Summary
On ordinary days the Infanta of Spain may play only with children of her own rank, and so plays alone, but on her twelfth birthday she may invite whom she likes into the sunlit palace gardens. From a window her sad father, the King, watches beside his hated brother Don Pedro of Aragon and the Grand Inquisitor. He is thinking of the Infanta's mother, a young Queen from France who died six months after the child's birth, and whose embalmed body he still visits in a black marble chapel. Many suspect Don Pedro of poisoning her with a pair of gloves. The King buries his face in his hands and withdraws, and the Infanta, disappointed, goes down to the entertainments hand in hand with her uncle.
In a pavilion of purple silk the children watch a sham bullfight, in which the young Count of Tierra-Nueva beheads a wickerwork bull, then Italian puppets whose tragedy brings tears to the Infanta's eyes, an African juggler, the dancing boys of Our Lady of Pilar, and gipsies with a bear and Barbary apes. Funniest of all is a little Dwarf, found running wild in the forest the day before, whose father, a poor charcoal-burner, was glad to be rid of him. He dances with no idea of his own ugliness, and the Infanta laughs so much that the Camerera rebukes her. Half in jest, she throws him the white rose from her hair, and he kneels with it pressed to his lips.
Told that he is to dance for her again after the siesta, the Dwarf runs into the garden in delight. The Flowers are outraged: the Tulips say he is too ugly to be there, the White Rose-Tree calls him a thief, and the Sundial and the Peacock agree that the children of charcoal-burners are charcoal-burners. The Birds, with whom he shared his bread in the forest, are kind to him, and so are the Lizards. Dreaming of taking the Infanta back there, he slips into the palace to find her, passing through a hall of statues, a council-room hung with a hunting scene and an empty throne-room.
In the brightest room of all he sees a little figure and cries out with joy, but it is a hunchbacked, crooked-limbed monster that copies everything he does and meets his hand with something cold and hard. When it kisses a white rose just like his, he understands that he is looking at himself, and that everyone was laughing at him. He tears the rose to pieces and lies moaning on the floor. The Infanta and her companions come in and applaud what they take for a performance. When he lies still, Don Pedro slaps him with his glove and calls for a whipping master, but the Chamberlain feels his heart and says that he will never dance again, because his heart is broken. The Infanta frowns and says that in future her playmates must have no hearts.