Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

King Loc promised to do so. And what he said he did. Each night Bee saw her mother, and each night the Duchess saw her daughter. This satisfied their affection a little.

*CHAPTER X*

*IN WHICH THE WONDERS OF THE KINGDOM OF THE
DWARFS ARE THOROUGHLY DESCRIBED, AS
WELL AS THE DOLLS WHICH WERE GIVEN TO BEE*

The kingdom of the dwarfs was deep and stretched under a great part of the earth. Though the sky was only visible here and there through openings in the rock, the open places, the roads, the palaces, and hall were not buried in the thickest night. Only a few rooms and several caverns remained in darkness. The others were lighted, not by lamps and torches, but by planets and meteors which shed a wild, fantastic brightness, and this brightness shone upon strange marvels. Enormous buildings had been hewn in the face of the rock: in certain places palaces cut out of granite rose to such a height up under the vaults of the huge caverns that their stone carvings disappeared in a mist pierced by the yellowish light of little planets less luminous than the moon.

There were in those kingdoms fortresses of stupendous mass, amphitheatres whose stone tiers formed a semicircle which the eye could not embrace in its full extent, and vast wells with sculptured sides in which no plummet could ever have found a bottom. All these structures, apparently unsuited to the stature of their inhabitants, agreed perfectly with their quaint fantastic turn of mind.

The dwarfs wrapped in hoods with sprigs of fern-leaves stuck in them moved about these buildings with the nimbleness of spirits. It was quite common to see one jump from the height of two or three stories on to the lava pavement and rebound like a ball. His face retained in the act that calm, majestic expression which sculptors give to the heads of ancient great men.

There was no indolence, and all applied themselves to their work. Whole quarters resounded with the noise of hammers; the shrieks of machinery echoed against the cavern roofs, and it was a curious sight to see the crowd of miners, smiths, goldbeaters, jewellers, diamond polishers, handle their pickaxes, hammers, pincers, and files with the dexterity of monkeys. But there was a more peaceful quarter.

There, uncouth and huge figures, shapeless pillars dimly projected from the rough stone; they seemed to be aged and venerable. There rose a squat palace with low doors; it was the palace of King Loc. Just opposite was the house of Bee, house, or rather cottage, with only one room in it, and this was hung with white muslin; fir-wood furniture spread its pleasant scent in the room. A cleft in the rock let in the light of the sky, and on fine nights stars were visible.

Bee had no special servants, but the whole dwarf nation struggled in emulation to supply all her needs and anticipate all her wishes, except that of reascending above ground.

The most learned dwarfs who possess great secrets took pleasure in teaching her, not with books, for dwarfs do not write, but by showing her all the plants of the mountains and the valleys, the different kinds of animals, and the various stones which are drawn from the bosom of the earth. And it was by sights and examples that they, with their gay simplicity, taught her the wonders of nature and the methods of art.

They made toys for her such as no rich children on the earth have ever had, for these dwarfs were capable and invented marvellous machines. In those depths they put together for her dolls that could move with grace and express themselves according to the rule of poetry. When assembled in a little theatre, of which the scenery represented the sea shore, the blue sky, palaces, and temples, these dolls played tragedies of surpassing interest. Though they were not much longer than a man's arm they looked exactly, some like reverend old men, others like men in the prime of life, or like lovely maidens dressed in white robes. There were also among them mothers clasping to their bosoms innocent little children. And these eloquent dolls spoke and acted on the stage as if they were moved by hatred, love, or ambition. They passed cleverly from joy to grief, and so well did they imitate nature that they raised smiles or drew tears. Bee clapped her hands at the show. The dolls who aimed at tyranny made her shudder with disgust. On the other hand she poured treasures of compassion on the doll who, once a princess, now a widow and a captive, her head crowned with cypress, has no other means of saving the life of her child than marrying, alas! the barbarian who made her a widow.

Bee never grew tired of this game in which the dolls introduced infinite variety. The dwarfs also gave concerts for her and taught her to play the lute, the viola, the theorbo, the lyre, and divers other kinds of instruments. In such a fashion she became a good musician, and the plays represented by the dolls gave her an experience of men and life. King Loc was present at these plays and concerts, but he saw and heard no one else but Bee, and his whole soul was gradually drawn towards her.

Meanwhile days and months passed, years made their round, and still Bee stayed among the dwarfs, incessantly amused and always full of regret for the earth. She was growing into a beautiful young woman. Her strange fate gave a touch of strangeness to her face, only adding to it another charm.

*CHAPTER XI*

*IN WHICH THE TREASURE OF KING LOC IS
DESCRIBED AS WELL AS POSSIBLE*

Bee had been among the dwarfs for six years to a day. King Loc summoned her to his palace and ordered his treasurer in her presence to displace a large stone which seemed fixed in the wall, but which was, in reality, only inserted into it.

