Prigio has an Idea.
{Ricardo and Semiramis: p165.jpg}
A weary and way-worn little bird was Prince Ricardo when he fluttered
into the royal study window, in the palace of Pantouflia. The king was
out at a council meeting; knowing that Ricardo had the right things, all
in good order, he was not in the least anxious about him. The king was
out, but Semiramis was in--Semiramis, the great grey cat, sitting on a
big book on the top of the library steps. Now Semiramis was very fond of
birds, and no sooner did Ricardo enter and flutter on to a table than
Semiramis gathered herself together and made one fell spring at him. She
just caught his tail feather. In all his adventures the prince had never
been in greater danger. He escaped, but no more, and went flying round
the ceiling, looking for a safe place. Finally he perched on a
chandelier that hung from the roof. Here he was safe; and so weary was
he, that he put his head under his wing and fell fast asleep. He was
awakened by the return of the king, who threw himself on a sofa and
exclaimed:
"Oh, that Prime Minister! his dulness is as heavy as lead; much heavier,
in fact!"
Then his Majesty lit a cigar and took up a volume; he certainly was a sad
bookworm.
Dick now began to fly about the room, brushing the king's face and trying
to attract his notice.
"Poor little thing!" said his Majesty.
And Dick alighted, and nestled in his breast.
On seeing this, Semiramis began to growl, as cats do when they are angry,
and slowly approached his Majesty.
"Get out, Semiramis!" said the king; and lifting her by the neck, he put
her out of the room and shut the door, at which she remained scratching
and mewing.
Dick now crept out of the royal waistcoat, flew to the king's ear,
twittered, pointed out of the window with one claw, and, lying down on
his back, pretended to be dead. Then he got up again, twittered afresh,
pointed to the Wishing Cap, and, finally, convinced the king that this
was no common fowl.
"An enchanted prince or princess," said Prigio, "such as I have often
read of. Who can it be? Not Jaqueline; she could change herself back in
a moment. By the way, where _is_ Jaqueline?"
He rang the bell, and asked the servant to look for the princess.
Semiramis tried to come in, but was caught and shut up downstairs.
After doing this, the man replied that her Royal Highness had not been in
the palace all day.
The king rushed to the crystal ball, looked all the world over; but no
princess! He became very nervous, and at that moment Dick lighted on the
crystal ball, and put his claw on the very hill where Jaqueline had
disappeared. Then he cocked his little eye at the king.
"Nay, she is somewhere in the unknown centre of South America," said his
Majesty; "somewhere behind Mount Roraima, where nobody has ever been. I
must look into this."
Then he put on the Wishing Cap, and wished that the bird would assume his
natural shape if he was under enchantment, as there seemed too good
reason to believe.
Instantly Dick stood before him.
{Instantly Dick stood before him: p170.jpg}
"Ricardo!" cried the king in horror; "and in this disguise! Where have
you been? What have you done with Jaqueline? Where are the Seven-league
Boots? Where is the Sword of Sharpness? Speak! Get up!" for Dick was
kneeling and weeping bitterly at the royal feet.
"All lost!" said Dick. "Poor Jaqueline! she was the best girl, and the
prettiest, and the kindest. And the Earthquaker's got her, and the
Giant's got the other things," Dick ended, crying bitterly.
"Calm yourself, Ricardo," said his Majesty, very pale, but calm and
determined. "Here, take a glass of port, and explain how all this
happened."
Dick drank the wine, and then he told his miserable story.
"You may well sob! Why didn't you use the Cap of Darkness? Mere
conceit! But there is no use in crying over spilt milk. The thing is,
to rescue Jaqueline. And what are we to say to your mother?"
"That's the worst of it all," said Dick. "Mother will break her heart."
"I must see her at once," said the king, "and break it to her."
This was a terrible task; but the queen had such just confidence in her
Prigio that she soon dried her tears, remarking that Heaven would not
desert Jaqueline, and that the king would find a way out of the trouble.
