"When I was alive and had a human heart," the statue replied, his voice low and strange, like wind through an empty corridor, "I did not know what tears were. I lived in the Palace of Sans-Souci, where sorrow is not permitted to enter. During the day I played with my companions in the garden. In the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Around the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it. Everything about me was so beautiful."

He paused, and the moonlight caught the wet trails on his face.

"My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead, they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead, I cannot choose but weep."

The swallow considered this. He had not expected philosophical reflection from municipal statuary.

"Far away," continued the Prince, "in a little street, there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the queen's maids-of-honour to wear at the next court ball. In a bed in the corner of the room, her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying."

The Prince's voice trembled. "Swallow, little swallow, will you not bring her the ruby from my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move."

"I am expected in Egypt," said the swallow. "My friends are flying up and down the Nile and conversing with the lotus-flowers. Tomorrow evening they will fly to the Second Cataract. The hippopotamus couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. I really must be going."

"Swallow, little swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad."

The swallow hesitated. He was not, truth be told, particularly fond of children — they had a tiresome habit of throwing stones at him. But the Prince looked so desperately unhappy that a refusal seemed indecent.

"It is bitterly cold," the swallow said at last, "but I will stay with you for one night and be your messenger."