Nur. "Knowing how ignorant, stupid, and wicked men are, I do not care
much what they think or what they do. Except that, to give some value to
the life of the proud and wretched race, the men have courage, the women
beauty, and the little children innocence, O King Loc, the whole of
mankind is lamentable or ridiculous. Subject like the dwarfs to the
necessity of working to live, men have rebelled against the divine law,
and, far from being like us workmen full of jubilance, they prefer war
to work, and would rather kill than help each other. But one must
acknowledge, to be just, that the brevity of their life is the principal
cause of their ignorance and their ferocity. They live too short a time
for them to learn how to live. The Dwarf race, which lives under the
earth, is happier and better. If we are not immortal, at least each of
us will last as long as the earth which carries us in its bosom and
pervades us with its inmost, fruitful warmth, while for the race which
is born on its rough rind, its breath is burning or icy, spreading death
as well as life. However, men are indebted to their extreme misery and
wretchedness for a quality which makes the soul of some of them more
beautiful than the soul of the dwarfs. This quality, as splendid to the
mind as the mild sheen of pearls to the eye, King Loc, is compassion.
Suffering teaches it, and the dwarfs do not know it well, because, being
wiser than men, they have fewer sorrows. So the dwarfs sometimes leave
their deep grottoes and mix with men on the inclement rind of the earth,
in order to love them, to suffer with them and through them, and then to
taste compassion, which falls on the soul like a heavenly, refreshing
dew. Such is the truth about men, King Loc; but did you not ask me for
the particular fate of one of them?"
King Loc having repeated his question, the old Nur looked into one of
the glasses that filled the room. For the dwarfs have no books, those
found among them come from man and are used as toys. To instruct
themselves they do not refer as we do to signs made upon paper; they
look into the glasses and see the subject of their researches. The only
difficulty is to select the proper glass and direct it rightly.
These glasses are of crystal, also of topaz and opal; but those which
have a big polished diamond as lens are the most powerful and are used
to see very distant things.
The dwarfs also have lenses of a diaphanous substance, unknown to men.
These allow the eye to pierce through walls and rocks as if they were
glass. Others, more wonderful still, reproduce as faithfully as a
mirror all that time has carried away in its course, for the dwarfs can
recall, from the infinite vastness of the ether back into their cavern
the light of former days together with the shapes and colours of
vanished ages. They enjoy this view of the past by collecting the
showers of light, which, having once fallen against the forms of men, of
beasts, of plants and of rocks, recoil through the immeasurable ether
for all time.
The old Nur excelled in reviving the shapes of the past and even those,
impossible to imagine, which existed before the earth had taken upon it
the aspect which we know. So it was mere play for him to find George of
the White Moor.
Having looked for less than a minute in quite a simple glass, he said to
King Loc:
"King Loc, he whom you seek is now among the Sylphs, in the manor of
crystal from which none return, and whose iridescent walls march with
your kingdom."
"He is there, is he? Let him stop there!" cried King Loc, rubbing his
hands.
And having embraced the old Nur, he went out of the well in peals of
laughter.
All along the road he held his sides to laugh at his ease; his head
wagged with mirth; his beard rose and fell on his chest; "ha! ha! ha!
ha! ha! ha! ha!" The little men who met him also began to laugh like
him, out of sympathy. Seeing them laugh, others laughed too; this
laughter spread from one to another till the whole inside of the earth
was shaken with a jovial great guffaw.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*TELLS THE MARVELLOUS ADVENTURE OF
GEORGE OF THE WHITE MOOR*
King Loc did not laugh long; on the contrary, he hid the face of a very
unhappy little man under his bedclothes. Thinking of George of the
White Moor, prisoner of the Sylphs, he could not sleep the whole night.
So, at that hour of the morning when the dwarfs who have a dairymaid for
a friend go to milk the cows in her place while she sleeps like a log in
her white bed, little King Loc revisited Nur in his deep well.
"Nur," he said to him, "you did not tell me what he was doing among the
Sylphs."
The old Nur thought that King Loc had gone out of his mind, and he was
not very frightened, because he was certain that King Loc, if he became
mad, would certainly turn into a graceful, witty, amiable, and kindly
madman. The madness of the dwarfs is gentle like their sanity and
delightfully fantastic. But King Loc was not mad; at least he was not
more so than lovers usually are.
"I mean George of the White Moor," he said to the old man, who had
forgotten this young man as completely as possible.