They all three passed through the opening left by the removal of the large stone and found themselves in a crevice of the rock where two people could not walk abreast. King Loc went forward first along the dark path and Bee followed, holding on to the skirt of the royal mantle. They went on walking for a long time. At times the walls of rock came so close together that the girl was afraid of being caught between them, without being able to move forward or back, and of dying there. But the mantle of King Loc sped before her along the dark and narrow path. At last King Loc found a bronze door, which he opened, and there was a flood of light.

"Little King Loc," cried Bee, "I never knew before that light was such a beautiful thing."

But King Loc, taking her by the hand, led her into the hall from which the light came, and said to her:

"Look!"

Bee, dazzled, at first saw nothing, for this huge hall, resting on high marble pillars, was from the floor to the roof all glorious with gold.

At the far end, on a dais made of sparkling gems, enchased in gold and in silver, and the steps of which were covered by a carpet of marvellous embroidery, was set a throne of ivory and gold with a canopy of translucent enamels. At its side two palm-trees, three thousand years old, rose from two gigantic vessels carved long ago by the best craftsmen of the dwarfs. King Loc sat down on this throne and made the young girl stand on his right hand.

"Bee," he said to her, "this is my treasure; choose whatever you like."

Immense shields of gold, hung to the pillars, caught the sunbeams and flung them back in dazzling showers. Crossed swords and lances hung flaming their bright points. The tables which spread close to the walls were loaded with bowls, flagons, ewers, chalices, pyxes, patins, goblets, beakers, with drinking-horns of ivory ringed with silver, with enormous bottles of rock crystals, dishes of carved gold and silver, with coffers, with reliquaries in the shape of churches, with mirrors, with candelabra and censers as wonderful for their workmanship as for their material, and with thuribles in the shape of monsters, and on one of the tables a game of chess made of moonstones was spread out.

"Choose, Bee," King Loc repeated.

But raising her eyes above these riches, Bee saw the blue sky through an opening in the roof, and as if she had understood that the light of the sky alone gave these things their brightness, she only said:

"Little King Loc, I would like to go back to earth."

Then King Loc made a sign to his treasurer, who, lifting some heavy curtains, showed a huge coffer barred with plates and patterns of iron. The coffer being open there streamed from it a thousand beams of various and charming colours; each of these beams sprang from a precious stone cunningly cut. King Loc dipped his hand in them, and they saw rolling in luminous confusion the violet amethyst and the maiden stone; the emerald of three natures, the one dark green, the other called the honeyed emerald because it is of the colour of honey, the third of a bluish-green called beryl, which bestows beautiful dreams; the eastern topaz; the ruby beautiful as the blood of brave men; the dark blue sapphire called the male sapphire, and the pale blue sapphire called the female sapphire; the alexandrite, the hyacinth, the turquoise, the opal, whose lights are softer than those of the dawn, the hyalite, and the Syrian garnet. All the stones were of the most limpid water and the most luminous colour. And big diamonds cast their dazzling white lights among these coloured fires.

"Bee, choose," said King Loc.

But Bee shook her head and said:

"Little King Loc, I prefer a single one of the sunbeams which strike the slates of the castle of the Clarides to all these jewels."

Then King Loc had a second coffer opened which held nothing but pearls. But all these pearls were round and pure; their changing lights took on all the tints of the sky and the sea, and their glow was so mild that it seemed to express a lovely thought.

"Take some," said King Loc.

But Bee answered him:

"Little King Loc, these pearls remind me of the looks of George of the White Moor; I like these pearls but I like the eyes of George better."

Hearing these words, King Loc turned away his head. Yet he opened a third coffer and showed the young girl a crystal in which a drop of water had been a prisoner since the earliest time of the world, and, when shaken, the crystal showed this drop of water moving. He also displayed to her pieces of yellow amber in which insects more dazzling than jewels had been taken for millions of years. Their delicate legs and frail membranes were distinguishable, and they would have taken wing again if some power had melted like ice their scented prison-house.

"These are great natural curiosities; I give them to you, Bee."

But Bee answered:

"Little King Loc, keep the amber and the crystal, for I could not give back their liberty either to the fly or the drop of water."

King Loc looked at her for a time and said:

"Bee, the richest treasures will be well placed in your hands. You will possess them and they will not possess you. The greedy are the prey of their own gold; only those who despise wealth can possess it with safety; their souls will always be greater than their fortune."

Having thus spoken, he made a sign to his treasurer who presented a crown of gold on a cushion to the young girl.

"Receive this jewel as a sign of the esteem we have for you, Bee," said King Loc. "Henceforward you will be called the Princess of the Dwarfs."

And he himself placed the crown on the brow of Bee.

*CHAPTER XII*

*IN WHICH KING LOC PROPOSES*

The dwarfs celebrated the coronation of their first princess by festivals and rejoicings. In their perfect simplicity they played games at random in the huge amphitheatre, and the little men, with a sprig of fern or two oak leaves neatly fixed in their hood, went leaping joyfully along the subterranean streets. The rejoicings lasted thirty days. In his intoxication Pic had the look of an inspired mortal; the good Tad was enraptured with the general happiness; the tender Dig gave himself the pleasure of shedding tears; Rug, in his joy, again proposed that Bee should be put in a cage that the dwarfs might not fear losing so delightful a princess; Bob, riding on his crow, filled the air with such joyful cries that the bird itself grew merry, and gave forth wild little croaks.

