So the king sent out his heralds all over the world to proclaim that any respectable prince with proper references should marry the Princess Melisande if he could stop her hair growing.
Then from far and near came trains of princess anxious to try their luck, and they brought all sorts of nasty things with them in bottles and round wooden boxes. The princess tried all the remedies, but she did not like any of them, and she did not like any of the princess, so in her heart she was rather glad that one of them made the least difference to her hair.
The princess had to sleep in the thone room now, for no other room was big enough to hold her and her hair. Which she woke in the morning the long high room would be quite full of her golden hair, packed tight and thick like wool in a barn.
And every evening when her hair had been cut close to her head again, she would sit in her green silk gown at the window of the tallest tower and cry, and kiss the green caps she used to wear, and wish herself bald again. It was as she sat crying there on Midsummer Eve that she first saw Prince Florizel.
He was walking in the garden in the moonlight, and he looked up and she looked down, and for the firsg time Melisande, looking on a prince, wished that he might have the power to stop her hair from growing. As for the prince, he wished many things, and the first was granted him. For he said, "You are Melisande?"
"And you are Florizel?"
"There are many roses rounds your window," said to her, "and none down here."
She threw him one of three white roses she held in her hand.
Then he said "If I can do what your father asks, will you marry me?
"My father has promised that I shall," said Melisande, playing with the white roses in her hand.
"Dear princess," said Prince Florizel, "your father's promise is nothing to me. I want yours. Will you give it to me?"
"Yes," said she, and gave him the second rose.
"I want your hand."
"Yes," she said.
"And your heart with it."
"Yes," said the princess, and she threw down the third rose.
"Then," said he, "stay by your window and I will stay down here in the garden and watch. And when your hair has grown to thw filling of your room, call to me and then do as I tell you."
"I will," said the princess.
So at dewy sunrise the prince, lying on the turf beside the sundial, heard her voice.
"Florizel! Florizel! My hair has grown so long that it is pushing me out on the windowsill," said he, "and twist your hair three times round the great iron hook that is there."
And she did.
