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?"