They all promenaded through the parlors in couples. Migajas gave his
arm to his royal consort.
"What a pity," said she, "that our hours of pleasure should be so
brief! Soon we shall have to return to our places."
His Serene Highness, Migajas, from the moment of his transformation,
had begun to experience the queerest sensations. The strangest of
these consisted in his having lost the sense of taste and the notion
of food. All he had eaten lay within him as though his stomach had
been a basket containing a thousand pasteboard viands which he did
not digest, which had no substance, weight, taste, or nourishment.
Moreover, he was no longer master of his movements, and was
compelled to keep time when he walked, which was a difficult thing
to do. He felt himself growing hard, as though he were being turned
to bone, wood, or clay. He thumped himself, and behold! his body
resounded like porcelain. His clothes, too, had grown hard, and were
in every respect precisely like his body.
When he found himself alone with his little wife and clasped her
to his bosom, he experienced no human or divine sensation of
pleasure,--nothing but the harsh shock of two hard, cold bodies. He
kissed her cheek; it was frozen. In vain did his hungry spirit call
upon nature. Nature in him was what it is in a piece of pottery. He
felt his heart throbbing like the machinery of a watch. His thoughts
alone survived; the rest was all unfeeling matter.
The princess seemed very happy. "What is the matter, my love?" said
she, observing Pacorrito's expression of distress.
"I am weary, bored, bored to death, my dear," said the lover, gaining
assurance.
"You will get accustomed to it. O happy hours! If this lasted much
longer, we could not endure it!"
"Does your Highness call this happiness?" observed Migajas. "What
coldness, what emptiness, what rigidity!"
"The after-taste of human things still lingers in your soul, and
you are still a slave to the views of your depraved human senses.
Pacorrito, I shall have to implore you to control these paroxysms, or
you will be the demoralization and destruction of every living doll."
"Life! life! blood! heat!" shouted Migajas, in despair, gesticulating
like a maniac. "What is happening to me?"
The princess clasped him to her bosom, and kissing him with her red,
waxen lips, exclaimed:
"You are mine, forever, forever, through time everlasting!"
Just then they heard a great commotion, and the sound of many voices
crying,--
"It is time! it is time!"
The clock struck twelve, and all had disappeared, princess, palace,
dolls, and emperors. Pacorrito was left alone.