The woman stood over him, chuckling in great glee. “I have you now, my pretty cup-bearer, and will make you of great use to me. I will teach you a thousand things you would be glad not to know! You shall have a crimson tuft, ha! ha! ha! I will teach you to be impertinent to me! My hooked nose! to be sure. Ah! I am old! old! and nothing can make me young and fair. If I could only take for myself your young beauty! But, no! one day I must die, and that will be the end.”
The woman’s face grew convulsed--for she was haunted by the grim specter, Death, as with a dread terror. Her life had been so filled with darkness, that she could not look forward to the calm hereafter. All the brightness and beauty of heaven, the golden, was like the fleeting dreams of childhood, that the rolling years, bearing her to the portals of dim old age, had swept away.
She had studied magic, and tried to find the elixir of life, but in vain. She had discovered many wonderful things, but not the fountain of perpetual youth, nor the precious elixir of life.
For a few moments she stood gazing at the fresh face and rich curls of the child, as he lay sleeping in his pure innocence. Once the word “mother” passed his rosy lips, and the woman waved a perfumed fan over him, till even the mother was no longer the companion of his dreamless sleep.
“Now, it will do to begin,” said the old woman, and she took from a secret drawer in the closet several bottles containing liquids, and placed them on a little table. Taking a pair of sharp scissors, she sat down by the child, and cut off all his beautiful brown curls, leaving only a little tuft. This she made quite stiff in some way, and colored it bright red, tying it upon the top of his head, so that it stood up and looked very strangely.
“There is the crimson tuft, my little cup-bearer,” she said, laughing heartily at her wicked work.
Then she tinged his eyebrows red, and his skin a dark mahogany color, until, instead of the beautiful little Paul that everybody had loved and admired, he appeared the ugliest little wretch one could well imagine.
She took off his neat, plain clothes, dressing him in yellow leather breeches and a fantastic red jacket. Upon his feet she put shoes with long pointed toes, that turned up and were tied with red ribbons. When she had finished, she looked at him with great satisfaction.