Missing!
- When Despereaux wakes up, he finds the kitchen in a tizzy. Louise is talking about how the princess is missing, Mig is gone, and Gregory the jailer is dead. Things sure happened quickly.
- After Roscuro chewed through Gregory's rope, he got lost in the maze of the dungeons and died of fright.
- The cook starts moaning about how awful the world is: princesses getting kidnapped and something as lovely as soup getting outlawed. Louise tells her to shut up about the soup; they're never to mention soup.
- Despereaux listens to all of this and knows, with a heavy heart, that Roscuro has taken the princess into the dungeons and doesn't intend to let her go—no matter what he says to Mig.
- Then the mouse decides to do something quite brave and possibly foolish: he decides to go find the king.