King Loc alone was sad.

It came to pass that on the thirtieth day, having entertained the princess and the whole nation of the dwarfs at a splendid feast, he stood upon his arm-chair, and his kind face being thus raised to the level of Bee's ear:

"Princess Bee," he said to her, "I am going to make a request which you have full liberty to grant or to refuse. Bee of the Clarides, princess of the dwarfs, will you be my wife?"

And, speaking thus, King Loc, grave and tender, looked as handsome and mild as a majestic poodle. Bee pulled his beard and answered him.

"Little King Loc, I am willing to be your wife for fun; but I will never be your wife seriously. When you propose to marry me, you make me think of Freeheart, who, on the earth, used to tell me the most incredible tales to amuse me."

At these words King Loc turned away his head, but too slowly for Bee not to see a tear caught in the eyelashes of the dwarf. Then Bee was sorry she had hurt him.

"Little King Loc," she said to him, "I love you like a little King Loc that you are, and if you make me laugh as Freeheart used to, that ought not to annoy you, for Freeheart sang very well, and would have been good-looking without his grey hair and red nose."

King Loc answered her:

"Bee of the Clarides, princess of the dwarfs, I love you in the hope that you will one day love me. But had I not that hope I would love you just as much. I request you, in return for my friendship, always to be sincere with me."

"Little King Loc, I promise you I will."

"Well, Bee, tell me if you love any one enough to marry him."

"Little King Loc, I love no one as much as that."

Then King Loc smiled, and seizing his golden goblet he proposed in ringing tones the health of the princess of the dwarfs. And a vast murmur rose from the depths of the earth, for the table at which they feasted stretched from one end to the other of the dwarfish empire.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*TELLS HOW BEE SAW HER MOTHER AND
COULD NOT KISS HER*

Bee, with a crown set on her forehead, was more pensive and more sad than in those days when her hair flowed unbound on her shoulders, and when she went laughing to the smithy of the dwarfs to pull the beards of her good friends, Pic, Tad, and Dig, whose faces, reddened by the glow of the flames, grew merry at her welcome. The good dwarfs, who once used to dandle her on their knees and call her their Bee, now bowed at her approach and kept deferentially silent. She regretted she was no longer a child, and she was oppressed by being the princess of the dwarfs.

It no longer gave her any pleasure to see King Loc since she had seen him cry on her account. But she liked him; for he was kind, and he was unhappy.

One day (if it can be said that there are days in the empire of the dwarfs) she took King Loc by the hand and drew him to the fissure of the rock admitting a beam in which golden motes danced gaily.

"Little King Loc," she said to him, "I am in pain. You are also a king, you love me, and I am in pain."

Hearing these words of the beautiful maiden, King Loc answered:

"I love you, Bee of the Clarides, princess of the dwarfs; and this is why I have kept you in this our world, so as to teach you our secrets which are more great and wonderful than anything you can learn on earth among men, for men are less clever and less learned than dwarfs."

"Yes," said Bee, "but they are more like me than the dwarfs; that is why I like them better. Little King Loc, let me see my mother again, if you do not wish me to die."

King Loc walked away without answering.

Bee, alone and dejected, gazed on the beam of that light which bathes the whole face of the earth and pours its radiant floods on all living men, and even on the beggars that tramp the roads. Slowly the beam grew faint and changed its golden splendour into a pale, blue light. Night had come upon earth. A star glittered through the fissure in the rock.

Then some one touched her on the shoulder and she saw King Loc wrapped in a black mantle. On his arm hung another mantle which he put round the girl.

"Come," he said to her.

And he led her from underground. When she again saw the trees swept by the wind, the clouds racing over the moon and the whole of the fresh, blue night, when she smelt the scent of the grasses, and took to her bosom in a flood the air she had breathed during her childhood, she gave a great sigh and thought to die of joy.

King Loc had taken her in his arms; small as he was, he carried her as easily as a feather, and the two went gliding over the earth like the shadow of two birds.

"Bee, you are going to see your mother again. But listen. Every night, as you know, I send your image to your mother. Every night, she sees your dear shape. She smiles and speaks to it, and kisses it. To-night I am going to show you, instead of your ghost. You will see her; but do not touch her, do not speak of her, for then the charm would be broken, and she will never again see you nor your image, which she does not distinguish from yourself."

"I will therefore be careful, alas! little King Loc ... there it is, there it is!"

There was the Keep of the Clarides rising black on the hill. Bee hardly had time to send a kiss to the old, well-beloved stones; now she saw, blooming with gilliflowers, the ramparts of the town of the Clarides fly past her; now she was going up along a slope where glow-worms shone in the grass to the postern gate, which King Loc opened easily, for the dwarfs, the metal workers, are not stopped by locks, padlocks, bolts, chains, and bars.