Then the learned Nur arranged the lenses and the mirrors in a careful
pattern, but so intricate that it had the appearance of disorder, and
showed to King Loc in the mirror the very shape of George of the White
Moor, such as he was when the Sylphs carried him off. By properly
choosing and skilfully directing the instruments, the dwarf showed the
lovelorn king the whole adventure of the son of that countess who was
warned of her end by a white rose. And here expressed in words is what
the two little men saw in the reality of form and colour.
When George was carried away in the icy arms of the daughter of the
lake, he felt the water press his eyes and his breast, and he thought it
was death. Yet he heard songs that were like caresses, and he was
steeped in a delicious coolness. When he opened his eyes again he found
himself in a grotto; it had crystal pillars in which the delicate tints
of the rainbow shone. At the end of this grotto there was a large shell
of mother-of-pearl, irisated with the softest colours: it was a canopy
spreading over a throne of coral and weeds where sat the queen of the
Sylphs. But the aspect of the sovereign of the waters had lights softer
than the sheen of mother-of-pearl and of crystal. She smiled at the
child brought to her by her women and let her green eyes rest on him
long.
"Friend," she at length said to him, "welcome in our world, where you
will be spared every pain. For you, no dry books or rough exercises,
nothing coarse that recalls the earth and its labours, but only the
songs, the dances, and the friendship of the Sylphs."
So the blue-haired women taught the child music, waltzing, and a
thousand amusements. They loved to bind on his forehead the shells that
starred their own locks. But he, thinking of his country, gnawed his
fists in impatience.
The years went by, and George's wish to see the earth again was
unchanged and fervent, the hardy earth burnt by the sun, frozen by the
snow, the native earth of sufferings and affections, the earth where he
had seen, where he wished to see Bee again. Now he was growing into a
big boy, and a slight golden down ran along his upper lip. Boldness
came to him with his beard, and one day he appeared before the queen of
the Sylphs, and having bowed, said to her:
"My lady, I have come, if you deign to permit it, to take leave of you.
I am going back to the Clarides."
"Dear friend," the queen answered, smiling, "I cannot grant you the
leave you demand, for I keep you in my crystal manor to make you my
friend."
"My lady," George replied, "I feel unworthy of so great an honour."
"This is the effect of your courtesy. No good knight ever thinks he has
done enough to win the love of his lady. Further, you are yet too young
to know all your merits. Be sure, dear friend, that nobody wishes you
anything but good. You only have to obey your lady."
"My lady, I love Bee of the Clarides, and I will love no other lady but
her."
The queen, very pale, but still more beautiful, cried:
"A mortal woman, a gross daughter of men, this Bee, how can you love
that?"
"I do not know, but I know that I love her."
"Very well, you will recover."
And she detained the young man in the delights of the crystal manor.
He did not know what a woman was, and was more like Achilles among the
daughters of Lycomedes than Tannhauser in the magic mountain. So he
wandered gloomily along the walls of the immense palace, looking for an
opening to run away; but on all sides he saw the floods enclosing his
luminous prison in their mute and magnificent kingdom. Through the
transparent walls he watched the anemones bloom and the coral flowering,
while purple, azure, and golden fish sparkled and sported above the
delicate madrepores and the glistening shells. These marvels did not
interest him; but lulled by the delicious songs of the Sylphs, he slowly
felt his will give way, and his whole soul dissolve.
He was all slackness and indifference, when he found by chance in a
gallery of the palace an old worn book of vellum, studded with copper
nails. The book, found in a wreck at the bottom of the sea, dealt with
chivalry and ladies, and there were told at length stories of the
adventures of heroes who went through the world fighting giants,
redressing wrongs, protecting widows, and assisting orphans for the love
of justice and the honour of beauty. George flushed and grew pale in
turn with admiration, shame, and anger at the tale of these splendid
adventures. He could not contain himself:
"I also," he cried, "will be a good knight! I also will go through the
world punishing the wicked and helping the unhappy for the good of men
and the name of my lady Bee."
Then his heart grew great with courage. He strode with drawn sword
through the crystal mansions. The white women fled and vanished before
him like the silvery waves of a lake. Their queen alone saw him come
upon her unmoved. She fixed on him the cold look of her green eyes.
He rushes to her; he cries:
"Unclasp the charm which you have thrown on me. Open me the road to
earth. I wish to fight in the sun like a knight. I wish to return to
love, to suffer, and to struggle. Give me back the true life and the
true light. Give me action and achievement; if you do not I will kill
you, wicked woman!"
She shook her head smiling, to say "no." She was beautiful and calm.
