Part 4

"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?"

"I do not know, and I have never had the curiosity to learn," answered 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."