She went up the spiral staircase leading to her mother's room and stopped to put her two hands to her beating heart. The door opened slowly, and, by the light of a lamp hung from the ceiling, Bee saw, in the brooding, religious silence, her mother, worn and pale, her hair silvered at the temples, but more beautiful thus for her daughter than in the days gone by of splendid jewels and fearless rides. As the mother saw her daughter in a dream, she opened her arms to embrace her. And the child, laughing and sobbing, tried to cast herself into these open arms; but King Loc tore her from this embrace and carried her off like a straw over the dark champaign, down into the kingdom of the dwarfs.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*IN WHICH THE GREAT GRIEF THAT OVERTOOK
KING LOC IS SEEN*

Bee, seated on the granite steps of the subterranean palace, again gazed at the blue sky through the fissure in the stone. High above the elder trees turned their white umbels towards the light. Bee began to cry. King Loc took her by the hand and said to her:

"Bee, why are you crying and what do you want?"

And, as she had been sad for several days, the dwarfs seated at her feet were playing to her very simple tunes on the flute, the flageolet, the rebec, and the cymbals. Other dwarfs turned, to please her, such somersaults, that one after the other they stuck in the ground the tips of their hoods decorated with a plume of leaves; nothing could be more diverting to see than the sports of these little men with their hermit beards. The good Tad, the romantic Dig, who loved her from the day they had seen her sleeping on the edge of the lake, and Pic, the old poet, took her gently by the arm and begged her to tell them the secret of her grief. Paw, who was simple but sensible, held up to her grapes in a basket, and all, tugging the edge of her dress, repeated with King Loc:

"Bee, princess of the dwarfs, why are you weeping?"

Bee answered:

"Little King Loc and you all, little men, my grief increases your grief because you are kind; you weep when I weep. Know that I weep thinking of George of the White Moor, who must to-day be a brave knight, and whom I shall never see again. I love him and I wish to be his wife."

King Loc drew his hand from the hand he was pressing and said:

"Bee, why did you deceive me and tell me, at the feast table, that you loved no one?"

Bee answered:

"Little King Loc, I did not deceive you at the feast table. I did not then wish to marry George of the White Moor, and it is to-day my highest desire that he should propose to marry me. But he will not propose, since I do not know where he is and he does not know where to find me. And this is why I cry."

At these words the musicians stopped playing their instruments; the leapers interrupted their leaps and remained motionless on their heads or their seats; Tad and Dig shed silent tears on Bee's sleeve; the simple Paw let drop the basket with the bunches of grapes, and all the little men gave fearful groans.

But the King of the Dwarfs, more dejected than all of them under his crown of sparkling stones, walked away without a word, letting his mantle drag behind him like a torrent of purple.

*CHAPTER XV*

*RELATES THE WORDS OF THE LEARNED NUR
WHICH GAVE AN EXTRAORDINARY PLEASURE
TO LITTLE KING LOC*

King Loc had not shown his weakness to the maiden, but when he was alone, he sat on the ground, and holding his feet in his hands, he gave way to grief.

He was jealous, and he said to himself:

"She is in love, and it is not with me! Yet I am a king and am full of learning; I have treasures, I know marvellous secrets; I am better than all the other dwarfs, who are superior to men. She does not love me, and she loves a young man who has not the learning of the dwarfs and who, perhaps, has none at all. Clearly she does not appreciate merit and is silly. I ought to laugh at her want of sense, but I love her and nothing in the world pleases me because she does not love me."

For many long days King Loc wandered alone in the wildest gorges of the mountains, revolving in his mind sad and sometimes wicked ideas. He thought of compelling Bee by captivity and hunger to become his wife. But discarding the idea almost as soon as he had formed it, he determined to go to the girl and to throw himself at her feet. Still he could not make up his mind, and did not know what to do. For truly, the power was not given to him to make Bee love him.

His anger turned all at once against George of the White Moor; he hoped that this young man would be carried far away by a magician, or at least, if he should ever be acquainted with Bee's love, that he would disdain it.

And the king thought:

"Without being old, I have already lived too long not to have suffered at times. But my suffering, deep as it was, was never so fierce as what I undergo to-day. These former pains being caused by tenderness or by pity had something of their heavenly gentleness. On the contrary, I feel at this hour that my grief has the blackness and bitterness of a bad passion. My soul is arid, and my eyes swim in tears as in a burning acid."

So thought King Loc. And, dreading that jealousy should make him unjust and wicked, he avoided meeting the young girl for fear of using, without wishing to, the tone of a weak or violent man.

One day, being more than ordinarily tortured by the thought that Bee loved George, he determined to consult Nur, who was the most learned of the dwarfs and lived in the bottom of a well dug in the entrails of the earth.

This well had the advantage of an even, mild temperature. It was not dark, for two little planets, a pale sun and red moon, alternately gave light to every part of it. King Loc went down this well and found Nur in his laboratory. Nur had the face of a pleasant old little man, and carried a wisp of wild thyme in his hood. In spite of his learning, he showed in all matters the innocence and candour of his race.

"Nur," said the king, embracing him, "I have come to consult you because you know many things."

