A certain Magician had retired for the sake of study to a cottage in a
forest. It was summer in a hot country. In the trees near the cottage
dwelt a most beautiful Firefly. The light she bore with her was
dazzling, yet soft and palpitating, as the evening star, and she seemed
a single flash of fire as she shot in and out suddenly from under the
screen of foliage, or like a lamp as she perched panting upon some
leaf, or hung glowing from some bough; or like a wandering meteor as
she eddied gleaming over the summits of the loftiest trees; as she
often did, for she was an ambitious Firefly. She learned to know the
Magician, and would sometimes alight and sit shining in his hair, or
trail her lustre across his book as she crept over the pages. The
Magician admired her above all things:
“What eyes she would have if she were a woman!” thought he.
Once he said aloud;
“How happy you must be, you rare, beautiful, brilliant creature!”
“I am not happy,” rejoined the Firefly; “what am I, after all, but a
flying beetle with a candle in my tail? I wish I were a star.”
“Very well,” said the Magician, and touched her with his wand, when she
became a beautiful star in the twelfth degree of the sign Pisces.
After some nights the Magician asked her if she was content.
“I am not,” replied she. “When I was a Firefly I could fly whither I
would, and come and go as I pleased. Now I must rise and set at certain
times, and shine just so long and no longer. I cannot fly at all, and
only creep slowly across the sky. In the day I cannot shine, or if I do
no one sees me. I am often darkened by rain, and mist, and cloud. Even
when I shine my brightest I am less admired than when I was a Firefly,
there are so many others like me. I see, indeed, people looking up from
the earth by night towards me, but how do I know that they are looking
at me?”
“The laws of nature will have it so,” returned the Magician.
“Don’t talk to me of the laws of Nature,” rejoined the Firefly. “I did
not make them, and I don’t see why I should be compelled to obey them.
Make me something else.”
“What would you be?” demanded the accommodating Magician.
“As I creep along here,” replied the Star, “I see such a soft pure
track of light. It proceeds from the lamp in your study. It flows out
of your window like a river of molten silver, both cool and warm. Let
me be such a lamp.”
“Be it so,” answered the Magician: and the star became a lovely
alabaster lamp, set in an alcove in his study. Her chaste radiance was
shed over his page as long as he continued to read. At a certain hour
he extinguished her and retired to rest.
Next morning the Lamp was in a terrible humour.
“I don’t choose to be blown out,” she said.
“You would have gone out of your own accord else,” returned the
Magician.
“What!” exclaimed the Lamp, “am I not shining by my own light?”
“Certainly not: you are not now a Firefly or a Star. You must now
depend upon others. You would be dark for ever if I did not rekindle
you by the help of this oil.”
“What!” cried the Lamp, “not shine of my own accord! Never! Make me an
everlasting lamp, or I will not be one at all.”
“Alas, poor friend,” returned the Magician sadly, “there is but one
place where aught is everlasting. I can make thee a lamp of the
sepulchre.”
“Content,” responded the Lamp. And the Magician made her one of those
strange occult lamps which men find ever and anon when they unseal the
tombs of ancient kings and wizards, sustaining without nutriment a
perpetual flame. And he bore her to a sepulchre where a great king was
lying embalmed and perfect in his golden raiment, and set her at the
head of the corpse. And whether the poor fitful Firefly found at last
rest in the grave, we may know when we come thither ourselves. But the
Magician closed the gates of the sepulchre behind him, and walked
thoughtfully home. And as he approached his cottage, behold another
Firefly darting and flashing in and out among the trees, as brilliantly
as ever the first had done. She was a wise Firefly, well satisfied with
the world and everything in it, more particularly her own tail. And if
the Magician would have made a pet of her no doubt she would have abode
with him. But he never looked at her.