George struck her with all his strength. But his sword broke against
the glittering bosom of the queen of the Sylphs.
"Child!" she said.
And she had him shut up in a kind of crystal funnel which formed a cell
under the manor; round it sharks prowled, opening their monstrous jaws
armed with a triple row of sharp teeth. And it seemed as if at each
charge they must break the thin partition of glass; it was not possible
to sleep in this strange cell.
The point of this submarine funnel rested on a rocky bottom which was
the dome of the furthest and the least known cavern of the Empire of the
dwarfs.
This is what the two little men saw in the course of an hour as exactly
as if they had followed George all the days of his life. The ancient
Nur, after having displayed the cell scene in all its sadness, spoke to
King Loc much in the way of a showman when he has shown the magic
lantern to little children.
"King Loc," he said to him, "I have shown you all you wished to see,
and, your knowledge being perfect, I can add nothing to it. I am not
anxious to know whether what you have seen has pleased you; it is enough
that it is true. Science takes no account of pleasing or displeasing. It
is inhuman. It is not science, it is poetry which charms and consoles.
That is why poetry is more necessary than science. King Loc, go and
compose a song."
King Loc went out of the well without speaking a word.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*IN WHICH KING LOC MAKES A TERRIBLE JOURNEY*
On leaving the well of science King Loc went to his treasure, took a
ring from a box of which he alone had a key, and put it on his finger.
The bezel of this ring shone brightly, for it was made of magic stone
whose virtues will be discovered in the course of this story. King Loc
then went to his palace, where he put on a travelling cloak, drew on
heavy boots, and took a stick. Then he set out through the crowded
street, the broad roads, the villages, and the halls of porphyry, the
lakes of petroleum, and the grottos of crystal which communicated with
each other by narrow openings.
He seemed pensive and spoke words which had no sense. But he walked on
steadily. Mountains blocked the way and he climbed the mountains;
cliffs yawned at his feet and he went down the cliffs; he crossed fords,
he passed through grisly regions darkened by the fumes of sulphur. He
walked over burning lava, in which his feet printed themselves; he
seemed to be an extremely determined traveller. He entered dark caverns
where the sea water, trickling in drops, fell like tears along the weeds
and made pools in the uneven soil in which innumerable crustaceans grew
monstrously. Enormous crabs, giant crayfish, spiders of the sea,
cracked under the feet of the dwarf and made off, leaving behind a claw,
and waking in their flight hideous hoary cuttle-fish, who suddenly waved
their hundred arms and spat from their beaks a reeking poison. King Loc
went on all the same. He reached the end of these caverns staggering
under a load of monsters armed with stings, double jagged pincers, claws
that curled up to his neck, and sullen eyes brandished at the end of
long branches. He climbed the side of the cavern clinging to the
roughnesses of the rock, and the armoured beasts went up with him, and
he only stopped when by groping he found a stone that jutted out of the
vaulted summit. With his magic ring he touched this stone, which
immediately fell with a great crash, and immediately a flood of light
poured its lovely streams into the cavern and put to flight the beasts
bred in darkness.
King Loc put his head through the opening where the light came from, saw
George of the White Moor thinking of Bee and the earth, and mourning in
his glass prison. For King Loc had made this subterranean journey to
release the prisoner of the Sylphs. But seeing this big head, all hair,
eyebrows, and beard, look at him from the bottom of the crystal funnel,
George thought a great danger threatened him, and he felt for the sword
at his side, forgetting he had broken it on the bosom of the green-eyed
woman. Meanwhile King Loc examined him curiously.
"Pooh!" he said to himself, "it is only a child."
Certainly it was a very simple child, and he owed to his great
simplicity his escape from the delicious and mortal kisses of the queen
of the Sylphs. Aristotle with all his learning could not have got out
of it so easily.
George, seeing himself defenceless, said:
"What do you want of me, big head? Why hurt me, if I have never hurt
you?"
King Loc answered in a jovial and gruff tone:
"My dear boy, you do not know if you have hurt me, for you are ignorant
of effect and cause, of reflex action, and generally of all philosophy.
But do not let us talk of this. If you are not reluctant to leave your
funnel, come through here."
George immediately insinuated himself into the cavern, slid down the
wall, and, as soon as he reached the bottom:
"You are a good little man," he said to his deliverer, "I will like you
all my life; but do you know where Bee of the Clarides is?"
"I know a great many things," answered the dwarf, "and especially that I
do not like inquisitive people."