"King Loc," answered Nur, "I might know many things and yet be only a fool. But I know the way to learn a few of the innumerable things I do not know, and this is why I am justly renowned as a man of learning."

"Well," continued Loc, "do you know where a boy called George of the White Moor is now?"

"I do not know, and I have never had the curiosity to learn," answered Nur. "Knowing how ignorant, stupid, and wicked men are, I do not care much what they think or what they do. Except that, to give some value to the life of the proud and wretched race, the men have courage, the women beauty, and the little children innocence, O King Loc, the whole of mankind is lamentable or ridiculous. Subject like the dwarfs to the necessity of working to live, men have rebelled against the divine law, and, far from being like us workmen full of jubilance, they prefer war to work, and would rather kill than help each other. But one must acknowledge, to be just, that the brevity of their life is the principal cause of their ignorance and their ferocity. They live too short a time for them to learn how to live. The Dwarf race, which lives under the earth, is happier and better. If we are not immortal, at least each of us will last as long as the earth which carries us in its bosom and pervades us with its inmost, fruitful warmth, while for the race which is born on its rough rind, its breath is burning or icy, spreading death as well as life. However, men are indebted to their extreme misery and wretchedness for a quality which makes the soul of some of them more beautiful than the soul of the dwarfs. This quality, as splendid to the mind as the mild sheen of pearls to the eye, King Loc, is compassion. Suffering teaches it, and the dwarfs do not know it well, because, being wiser than men, they have fewer sorrows. So the dwarfs sometimes leave their deep grottoes and mix with men on the inclement rind of the earth, in order to love them, to suffer with them and through them, and then to taste compassion, which falls on the soul like a heavenly, refreshing dew. Such is the truth about men, King Loc; but did you not ask me for the particular fate of one of them?"

King Loc having repeated his question, the old Nur looked into one of the glasses that filled the room. For the dwarfs have no books, those found among them come from man and are used as toys. To instruct themselves they do not refer as we do to signs made upon paper; they look into the glasses and see the subject of their researches. The only difficulty is to select the proper glass and direct it rightly.

These glasses are of crystal, also of topaz and opal; but those which have a big polished diamond as lens are the most powerful and are used to see very distant things.

The dwarfs also have lenses of a diaphanous substance, unknown to men. These allow the eye to pierce through walls and rocks as if they were glass. Others, more wonderful still, reproduce as faithfully as a mirror all that time has carried away in its course, for the dwarfs can recall, from the infinite vastness of the ether back into their cavern the light of former days together with the shapes and colours of vanished ages. They enjoy this view of the past by collecting the showers of light, which, having once fallen against the forms of men, of beasts, of plants and of rocks, recoil through the immeasurable ether for all time.

The old Nur excelled in reviving the shapes of the past and even those, impossible to imagine, which existed before the earth had taken upon it the aspect which we know. So it was mere play for him to find George of the White Moor.

Having looked for less than a minute in quite a simple glass, he said to King Loc:

"King Loc, he whom you seek is now among the Sylphs, in the manor of crystal from which none return, and whose iridescent walls march with your kingdom."

"He is there, is he? Let him stop there!" cried King Loc, rubbing his hands.

And having embraced the old Nur, he went out of the well in peals of laughter.

All along the road he held his sides to laugh at his ease; his head wagged with mirth; his beard rose and fell on his chest; "ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!" The little men who met him also began to laugh like him, out of sympathy. Seeing them laugh, others laughed too; this laughter spread from one to another till the whole inside of the earth was shaken with a jovial great guffaw.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*TELLS THE MARVELLOUS ADVENTURE OF
GEORGE OF THE WHITE MOOR*

King Loc did not laugh long; on the contrary, he hid the face of a very unhappy little man under his bedclothes. Thinking of George of the White Moor, prisoner of the Sylphs, he could not sleep the whole night. So, at that hour of the morning when the dwarfs who have a dairymaid for a friend go to milk the cows in her place while she sleeps like a log in her white bed, little King Loc revisited Nur in his deep well.

"Nur," he said to him, "you did not tell me what he was doing among the Sylphs."

The old Nur thought that King Loc had gone out of his mind, and he was not very frightened, because he was certain that King Loc, if he became mad, would certainly turn into a graceful, witty, amiable, and kindly madman. The madness of the dwarfs is gentle like their sanity and delightfully fantastic. But King Loc was not mad; at least he was not more so than lovers usually are.

"I mean George of the White Moor," he said to the old man, who had forgotten this young man as completely as possible.

Then the learned Nur arranged the lenses and the mirrors in a careful pattern, but so intricate that it had the appearance of disorder, and showed to King Loc in the mirror the very shape of George of the White Moor, such as he was when the Sylphs carried him off. By properly choosing and skilfully directing the instruments, the dwarf showed the lovelorn king the whole adventure of the son of that countess who was warned of her end by a white rose. And here expressed in words is what the two little men saw in the reality of form and colour.

