He thank’d the Fairy for her kind advice.—­
  Thought he, “If this be all, I’ll not be nice;
  Rather than in my courtship I will fail
  I will to mince-meat tread Minon’s black tail.”

  To the Princess’s court repairing strait,
  He sought the cat that must decide his fate;
  But when he found her, how the creature stared! 
  How her back bristled, and her great eyes glared! 
  That [tail] which he so fondly hop’d his prize,
  Was swell’d by wrath to twice its usual size;
  And all her cattish gestures plainly spoke
  She thought the affair he came upon, no joke. 
  With wary step the cautious King draws near,
  And slyly means to attack her in her rear;
  But when he thinks upon her tail to pounce,
  Whisk—­off she skips—­three yards upon a bounce—­
  Again he tries, again his efforts fail—­
  Minon’s a witch—­the deuce is in her tail—­

  The anxious chase for weeks the Monarch tried,
  Till courage fail’d, and hope within him died. 
  A desperate suit ’twas useless to prefer,
  Or hope to catch a tail of quicksilver.—­
  When on a day, beyond his hopes, he found
  Minon, his foe, asleep upon the ground;
  Her ample tail behind her lay outspread,
  Full to the eye, and tempting to the tread. 
  The King with rapture the occasion bless’d. 
  And with quick foot the fatal part he press’d. 
  Loud squalls were heard, like howlings of a storm,
  And sad he gazed on Minon’s altered form,—­
  No more a cat, but chang’d into a man
  Of giant size, who frown’d, and thus began: 

  “Rash King, that dared with impious design
  To violate that tail, that once was mine;
  What though the spell be broke, and burst the charms,
  That kept the Princess from thy longing arms,—­
  Not unrevenged shall thou my fury dare,
  For by that violated tail I swear,
  From your unhappy nuptials shall be born
  A Prince, whose Nose shall be thy subjects’ scorn. 
  Bless’d in his love thy son shall never be,
  Till he his foul deformity shall see,
  Till he with tears his blemish shall confess,
  Discern its odious length, and wish it less!”

  This said, he vanish’d; and the King awhile
  Mused at his words, then answer’d with a smile
  “Give me a child in happy wedlock born,
  And let his Nose be made like a French horn;
  His knowledge of the fact I ne’er can doubt,—­
  If he have eyes, or hands, he’ll find it out.”

  So spake the King, self-flatter’d in his thought,
  Then with impatient step the Princess sought. 
  His urgent suit no longer she withstands,
  But links with him in Hymen’s knot her hands.

    Almost as soon a widow as a bride,
  Within a year the King her husband died;
  And shortly after he was dead and gone,
  She was deliver’d of a little son,
  The prettiest babe, with lips as red as rose,
  And eyes like little stars—­but such a nose—­
  The tender Mother fondly took the boy
  Into her arms, and would have kiss’d her joy;
  His luckless nose forbade the fond embrace—­
  He thrust the hideous feature in her face.