George, hearing these words, remained quite abashed, and he silently
followed his guide through the thick and murky air where cuttlefish and
crabs were moving. Then King Loc said to him with a grin:
"The road is rather rough, my young prince."
"Sir," George answered him, "the way to freedom is always pleasant, and
I am not afraid of being lost by following my benefactor."
Little King Loc bit his lips. When he reached the hall of porphyry, he
showed the young man a staircase made in the stone by which the dwarfs
go up above ground.
"Here is your road," he said to him, "good-bye."
"Do not say good-bye," replied George, "tell me you will see me again.
My life belongs to you after what you have done for me."
King Loc answered:
"What I have done was not for you, but for another. We had better not
see each other again, because we might not like each other."
George replied unaffectedly and seriously:
"I did not think that my release would give me pain. And yet it has.
Good-bye, sir."
"I wish you a good journey," King Loc cried roughly.
Now this staircase ended in a lonely quarry which lay less than a league
from the castle of the Clarides.
King Loc pursued his way muttering:
"This boy has neither the learning nor the wealth of the dwarfs. I do
not really know why he is loved by Bee, unless it is that he is young,
handsome, loyal, and bold."
He returned to the town laughing to himself like a man who has played a
practical joke on some one. Passing in front of Bee's house, he pushed
his big head through the window, as he had done into the glass funnel,
and he saw the young girl embroidering a veil with silver flowers.
"Rejoice, Bee," he said to her.
"And you," she answered, "little King Loc, may you never have anything
to wish for, or at least anything to regret."
There was something he wished for, but really he had nothing to regret.
This thought gave him a large appetite for supper. After eating a great
number of truffled pheasants, he called Bob.
"Bob," he said to him, "get on your crow: go to the Princess of the
Dwarfs and tell her that George of the White Moor, who was for a long
time a prisoner of the Sylphs, returned to-day to the Clarides."
He spoke, and Bob flew off on his crow.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*TELLS THE MARVELLOUS MEETING THAT OCCURRED
TO JOHN, THE MASTER TAILOR, AND OF THE
GOOD SONG SUNG BY THE BIRDS OF THE
GROVE TO THE DUCHESS*
When George found himself on the earth where he was born, the first
person he met was John, the old master tailor, carrying on his arm a
scarlet suit for the steward of the castle. The old fellow gave a great
cry at the sight of the young lord.
"St. James!" he said, "if it is not his Highness George of the White
Moor, who was drowned in the lake seven years ago, then it is his ghost
or the devil himself!"
"It is not a ghost or a devil, my good John, but it is that George of
the White Moor who used to slip into your shop and ask you for little
bits of cloth to make dresses for the dolls of my sister Bee."
But the old fellow exclaimed:
"So you were not drowned, your Highness? I am very pleased. You look
quite well. My grandson, Peter, who used to climb up into my arms of a
Sunday morning to see you go by on horseback next to the Duchess, has
become a good workman and a fine, handsome lad. He will be glad to know
you are not at the bottom of the water, and that the fish have not eaten
you as he thought. He is accustomed to say about this the most amusing
things in the world; for he is full of wit, your Highness. And it is a
fact that everybody regrets you in the Clarides. You were such a
promising little boy. I will remember to my last day how once you asked
me for my needle, and as I would not give it to you, because you were
not old enough to handle it without danger, you answered me that you
would go into the wood and pick the fine needles of the pines. This is
what you said, and it still makes me laugh. Upon my word this is what
you said. Our little Peter used also to make excellent answers. He is
a cooper at present, at your service, your Highness."
"I will employ none other but him. But, Master John, give me some news
of Bee and the Duchess."
"Alas, where have you been, your Highness, not to know that Princess Bee
was carried off, seven years ago, by the dwarfs of the mountain? She
disappeared the very day you were drowned; and it can be said that on
that day the Clarides lost their two sweetest flowers. The Duchess has
mourned greatly ever since. This always makes me say that the great
people of this world have their trouble like the poorest workmen, and
this is a sign that we are all children of Adam. Accordingly a cat may
look at a king, as they say. By the same token the good Duchess saw her
hair grow grey and lost all her gaiety. And when, in the spring, she
walks about in a black dress under the grove where the birds sing, the
smallest of these birds is more enviable than the sovereign of the
Clarides. Her sorrow, however, is not hopeless, your Highness; for, if
she has no news of you, at least she knows by dreams that her daughter
Bee is alive."
Old John said these things and many others, too; but George was not
listening to him since he had heard that Bee was a prisoner of the
dwarfs.