When George was carried away in the icy arms of the daughter of the lake, he felt the water press his eyes and his breast, and he thought it was death. Yet he heard songs that were like caresses, and he was steeped in a delicious coolness. When he opened his eyes again he found himself in a grotto; it had crystal pillars in which the delicate tints of the rainbow shone. At the end of this grotto there was a large shell of mother-of-pearl, irisated with the softest colours: it was a canopy spreading over a throne of coral and weeds where sat the queen of the Sylphs. But the aspect of the sovereign of the waters had lights softer than the sheen of mother-of-pearl and of crystal. She smiled at the child brought to her by her women and let her green eyes rest on him long.

"Friend," she at length said to him, "welcome in our world, where you will be spared every pain. For you, no dry books or rough exercises, nothing coarse that recalls the earth and its labours, but only the songs, the dances, and the friendship of the Sylphs."

So the blue-haired women taught the child music, waltzing, and a thousand amusements. They loved to bind on his forehead the shells that starred their own locks. But he, thinking of his country, gnawed his fists in impatience.

The years went by, and George's wish to see the earth again was unchanged and fervent, the hardy earth burnt by the sun, frozen by the snow, the native earth of sufferings and affections, the earth where he had seen, where he wished to see Bee again. Now he was growing into a big boy, and a slight golden down ran along his upper lip. Boldness came to him with his beard, and one day he appeared before the queen of the Sylphs, and having bowed, said to her:

"My lady, I have come, if you deign to permit it, to take leave of you. I am going back to the Clarides."

"Dear friend," the queen answered, smiling, "I cannot grant you the leave you demand, for I keep you in my crystal manor to make you my friend."

"My lady," George replied, "I feel unworthy of so great an honour."

"This is the effect of your courtesy. No good knight ever thinks he has done enough to win the love of his lady. Further, you are yet too young to know all your merits. Be sure, dear friend, that nobody wishes you anything but good. You only have to obey your lady."

"My lady, I love Bee of the Clarides, and I will love no other lady but her."

The queen, very pale, but still more beautiful, cried:

"A mortal woman, a gross daughter of men, this Bee, how can you love that?"

"I do not know, but I know that I love her."

"Very well, you will recover."

And she detained the young man in the delights of the crystal manor.

He did not know what a woman was, and was more like Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes than Tannhauser in the magic mountain. So he wandered gloomily along the walls of the immense palace, looking for an opening to run away; but on all sides he saw the floods enclosing his luminous prison in their mute and magnificent kingdom. Through the transparent walls he watched the anemones bloom and the coral flowering, while purple, azure, and golden fish sparkled and sported above the delicate madrepores and the glistening shells. These marvels did not interest him; but lulled by the delicious songs of the Sylphs, he slowly felt his will give way, and his whole soul dissolve.

He was all slackness and indifference, when he found by chance in a gallery of the palace an old worn book of vellum, studded with copper nails. The book, found in a wreck at the bottom of the sea, dealt with chivalry and ladies, and there were told at length stories of the adventures of heroes who went through the world fighting giants, redressing wrongs, protecting widows, and assisting orphans for the love of justice and the honour of beauty. George flushed and grew pale in turn with admiration, shame, and anger at the tale of these splendid adventures. He could not contain himself:

"I also," he cried, "will be a good knight! I also will go through the world punishing the wicked and helping the unhappy for the good of men and the name of my lady Bee."

Then his heart grew great with courage. He strode with drawn sword through the crystal mansions. The white women fled and vanished before him like the silvery waves of a lake. Their queen alone saw him come upon her unmoved. She fixed on him the cold look of her green eyes.

He rushes to her; he cries:

"Unclasp the charm which you have thrown on me. Open me the road to earth. I wish to fight in the sun like a knight. I wish to return to love, to suffer, and to struggle. Give me back the true life and the true light. Give me action and achievement; if you do not I will kill you, wicked woman!"

She shook her head smiling, to say "no." She was beautiful and calm. George struck her with all his strength. But his sword broke against the glittering bosom of the queen of the Sylphs.

"Child!" she said.

And she had him shut up in a kind of crystal funnel which formed a cell under the manor; round it sharks prowled, opening their monstrous jaws armed with a triple row of sharp teeth. And it seemed as if at each charge they must break the thin partition of glass; it was not possible to sleep in this strange cell.

The point of this submarine funnel rested on a rocky bottom which was the dome of the furthest and the least known cavern of the Empire of the dwarfs.

This is what the two little men saw in the course of an hour as exactly as if they had followed George all the days of his life. The ancient Nur, after having displayed the cell scene in all its sadness, spoke to King Loc much in the way of a showman when he has shown the magic lantern to little children.

"King Loc," he said to him, "I have shown you all you wished to see, and, your knowledge being perfect, I can add nothing to it. I am not anxious to know whether what you have seen has pleased you; it is enough that it is true. Science takes no account of pleasing or displeasing. It is inhuman. It is not science, it is poetry which charms and consoles. That is why poetry is more necessary than science. King Loc, go and compose a song."