His Majesty retired to his study, put his head in his hands, and thought
and thought.
"The thing is, of course," he said, "to destroy the Earthquaker before he
wakens; but how? What can kill such a monster? Prodding him with the
sword would only stir him up and make him more vicious. And I know of no
other beast we can set against him, as I did with the Fire-beast and the
Ice-beast, when I was young. Oh, for an idea!"
Then his mind, somehow, went back to the Council and the ponderous
stupidity of the Prime Minister.
"Heavier than lead," said the king. "By George! I have a plan. If I
could get to the place where they keep the Stupidity, I could carry away
enough of it to flatten out the Earthquaker."
Then he remembered how, in an old Italian poem, he had read about all the
strange lumber-room of odd things which is kept in the moon. That is the
advantage of reading: _Knowledge is Power_; and you mostly get knowledge
that is really worth having out of good old books which people do not
usually read.
"If the Stupidity is kept in stock, up in the moon, and comes from there,
falling naturally down on the earth in small quantities, I might obtain
enough for my purpose," thought King Prigio. "But--how to get to the
moon? There are difficulties about that."
But difficulties only sharpened the ingenuity of this admirable king.
"The other fellow had a Flying Horse," said he.
By "the other fellow" King Prigio meant an Italian knight, Astolfo, who,
in old times, visited the moon, and there found and brought back the
common sense of his friend, Orlando, as you may read in the poem of
Ariosto.
"Now," reasoned King Prigio, "if there is a Flying Horse at all, he is in
the stables of the King of Delhi. I must look into this."
Taking the magic spy-glass, the king surveyed the world from China to
Peru, and, sure enough, there was the famous Flying Horse in the king's
stable at Delhi. Hastily the king thrust his feet into the Shoes of
Swiftness--so hastily, indeed, that, as the poet says, he "madly crammed
a left-hand foot into a right-hand shoe." But this, many people think,
is a sign of good luck; so he put the shoes on the proper feet, and in a
few minutes was in the presence of the Great Mogul.
The monarch received him with some surprise, but with stately kindness,
and listened to Prigio while he explained what he wanted.
"I am only too happy to assist so adventurous a prince," remarked the
Great Mogul. "This is like old times! Every horse in my stable is at
your service, but, as you say, only the Flying Horse is of any use to you
in this expedition."
He clapped his hands, the Grand Vizier appeared, and the king gave orders
to have the Flying Horse saddled at once. He then presented King Prigio
with a large diamond, and came down into the courtyard to see him mount.
"He's very fresh," said the groom who held the bridle; "has not been out
of the stable for three hundred years!"
Prigio sprang into the saddle among the salaams of the dusky multitude,
and all the ladies of the seraglio waved their scented handkerchiefs out
of the windows.
The king, as he had been instructed, turned a knob of gold in the saddle
of the Flying Horse, then kissed his hand to the ladies, and, giving the
steed his head, cried, in excellent Persian:
"To the moon!"
Up flew the horse with an easy action, and the king's head nearly swam
with the swiftness of the flight. Soon the earth below him was no bigger
than a top, spinning on its own axis (see Geography books for this), and,
as night fell, earth was only a great red moon.
{King Prigio on the Flying Horse: p178.jpg}
Through the dark rode King Prigio, into the silver dawn of the moon. All
now became clear and silvery; the coasts of the moon came into sight,
with white seas breaking on them; and at last the king reached the silver
walls, and the gate of opal. Before the gate stood two beautiful ladies.
One was fair, with yellow locks, the colour of the harvest moon. She had
a crown of a golden snake and white water-lilies, and her dress now shone
white, now red, now golden; and in her hand was the golden pitcher that
sheds the dew, and a golden wand. The other lady was as dark as
night--dark eyes, dark hair; her crown was of poppies. She held the
ebony Wand of Sleep. Her dress was of the deepest blue, sown with stars.
