ADRIEN, MARINETTE ET LA REINE DES NEIGES

IV. Prince et princesse

The springtime and summer had gone, and a cold wind blew the leaves from the trees. Marinette hurried along, wondering where to look for Adrien. On the way she met a young guard, a non-commissioned officer of dark features, dressed in a silver and blue grenadier's uniform.
"Good day to you, Ser," she addressed him with a bow.
"Where are you going, so alone in the wide world?" quoth he.
So Marinette told him her whole story, her search for Adrien, what had happened at the old lady's and how she'd dawdled for too long in her garden, and must hurry and find him. She described Adrien in detail to the guard, and asked him if he had not seen Adrien in those lands.
"I have seen a young man who looks quite a lot like the one you seek. It may be that I know him, as sure as my rank is sergeant and my name is Nino... I might have seen your friend... and furthermore it happens to be the young man who has just been betrothed to the Crown Princess..." he cocked his head.
The young girl stifled a gasp of surprise, not finding the right words.
"Oui, now he is a prince, and he lives at the royal palace with the Crown Princess herself!" Nino pointed towards a château of rosy-red granite surrounded by a well-kept French garden.
The grenadier told Marinette that this lad had won the heart and hand of the princess through his lively and earnest conversation, and furthermore, because he had not come to woo her, but simply to listen to her and speak to her in exchange. The princess there wanted a husband. All the princes she met were handsome but empty-headed. But then a thin, pretty boy came from far away. He had green eyes and he was clever and bright, and the princess was very pleased with him. He asked her something in a foreign language and she replied, delighted, in the same language, both of them taken with one another! "Now he lives at the palace with her."
"Oui!" Marinette exclaimed. "That is surely my Adrien! His eyes are green and he is clever and bright. Please can you show me the palace?"
"Right," Nino replied. "We should better head towards the castle and check it for ourselves, taking advantage of the fact that the sun has not risen yet and they are still fast asleep. My own fiancée, who has been an eyewitness to the courtship, lives in the palace. And she works there as a chambermaid. Maybe she can help us."
And off he set towards the landscaped grounds of the royal château. When he returned, he led Marinette to a fine palace, whose well-kept French gardens were surrounded by high walls; then he showed her through a gap in the garden wall, and they hid among the perfumed flowers. It was evening already, and the palace windows were full of golden lights. They waited in the dark until eventually the lights went out one by one. Then they heard a female voice say, "Follow me."
Led by Nino, Marinette traced the voice to a little tunnel concealed behind an artificial waterfall, where a dark-skinned ginger in a French maid's uniform had been waiting for them.
"Alya!" called the grenadier, and the maid sauntered from behind the waterfall in the palace garden to greet them. The two servants talked together first to one another, and then turned to Marinette.
"My fiancé has told me your story," the palace maid told Marinette with a curtsy. "I hope that we can do something for your sake at the end of the day. I can take you to see this boy."
They crept into the palace through the hidden door behind the waterfall.
Following the clever maidservant Alya, who kept a kerosene lamp in hand to light the way, Marinette and Nino passed through a narrow tunnel under ground, then padded up a dark, ornate spiral staircase, and out onto a corridor covered in deep rugs, which were warm and soft, and decked with portraits of late royalty on walls of rose-pink satin with embroidered bouquets of lace flowers, until Alya showed them the carved wooden door to the suite of the royal fiancés.
"Peek in; this door is the one to their bedchamber suite. So let's watch them now while they sleep," the redhead softly whispered.
Marinette, the grenadier, and the maid stepped, through an estrade covered in tapestries of classical myths, into the luxurious bedchamber, whose roof was a dome shaped like a lotus bud of costly glass; and where there were two beds shaped like large half-open roses. In the pink rose-bed lay a sleeping princess, as fair and small-boned as a porcelain doll, and in the white one lay her prince, a slender boy with his face hidden in his arms, both of them breathing steadily.
And Alya dimmed the lights, so that the three intruders could not be discovered.
For a moment, the young quester thought that it was indeed her friend, and she could not restrain her excitement to see him, but, upon thinking that he had forgotten her for a princess as kind-hearted and bright as she was lovely and charming, Marinette's azure eyes clouded with tears.
Quite carefully, she unwrapped the covers of the prince's white rose-bed. His back was turned towards her, but, upon seeing her friend's rumpled hair, quite dark in the twilight, Marinette choked back a sob:
"Adrien! Wake up. It's me..." she whispered.
The sound startled the prince, who, feeling watched, suddenly sat up in bed as he awoke, and stared at the raven-haired stranger in surprise. As the lights went on and she saw his face, Marinette burst into tears, for she suddenly understood that this lad, fortunately, was not her darling Adrien after all: the prince's hair was actually dark, while Adrien's was golden blond; and the one she sought had a complexion like peaches and cream, not like bronze such as that of the princess's fiancé. Nevertheless, he was a good-looking young fellow as well.
Even the princess herself, a blue-eyed blonde as fair and small-boned as a porcelain doll, sat down in bed, and both of them inquired to know what Marinette was doing in their bedchamber.
"I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else", she said miserably.
And thus, once more, the stranger girl told them the story of her quest. So she told them everything, her search for Adrien, and how the two servants had tried to help her.
Their hearts warmed by the tale, and full of kind understanding, Prince Ali and Princess Rose promised to give her new winter clothes and a carriage for her to carry on her quest. And they did not neglect to reward her companions either: Nino was promoted to lieutenant, while Alya became head lady-in-waiting at court; both of them looking very pleased.
The princess turned to Marinette. "Tomorrow in the morn we will send you on your way with a carriage and six horses, and a coachman à la Daumont to drive them. That should make your search easier."
Marinette couldn't thank her, or her fiancé, enough; especially after the prince had showed her to a spare bedroom for guests that had been prepared in advance, for Marinette to spend the night there.
So on the next day, after a filling breakfast, the prince and the princess, drying up their tears, waved goodbye as took their leave of Marinette, who, swaddled in scarlet silks from crown to toe, with a warm scarlet cloak wrapped around, was sent on her way in a golden carriage. For a while, Alya and Nino followed her, until they said a fond farewell at the edge of the kingdom, when they reached a port town at the north coast, and Marinette boarded the royal yacht, which had been awaiting her orders, none of their eyes being dry.
And thus, without ever losing hope, Marinette set sail in order to to carry on her quest.