King Loc went out of the well without speaking a word.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*IN WHICH KING LOC MAKES A TERRIBLE JOURNEY*

On leaving the well of science King Loc went to his treasure, took a ring from a box of which he alone had a key, and put it on his finger. The bezel of this ring shone brightly, for it was made of magic stone whose virtues will be discovered in the course of this story. King Loc then went to his palace, where he put on a travelling cloak, drew on heavy boots, and took a stick. Then he set out through the crowded street, the broad roads, the villages, and the halls of porphyry, the lakes of petroleum, and the grottos of crystal which communicated with each other by narrow openings.

He seemed pensive and spoke words which had no sense. But he walked on steadily. Mountains blocked the way and he climbed the mountains; cliffs yawned at his feet and he went down the cliffs; he crossed fords, he passed through grisly regions darkened by the fumes of sulphur. He walked over burning lava, in which his feet printed themselves; he seemed to be an extremely determined traveller. He entered dark caverns where the sea water, trickling in drops, fell like tears along the weeds and made pools in the uneven soil in which innumerable crustaceans grew monstrously. Enormous crabs, giant crayfish, spiders of the sea, cracked under the feet of the dwarf and made off, leaving behind a claw, and waking in their flight hideous hoary cuttle-fish, who suddenly waved their hundred arms and spat from their beaks a reeking poison. King Loc went on all the same. He reached the end of these caverns staggering under a load of monsters armed with stings, double jagged pincers, claws that curled up to his neck, and sullen eyes brandished at the end of long branches. He climbed the side of the cavern clinging to the roughnesses of the rock, and the armoured beasts went up with him, and he only stopped when by groping he found a stone that jutted out of the vaulted summit. With his magic ring he touched this stone, which immediately fell with a great crash, and immediately a flood of light poured its lovely streams into the cavern and put to flight the beasts bred in darkness.

King Loc put his head through the opening where the light came from, saw George of the White Moor thinking of Bee and the earth, and mourning in his glass prison. For King Loc had made this subterranean journey to release the prisoner of the Sylphs. But seeing this big head, all hair, eyebrows, and beard, look at him from the bottom of the crystal funnel, George thought a great danger threatened him, and he felt for the sword at his side, forgetting he had broken it on the bosom of the green-eyed woman. Meanwhile King Loc examined him curiously.

"Pooh!" he said to himself, "it is only a child."

Certainly it was a very simple child, and he owed to his great simplicity his escape from the delicious and mortal kisses of the queen of the Sylphs. Aristotle with all his learning could not have got out of it so easily.

George, seeing himself defenceless, said:

"What do you want of me, big head? Why hurt me, if I have never hurt you?"

King Loc answered in a jovial and gruff tone:

"My dear boy, you do not know if you have hurt me, for you are ignorant of effect and cause, of reflex action, and generally of all philosophy. But do not let us talk of this. If you are not reluctant to leave your funnel, come through here."

George immediately insinuated himself into the cavern, slid down the wall, and, as soon as he reached the bottom:

"You are a good little man," he said to his deliverer, "I will like you all my life; but do you know where Bee of the Clarides is?"

"I know a great many things," answered the dwarf, "and especially that I do not like inquisitive people."

George, hearing these words, remained quite abashed, and he silently followed his guide through the thick and murky air where cuttlefish and crabs were moving. Then King Loc said to him with a grin:

"The road is rather rough, my young prince."

"Sir," George answered him, "the way to freedom is always pleasant, and I am not afraid of being lost by following my benefactor."

Little King Loc bit his lips. When he reached the hall of porphyry, he showed the young man a staircase made in the stone by which the dwarfs go up above ground.

"Here is your road," he said to him, "good-bye."

"Do not say good-bye," replied George, "tell me you will see me again. My life belongs to you after what you have done for me."

King Loc answered:

"What I have done was not for you, but for another. We had better not see each other again, because we might not like each other."

George replied unaffectedly and seriously:

"I did not think that my release would give me pain. And yet it has. Good-bye, sir."

"I wish you a good journey," King Loc cried roughly.

Now this staircase ended in a lonely quarry which lay less than a league from the castle of the Clarides.

King Loc pursued his way muttering:

"This boy has neither the learning nor the wealth of the dwarfs. I do not really know why he is loved by Bee, unless it is that he is young, handsome, loyal, and bold."

He returned to the town laughing to himself like a man who has played a practical joke on some one. Passing in front of Bee's house, he pushed his big head through the window, as he had done into the glass funnel, and he saw the young girl embroidering a veil with silver flowers.

"Rejoice, Bee," he said to her.

"And you," she answered, "little King Loc, may you never have anything to wish for, or at least anything to regret."

There was something he wished for, but really he had nothing to regret. This thought gave him a large appetite for supper. After eating a great number of truffled pheasants, he called Bob.

"Bob," he said to him, "get on your crow: go to the Princess of the Dwarfs and tell her that George of the White Moor, who was for a long time a prisoner of the Sylphs, returned to-day to the Clarides."

