The Adventure of the Shopkeepers.
{Man with sword: p48.jpg}
Dick went on with his breakfast. He ate cold pastry, and poached eggs,
and ham, and rolls, and raspberry jam, and hot cakes; and he drank two
cups of coffee. Meanwhile the king had joined the tradesmen who attended
by his orders. They were all met in the royal study, where the king made
them a most splendid bow, and requested them to be seated. But they
declined to sit in his sacred presence, and the king observed that, in
that case he must stand up.
"I have invited you here, gentlemen," he said, "on a matter of merely
private importance, but I must request that you will be entirely silent
as to the nature of your duties. It is difficult, I know, not to talk
about one's work, but in this instance I am sure you will oblige me."
"Your Majesty has only to command," said Herr Schnipp. "There have been
monarchs, in neighbouring kingdoms, who would have cut off all our heads
after we had done a bit of secret business; but the merest word of your
Majesty is law to your loving subjects."
The other merchants murmured assent, for King Prigio was really liked by
his people. He was always good-tempered and polite. He never went to
war with anybody. He spent most of the royal income on public objects,
and of course there were scarcely any taxes to speak of. Moreover, he
had abolished what is called compulsory education, or making everybody go
to school whether he likes it or not; a most mischievous and tyrannical
measure! "A fellow who can't teach himself to read," said the king, "is
not worth teaching."
For all these reasons, and because they were so fond of the queen, his
subjects were ready to do anything in reason for King Prigio.
Only one tradesman, bowing very deep and blushing very much, said:
"Your Majesty, will you hear me for one moment?"
"For an hour, with pleasure, Herr Schmidt," said the monarch.
"It is an untradesman-like and an unusual thing to decline an order; and
if your Majesty asked for my heart's blood, I am ready to shed it, not to
speak of anything in the line of my business--namely, boot and shoe
making. But keep a secret from my wife, I fairly own to your Majesty
that I can _not_."
Herr Schmidt went down on his knees and wept.
{Herr Schmidt went down on his knees: p52.jpg}
"Rise, Herr Schmidt," said the king, taking him by the hand. "A more
honourable and chivalrous confession of an amiable weakness, if it is to
be called a weakness, I never heard. Sir, you have been true to your
honour and your prince, in face of what few men can bear, the chance of
ridicule. There is no one here, I hope, but respects and will keep the
secret of Herr Schmidt's confession?"
The assembled shopkeepers could scarcely refrain from tears.
"Long live King Prigio the Good!" they exclaimed, and vowed that
everything should be kept dark.
"Indeed, sire," said the swordmaker, "all the rest of us are bachelors."
"That is none the worse for my purpose gentlemen," said his Majesty; "but
I trust that you will not long deprive me of sons and subjects worthy to
succeed to such fathers. And now, if Herr Schmidt will kindly find his
way to the buttery, where refreshments are ready, I shall have the
pleasure of conducting you to the scene of your labours."
Thus speaking, the king, with another magnificent bow, led the way
upstairs to a little turret-room, in a deserted part of the palace.
Bidding the tradesmen enter, he showed them a large collection of
miscellaneous things: an old cap or two, a pair of boots of a sort long
out of fashion, an old broadsword, a shabby old Persian rug, an ivory spy-
glass, and other articles. These were, in fact, the fairy presents,
which had been given to the king at his christening, and by aid of which
(and his natural acuteness) he had, in his youth, succeeded in many
remarkable adventures.
The caps were the Wishing Cap and the Cap of Darkness. The rug was the
famous carpet which carried its owner through the air wherever he wished
to go. The sword was the Sword of Sharpness. The ivory glass showed you
anyone you wanted to see, however far off. The boots were the
Seven-league Boots, which Hop-o'-my-Thumb stole from the Ogre about 1697.
There were other valuable objects, but these were the most useful and
celebrated. Of course the king did not tell the tradesmen what they
were.
"Now, gentlemen," said his Majesty, "you see these old things. For
reasons which I must ask you to excuse me for keeping to myself, I wish
you to provide me with objects exactly and precisely similar to these,
with all the look of age."
The tradesmen examined the objects, each choosing that in his own line of
business.
"As to the sword, sire," said the cutler, "it is an Andrea Ferrara, a
fine old blade. By a lucky accident, I happen to have one at home in a
small collection of ancient weapons, exactly like it. This evening it
shall be at your Majesty's disposal."
"Perhaps, Herr Schnitzler, you will kindly write an order for it, as I
wish no one of you to leave the palace, if you can conveniently stay,
till your business is finished."
"With pleasure, your Majesty," says the cutler.
