BUT the stars went on their course, and left their glittering picture
only a little while before the Child’s eyes. Even this faded, and then
vanished quite away. And he was beginning to feel tired, and to wish to
lay himself down again, when a flickering Will-o’-the-wisp appeared from
behind a bush—so that the Child thought, at first, one of the stars had
wandered out of its way, and had come to visit him, and to take him with
it. And the Child breathed quick with joy and surprise, and then the
Will-o’-the-wisp came nearer, and sat himself down on a damp mossy stone
in front of the cave, and another fluttered quickly after him, and sat
down over against him and sighed deeply, “Thank God, then, that I can
rest at last!”
“Yes,” said the other, “for that you may thank the innocent Child who
sleeps there within; it was his pure breath that freed us.”
“Are you, then,” said the Child, hesitatingly, “not of yon stars which
wander so brightly there above?”
“Oh, if we were stars,” replied the first, “we should pursue our tranquil
path through the pure element, and should leave this wood and the whole
darksome earth to itself.”
“And not,” said the other, “sit brooding on the face of the shallow
pool.”
The Child was curious to know who these could be who shone so
beautifully, and yet seemed so discontented. Then the first began to
relate how he had been a child too, and how, as he grew up, it had always
been his greatest delight to deceive people and play them tricks, to show
his wit and cleverness. He had always, he said, poured such a stream of
smooth words over people, and encompassed himself with such a shining
mist, that men had been attracted by it to their own hurt. But once on a
time there appeared a plain man, who only spoke two or three simple
words, and suddenly the bright mist vanished, and left him naked and
deformed, to the scorn and mockery of the whole world. But the man had
turned away his face from him in pity, while he was almost dead with
shame and anger. And when he came to himself again, he knew not what had
befallen him, till, at length, he found that it was his fate to hover,
without rest or change, over the surface of the bog as a
Will-o’-the-wisp.
“With me it fell out quite otherwise,” said the first: “instead of giving
light without warmth, as I now do, I burned without shining. When I was
only a child, people gave way to me in everything, so that I was
intoxicated with self-love. If I saw any one shine, I longed to put out
his light; and the more intensely I wished this, the more did my own
small glimmering turn back upon myself, and inwardly burn fiercely while
all without was darker than ever. But if any one who shone more brightly
would have kindly given me of his light, then did my inward flame burst
forth to destroy him. But the flame passed through the light and harmed
it not; it shone only the more brightly, while I was withered and
exhausted. And once upon a time I met a little smiling child, who played
with a cross of palm branches, and wore a beamy coronet around his golden
locks. He took me kindly by the hand and said, ‘My friend, you are now
very gloomy and sad, but if you will become a child again, even as I am,
you will have a bright circlet such as I have.’ When I heard that, I was
so angry with myself and with the child, that I was scorched by my inward
fire. Now would I fain fly up to the sun to fetch rays from him, but the
rays drove me back with these words:
‘Return thither whence thou camest, thou dark fire of envy, for the sun
lightens only in love; the greedy earth, indeed, sometimes turns his mild
light into scorching fire. Fly back, then, for with thy like alone must
thou dwell.’ I fell, and when I recovered myself I was glimmering coldly
above the stagnant waters.”
While they were talking the Child had fallen asleep, for he knew nothing
of the world nor of men, and he could make nothing of their stories.
Weariness had spoken a more intelligible language to him—_that_ he
understood, and he had fallen asleep.