The king knew that they were the maidens of the bright and the dark side
of the moon--of the side you see, and of the side that no one has ever
seen, except King Prigio. He stopped the Flying Horse by turning the
other knob in the saddle, alighted, and bowed very low to each of the
ladies.
"Daring mortal! what make you here?" they asked.
And then the king told them about Jaqueline and the Earthquaker, and how
he needed a great weight of Stupidity to flatten him out with.
The ladies heard him in silence, and then they said:
"Follow us," and they flew lightly beside the Flying Horse till they had
crossed all the bright side of the moon, above the silver palaces and
silver seas, and reached the summit of the Mountains of the Moon which
separate the bright from the dark side.
"Here I may go no further," said the bright lady; "and beyond, as you
see, all is darkness and heavy sleep."
Then she touched Prigio with her golden wand with twisted serpents, and
he became luminous, light raying out from him; and the dark lady, too,
shone like silver in the night: and on they flew, over black rocks and
black rivers, till they reached a huge mountain, like a mountain of coal,
many thousand feet high, for its head was lost in the blackness of
darkness. The dark Moon-Lady struck the rock with her ebony wand, and
said, "Open!" and the cliffs opened like a door, and they were within the
mountain.
"Here," said the dark lady, "is the storehouse of all the Stupidity;
hence it descends in showers like Stardust on the earth whenever this
mountain, which is a volcano, is in eruption. Only a little of the
Stupidity reaches the earth, and that only in invisible dust; yet you
know how weighty it is, even in that form."
"Indeed, madam," said the king, "no one knows it better than I do."
"Then make your choice of the best sort of Stupidity for your purpose,"
said the dark lady.
And in the light which flowed from their bodies King Prigio looked round
at the various kinds of Solid Stupidity. There it all lay in masses--the
Stupidity of bad Sermons, of ignorant reviewers, of bad poems, of bad
speeches, of dreary novels, of foolish statesmen, of ignorant mobs, of
fine ladies, of idle, naughty boys and girls; and the king examined them
all, and all were very, very heavy. But when he came to the Stupidity of
the Learned--of dull, blind writers on Shakspeare, and Homer, and the
Bible--then King Prigio saw that he had found the sort he wanted, and
that a very little of it would go a long way. He never could have got it
on the saddle of the Flying Horse if the dark lady had not touched it
with her ebony wand, and made it light to carry till it was wanted for
his purpose. When he needed it for use, he was to utter a certain spell,
which she taught him, and then the lump would recover its natural weight.
So he easily put a great block on his saddle-bow, and he and the dark
lady flew back till they reached the crest of the Mountains of the Moon.
There she touched him with her ebony wand, and the silver light which the
bright lady had shed on him died from his face and his body, and he
became like other men.
"You see your way?" said the dark lady, pointing to the bright moon of
earth, shining far off in the heavens.
Then he knelt down and thanked her, and she murmured strange words of
blessing which he did not understand; but her face was grave and kind,
and he thought of Queen Rosalind, his wife.
Then he jumped on the Flying Horse, galloped down and down, till he
reached his palace gate; called for Ricardo, set him behind him on the
saddle, and away they rode, above land and wide seas, till they saw the
crest of the hollow hill, where Jaqueline was with the Earthquaker.
Beyond it they marked the glittering spires and towers of Manoa, the City
of the Sun; and "Thither," said King Prigio, who had been explaining how
matters stood, to Ricardo, "we must ride, for I believe they stand in
great need of our assistance."
"Had we not better go to Jaqueline first, sir?" said Ricardo.
"No," said the king; "I think mine is the best plan. Manoa, whose golden
spires and pinnacles are shining below us, is the City of the Sun, which
Sir Walter Raleigh and the Spaniards could never find, so that men have
doubted of its existence. We are needed there, to judge by that angry
crowd in the marketplace. How they howl!"