He spoke, and Bob flew off on his crow.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*TELLS THE MARVELLOUS MEETING THAT OCCURRED
TO JOHN, THE MASTER TAILOR, AND OF THE
GOOD SONG SUNG BY THE BIRDS OF THE
GROVE TO THE DUCHESS*

When George found himself on the earth where he was born, the first person he met was John, the old master tailor, carrying on his arm a scarlet suit for the steward of the castle. The old fellow gave a great cry at the sight of the young lord.

"St. James!" he said, "if it is not his Highness George of the White Moor, who was drowned in the lake seven years ago, then it is his ghost or the devil himself!"

"It is not a ghost or a devil, my good John, but it is that George of the White Moor who used to slip into your shop and ask you for little bits of cloth to make dresses for the dolls of my sister Bee."

But the old fellow exclaimed:

"So you were not drowned, your Highness? I am very pleased. You look quite well. My grandson, Peter, who used to climb up into my arms of a Sunday morning to see you go by on horseback next to the Duchess, has become a good workman and a fine, handsome lad. He will be glad to know you are not at the bottom of the water, and that the fish have not eaten you as he thought. He is accustomed to say about this the most amusing things in the world; for he is full of wit, your Highness. And it is a fact that everybody regrets you in the Clarides. You were such a promising little boy. I will remember to my last day how once you asked me for my needle, and as I would not give it to you, because you were not old enough to handle it without danger, you answered me that you would go into the wood and pick the fine needles of the pines. This is what you said, and it still makes me laugh. Upon my word this is what you said. Our little Peter used also to make excellent answers. He is a cooper at present, at your service, your Highness."

"I will employ none other but him. But, Master John, give me some news of Bee and the Duchess."

"Alas, where have you been, your Highness, not to know that Princess Bee was carried off, seven years ago, by the dwarfs of the mountain? She disappeared the very day you were drowned; and it can be said that on that day the Clarides lost their two sweetest flowers. The Duchess has mourned greatly ever since. This always makes me say that the great people of this world have their trouble like the poorest workmen, and this is a sign that we are all children of Adam. Accordingly a cat may look at a king, as they say. By the same token the good Duchess saw her hair grow grey and lost all her gaiety. And when, in the spring, she walks about in a black dress under the grove where the birds sing, the smallest of these birds is more enviable than the sovereign of the Clarides. Her sorrow, however, is not hopeless, your Highness; for, if she has no news of you, at least she knows by dreams that her daughter Bee is alive."

Old John said these things and many others, too; but George was not listening to him since he had heard that Bee was a prisoner of the dwarfs.

He reflected:

"The dwarfs detain Bee under the earth; a dwarf got me out of my crystal prison. These little men have not all the same habits; my deliverer surely does not belong to the tribe of those who carried off my sister."

He did not know what to think, unless it was that Bee must be released.

Now they were going through the town, and, as they passed, the old women standing at their thresholds asked each other who this young stranger was, and they agreed his appearance was handsome. The more wary, having recognised the Lord of the White Moor, thought they saw a ghost, and fled, crossing themselves vigorously.

"Holy water ought to be cast at him," said an old woman, "and he would vanish leaving a disgusting smell of sulphur. He is carrying off Master John, the tailor, and quite certainly he will plunge him all alive into the flames of hell."

"Gently, old woman," a burgess replied, "the young lord is alive and a good deal more so than you and me. He is as fresh as a rose, and rather seems to have come from some noble court than from the other world. Men come back from far, my good woman; witness the squire Freeheart, who came back to us from Rome last Candlemas."

And Mary, the armourer's daughter, having admired George, went up to her maiden room, and kneeling then before the image of the Holy Virgin: "Holy Virgin," she said, "grant me a husband like this young lord."

Every one spoke in their own way of the return of George, so much so that the news flew from mouth to mouth to the ears of the Duchess, who was then walking in the orchard. Her heart beat high, and she heard all the birds in the grove sing:

Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
George of the White Moor,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Whom you brought up,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Is here, here, here, here.

Freeheart respectfully approached her, and said to her:

"Your Grace, George of the White Moor, whom you thought to be dead, has returned. I am going to make a song about it."

Still the birds sang:

Teewhit, teewhit, twit, twit,
Is here, here, here,
Is here, here, here.

And when she saw the child coming she had brought up as a son she opened her arms and fell in a swoon.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*TELLS OF A LITTLE SATIN SLIPPER*

People were pretty certain in the Clarides that Bee had been carried off by the dwarfs. It was also the belief of the Duchess; but her dreams did not give her any exact information.

"We will find her," said George.

"We will find her," answered Freeheart.

"And we will bring her back to her mother," said George.

"And we will bring her back," answered Freeheart.

"And we will marry her," said George.

"And we will marry her," answered Freeheart.

And they inquired among the inhabitants concerning the habits of the dwarfs and the mysterious facts of Bee's capture.

This led them to question the nurse Glauce, who had been the nurse of the Duchess of the Clarides; but now Glauce was old and fed the fowls in her farmyard.

There the squire and his master found her. She was crying "Ss! ss! ss! chick! chick! chick; ss! ss! ss! ss!" and throwing grain to the chicks.