"As to the old rug," said the upholsterer, "I have a Persian one quite
identical with it at home, at your Majesty's service."
"Then you can do like Herr Schnitzler," who was the cutler.
"And I," said the hatter, "have two old caps just like these, part of a
bankrupt theatrical stock."
"We are most fortunate," said the king.
"The boots, now I come to think of it, are unimportant, at least for the
present. Perhaps we can borrow a pair from the theatre."
"As for the glass," said the optician, "if your Majesty will allow me to
take it home with me--"
"I am afraid I cannot part with it," said the king; "but that, too, is
unimportant, or not very pressing."
Then he called for a servant, to order luncheon for the shopkeepers, and
paper for them to write their orders on. But no one was within hearing,
and in that very old part of the palace there were no bells.
"Just pardon me for an instant, while I run downstairs," said his
Majesty; "and, it seems a strange thing to ask, but may I advise you not
to sit down on that carpet? I have a reason for it."
In fact, he was afraid that someone might sit down on it, and wish he was
somewhere else, and be carried away, as was the nature of the carpet.
King Prigio was not absent a minute, for he met William on the stairs;
but when he came back, there was not one single person in the
turret-room!
"Where on earth are they?" cried the king, rushing through all the rooms
in that part of the castle. He shouted for them, and looked everywhere;
but there was not a trace of tailor, hatter, optician, swordmaker,
upholsterer.
The king hastened to a window over the gate, and saw the sentinels on
duty.
"Hi!" he called.
And the sentinels turned round, looked up, and saluted.
"Have you seen anyone go out?" he cried.
"No one, sire," answered the soldiers.
The king, who began to guess what had happened, hurried back to the
turret-room.
There were all the tradesmen with parcels under their arms.
"What means this, gentlemen?" said his Majesty, severely. "For what
reason did you leave the room without my permission?"
They all knelt down, humbly imploring his compassion.
"Get up, you donkeys!" said the king, forgetting his politeness. "Get
up, and tell me where you have been hiding yourselves."
The hatter came forward, and said:
"Sire, you will not believe me; indeed, I can scarcely believe it
myself!"
"Nor none of us can't," said the swordmaker. "We have been home, and
brought the articles. All orders executed with punctuality and
dispatch," he added, quoting his own advertisement without thinking of
it.
On this the swordmaker took out and exhibited the Andrea Ferrara blade,
which was exactly like the Sword of Sharpness.
The upholsterer undid his parcel, and there was a Persian rug, which no
one could tell from the magical carpet.
The hatter was fumbling with the string of his parcel, when he suddenly
remembered, what the king in his astonishment had not noticed, that he
had a cap on himself. He pulled it off in a hurry, and the king at once
saw that it was his Wishing Cap, and understood all about the affair. The
hatter, in his absence, had tried on the Wishing Cap, and had wished that
he himself and his friends were all at home and back again with their
wares at the palace. And what he wished happened, of course, as was
natural. In a moment the king saw how much talk this business would
produce in the country, and he decided on the best way to stop it.
Seizing the Wishing Cap, he put it on, wished all the tradesmen,
including the shoemaker, back in the town at their shops, and also wished
that none of them should remember anything about the whole affair.
In a moment he was alone in the turret-room. As for the shopkeepers,
they had a kind of idea that they had dreamed something odd; but, as it
went no further, of course they did not talk about it, and nobody was any
the wiser.
"Owl that I am!" said King Prigio to himself. "I might have better
wished for a complete set of sham fairy things which would not work. It
would have saved a great deal of trouble; but I am so much out of the
habit of using the cap, that I never thought of it. However, what I have
got will do very well."
Then, putting on the Cap of Darkness, that nobody might see him, he
carried all the _real_ fairy articles away, except the Seven-league
Boots, to his own room, where he locked them up, leaving in their place
the sham Wishing Cap, the sham Cap of Darkness, the sham Sword of
Sharpness, and the carpet which was not a magic carpet at all.
His idea was, of course, that Ricardo would start on an expedition
confiding in his fairy things, and he would find that they did not act.
Then he would be left to his own cleverness and courage to get him out of
the scrape. That would teach him, thought the king, to depend on
himself, and to set a proper value on cleverness and learning, and
minding his book.
Of course he might have locked the things up, and forbidden Ricardo to
touch them, but that might have seemed harsh. And, as you may easily
imagine, with all the powers at his command, the king fancied he could
easily rescue Ricardo from any very serious danger at the hands of giants
or magicians or monsters. He only wanted to give him a fright or two,
and make him respect the judgment of older and wiser people than himself.