An Unscalable Fortress

To preserve their beauty, women truly exhausted every possible method. To keep her body straight, Princess Cissy never used a pillow when she slept. When she had first married into Austria, she had moved an entire gymnasium there. Fencing, horseback riding, swimming, gymnastics, even the parallel bars, horizontal bar, rings, and dumbbells—she could do it all.

If she had been a French or Russian girl, she might have studied ballet instead. But Princess Cissy was Bavarian, and she possessed a spirit unlike the delicate softness of ordinary court women.

Her hair reached all the way to her feet, and she spent hours every day carefully combing it.

In Grimm's Fairy Tales, there was a maiden with long hair. She was imprisoned by a witch in a high tower deep in the forest. The tower had neither stairs nor doors, only a tiny window at the very top.

Whenever the witch wanted to enter, she stood beneath the tower and called for the girl to let down her hair. The long-haired maiden would lower her thick golden locks, allowing the witch to climb up.

Then one day, a prince rode through the forest and happened to pass the tower. He suddenly heard a beautiful song and could not help following it. He discovered the long-haired girl in the tower. Lonely and bored, she sat by the little window, combing her hair and passing the time by singing.

She looked just like the ancient ballad sung by the girl playing the harp in the dining car:

Lips, plump as June berries, red as roses.

Skin, white as moonlight; eyes, blue as sea and sky, clear as running water.

The prince immediately "fell in love" with her.

The prince wanted to climb to the top of the tower to meet her, so he