He reflected:
"The dwarfs detain Bee under the earth; a dwarf got me out of my crystal
prison. These little men have not all the same habits; my deliverer
surely does not belong to the tribe of those who carried off my sister."
He did not know what to think, unless it was that Bee must be released.
Now they were going through the town, and, as they passed, the old women
standing at their thresholds asked each other who this young stranger
was, and they agreed his appearance was handsome. The more wary, having
recognised the Lord of the White Moor, thought they saw a ghost, and
fled, crossing themselves vigorously.
"Holy water ought to be cast at him," said an old woman, "and he would
vanish leaving a disgusting smell of sulphur. He is carrying off Master
John, the tailor, and quite certainly he will plunge him all alive into
the flames of hell."
"Gently, old woman," a burgess replied, "the young lord is alive and a
good deal more so than you and me. He is as fresh as a rose, and rather
seems to have come from some noble court than from the other world. Men
come back from far, my good woman; witness the squire Freeheart, who
came back to us from Rome last Candlemas."
And Mary, the armourer's daughter, having admired George, went up to her
maiden room, and kneeling then before the image of the Holy Virgin:
"Holy Virgin," she said, "grant me a husband like this young lord."
Every one spoke in their own way of the return of George, so much so
that the news flew from mouth to mouth to the ears of the Duchess, who
was then walking in the orchard. Her heart beat high, and she heard all
the birds in the grove sing:
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
George of the White Moor,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Whom you brought up,
Teewhit, teewhit, teewhit,
Is here, here, here, here.
Freeheart respectfully approached her, and said to her:
"Your Grace, George of the White Moor, whom you thought to be dead, has
returned. I am going to make a song about it."
Still the birds sang:
Teewhit, teewhit, twit, twit,
Is here, here, here,
Is here, here, here.
And when she saw the child coming she had brought up as a son she opened
her arms and fell in a swoon.
*CHAPTER XIX*
*TELLS OF A LITTLE SATIN SLIPPER*
People were pretty certain in the Clarides that Bee had been carried off
by the dwarfs. It was also the belief of the Duchess; but her dreams did
not give her any exact information.
"We will find her," said George.
"We will find her," answered Freeheart.
"And we will bring her back to her mother," said George.
"And we will bring her back," answered Freeheart.
"And we will marry her," said George.
"And we will marry her," answered Freeheart.
And they inquired among the inhabitants concerning the habits of the
dwarfs and the mysterious facts of Bee's capture.
This led them to question the nurse Glauce, who had been the nurse of
the Duchess of the Clarides; but now Glauce was old and fed the fowls in
her farmyard.
There the squire and his master found her. She was crying "Ss! ss! ss!
chick! chick! chick; ss! ss! ss! ss!" and throwing grain to the chicks.
"Ss! ss! ss! chick! chick! chick! It is your Highness! Ss! ss! ss! Is
it possible that you have become so big ... ss! and so handsome? Ss! ss!
shoo! shoo! shoo! Do you see that big one there eating the share of the
small ones? Shoo! shoo! So it is everywhere in the world, your
Highness. All the good goes to the rich. The lean get leaner, while the
fat get fatter. For there is no justice on this earth. What can I do
for you, your Highness? You will surely each of you take a glass of
ale?"
"We will take one with pleasure, Glauce, and I will kiss you because you
nursed the mother of her whom I love best in the world."
"It is quite true, your Highness; my baby had its first tooth in six
months and fourteen days, and on that occasion the late Duchess made me
a present. It is quite true."
"Well, tell us, Glauce, what you know of the dwarfs who carried off
Bee."
"Alas! your Highness, I know nothing of the dwarfs who carried her off.
And how can an old woman like me know anything? I forgot the little I
ever learnt long ago, and I have not even enough memory to remember
where I put my spectacles. I often look for them when I have them on.
Try this ale, it is nice and cool."
"Your health, Glauce; but I am told your husband knew something about
Bee's carrying off."
"It is quite true, your Highness. Though he had never got any education,
he knew a great many things that he learnt in inns and taverns. He
never forgot anything. If he was still in this world and sitting at this
table with us, he could tell you stories by the week. He told me so
many and so many of all kinds that they have made a muddle inside my
head, and I cannot, at this moment, make head or tail of any of them.
It is quite true, your Highness."
Yes, it is quite true, and the head of the old nurse was as useless as
an old cracked kettle. George and Freeheart had all the trouble in the
world to get any good out of her. At last, by sifting her, they drew
out a story which began in this style: