'In the square below,' said the Happy Prince, 'there stands a little
match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all
spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and
she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare.
Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.
'I will stay with you one night longer,' said the Swallow,'but I cannot pluck
out your eye. You would be quite blind then.'
'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'do as I command you.'
So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped
past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. 'What a
lovely bit of glass,' cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.
Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. 'You are blind now,' he said, 'so I
will stay with you always.'
'No, little Swallow,' said the poor Prince, 'you must go away to Egypt.'
'I will stay with you always,' said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's
feet.
All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what
he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long
rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold fish in their beaks; of the
Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows
everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and
carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who
is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake
that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes;
and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are
always at war with the butterflies.
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