When he arrived at the inn he ordered supper, but no sooner had he sat
down to eat it than he felt that he was going sound asleep.
‘I must be more tired than I thought,’ he said to himself, and, after
telling them to be sure to wake him next morning at eight o’clock, he
went to bed.
All night long he slept like a dead man. At eight o’clock they came to
wake him, and at half-past, and a quarter of an hour later, but it was
no use; and at last they decided to leave him in peace.
The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke. He sprang out of bed,
and, scarcely waiting to dress himself, hastened to ask if anyone had
been to inquire for him.
‘There came a lovely princess,’ replied the landlady, ‘in a coach of
gold. She left you this bouquet, and a message to say that she would
pass this way to-morrow morning at eight o’clock.’
The little soldier cursed his sleep, but tried to console himself by
looking at his bouquet, which was of immortelles.
‘It is the flower of remembrance,’ thought he, forgetting that it is
also the flower of the dead.
When the night came, he slept with one eye open, and jumped up twenty
times an hour. When the birds began to sing he could lie still no
longer, and climbed out of his window into the branches of one of the
great lime-trees that stood before the door. There he sat, dreamily
gazing at his bouquet till he ended by going fast asleep.
Once asleep, nothing was able to wake him; neither the brightness of
the sun, nor the songs of the birds, nor the noise of Ludovine’s golden
coach, nor the cries of the landlady who sought him in every place she
could think of.
As the clock struck twelve he woke, and his heart sank as he came down
out of his tree and saw them laying the table for dinner.
‘Did the Princess come?’ he asked.
‘Yes, indeed, she did. She left this flower-coloured scarf for you; said
she would pass by to-morrow at seven o’clock, but it would be the last
time.’
‘I must have been bewitched,’ thought the little soldier. Then he took
the scarf, which had a strange kind of scent, and tied it round his left
arm, thinking all the while that the best way to keep awake was not to
go to bed at all. So he paid his bill, and bought a horse with the money
that remained, and when the evening came he mounted his horse and stood
in front of the inn door, determined to stay there all night.
Every now and then he stooped to smell the sweet perfume of the scarf
round his arm; and gradually he smelt it so often that at last his head
sank on to the horse’s neck, and he and his horse snored in company.
When the Princess arrived, they shook him, and beat him, and screamed at
him, but it was all no good. Neither man nor horse woke till the coach
was seen vanishing away in the distance.
Then John put spurs to his horse, calling with all his might ‘Stop!
stop!’ But the coach drove on as before, and though the little soldier
rode after it for a day and a night, he never got one step nearer.
Thus they left many villages and towns behind them, till they came to
the sea itself. Here John thought that at last the coach must stop, but,
wonder of wonders! it went straight on, and rolled over the water as
easily as it had done over the land. John’s horse, which had carried him
so well, sank down from fatigue, and the little soldier sat sadly on the
shore, watching the coach which was fast disappearing on the horizon.