The End
The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women
that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and true, and
brought them to his master. So a new and upright court was formed, and
strength returned to the nation.
But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered
everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. Then came
Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the
king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built
smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners, and they mined the gold,
and smelted it, and the king coined it into money, and therewith
established things well in the land.
The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. When
he told the good news to Joan, his wife, she rose from her chair and
said, 'Let us go.' And they left the cottage, and repaired to
Gwyntystorm. And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a
warm house for their old age, high in the clear air.
As Peter mined one day, at the back of the king's wine Cellar, he broke
into a cavern crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed therefrom, and
the king used it wisely.
Queen Irene--that was the right name of the old princess--was
thereafter seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when she
was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody
else had a notion whither she had gone, said she was with the dear old
Uglies in the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be
with others there as well. All the uppermost rooms in the palace were
left to her use, and when any one was in need of her help, up thither
he must go. But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in
finding her. She, however, always knew that such a one had been
looking for her.
Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to
meet him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened the
door, lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been
glorified by her fire! And there burned the fire--a huge heap of red
and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess, an old
grey-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly wagging her
tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain
itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. The queen was
casting roses, more and more roses, upon the fire. At last she turned
and said, 'Now Lina!'--and Lina dashed burrowing into the fire. There
went up a black smoke and a dust, and Lina was never more seen in the
palace.
Irene and Curdie were married. The old king died, and they were king
and queen. As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better city, and
good people grew in it. But they had no children, and when they died
the people chose a king. And the new king went mining and mining in
the rock under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold,
and paid less and less heed to his people. Rapidly they sank toward
their old wickedness. But still the king went on mining, and coining
gold by the pailful, until the people were worse even than in the old
time. And so greedy was the king after gold, that when at last the ore
began to fail, he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter
and they that followed him had left standing to bear the city. And
from the girth of an oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to
that of a fir tree of fifty.
One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell with
a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up
with its dust, and then there was a great silence.
Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with
a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the river.
All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of
Gwyntystorm had ceased from the lips of men.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Princess and the Curdie, by George MacDonald