattering, since they have produced such powerful effects. In fact, I cannot think that Tourandot is as beautiful as you say.’

‘My lord,’ replied the widow, ‘she is still more charming than I have told you, and you may believe me, for I have seen her several times in going to see my daughter in the palace. Imagine to yourself what you will, depict in your imagina­tion all that can contribute to form a perfect beauty, and be persuaded that you will not be able to represent to yourself anything approaching to the princess.’

The Prince of the Nogaïs could not credit his hostess’s remarks, so hyperbolical did he find them; he took, however, without knowing why, a secret pleasure in them.

‘But, my mother,’ he replied, ‘are the questions which the king’s daughter puts so difficult that they cannot be answered in a way to satisfy the legal men who judge of them? For myself, I think that the princes who cannot penetrate the mean­ing of them are all of small genius, or ignorant men.’

‘No, no,’ replied the old woman, ‘there are no enigmas more obscure than the princess’s ques­tions, and it is almost impossible to reply to them well.’

Whilst they were speaking thus of Tourandot and her unfortunate lovers, the little boy who had been sent to the market returned laden with pro­visions. Calaf seated himself at a table laid for him by the widow, and ate like a man dying of hunger.