Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “Madam, I have come, with your gracious permission, to take leave of you; I am about to return to Clarides.”

  “Fair youth,” the queen replied smiling, “I cannot grant you the leave you ask, for I guard you in my crystal palace, to make of you my lover.”

  “Madam,” he replied, “I am not worthy of so great an honour.”

  “That is but your courtesy. What gallant cavalier ever believes that he has sufficiently deserved his lady’s favour. Besides you are still too young to know your own worth. Let me tell you, fair youth, that we do but desire your welfare; obey your lady and her alone.”

  “Madam, I love Honey-Bee of Clarides. I will have no other lady but her.”

  “A mortal maid!” the queen cried, turning pale, but more beautiful still, “a coarse daughter of men, this Honey-Bee! How can you love such a thing?”

  “I do not know, but I know that I love her.”

  “Never mind. It will pass.”

  And she still held the young man captive by means of the allurements of her crystal abode.

  He did not comprehend the devious thing called a woman; he was more like Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes than Tannhauser in the enchanted castle. And that is why he wandered sadly along the walls of the mighty palace searching for an outlet through which to escape; but he only saw the splendid and silent empire of the waves sealing his shining prison. Through the transparent walls he watched the blooming sea anemones and the spreading coral, while over the delicate streams of the madrepores and the sparkling shells, purple, blue, and gold fishes made a glitter of stars with a stroke of their tails. These marvels he left unheeded, for, lulled by the delicious songs of the nixies, he felt little by little his will broken and his soul grow weak. He was all indolence and indifference when one day he found by chance in a gallery of the palace, an ancient well-worn book bound in pigskin and studded with great copper nail-heads. The book, saved from some wreck in mid-ocean, treated of chivalry and fair ladies, and related at great length the adventures of heroes who went about the world redressing wrongs, protecting widows and succouring orphans for the love of justice and in honour of beauty. George flushed and paled with wonder, shame, and anger as he read these tales of splendid adventures. He could not contain himself.

  “I also,” he cried, “will be a gallant knight. I also will go about the world punishing the wicked and succouring the unfortunate for the good of mankind and in the name of my lady Honey-Bee.”

  With sword drawn and his heart big with valour he dashed across the crystal dwellings. The white ladies fled and swooned before him like the silver ripples of a lake. Their queen alone beheld his approach without a tremor; she turned on him the icy glance of her green eyes.

  “Break the enchantment which binds me,” he cried, running towards her. “Open to me the road to earth. I wish to fight in the light of the sun like a cavalier. I wish to return to where one loves, to where one suffers, to where one struggles! Give back to me the life that is real and the light that is real. Give mc back my prowess! If not, I will kill you, you wicked woman!”

  With a smile she shook her head as if to refuse. Beautiful she was and serene. With all the strength that was in him George struck her; but his sword broke against her glittering breast.

  “Child!” she said, and she commanded that he be cast into a dungeon which formed a kind of crystal tunnel under her palace, and about which sharks roamed with wide-stretched monstrous jaws armed with triple rows of pointed teeth. At every touch it seemed as if they must crush the frail glass wall, which made it impossible to sleep in this strange prison.

  The extremity of this under-sea tunnel rested on a bed of rock which formed the vaulting of the most distant and unexplored cavern in the empire of the dwarfs.

  And this is what the two little men saw in a single hour and quite as accurately as if they had followed George all the days of his life. The venerable Nur, having described the dungeon scene in all its tragic gloom, addressed the King in much the same way as the Savoyards speak to the little children when they show their magic lanterns.

  “King Loc,” he said, “I have shown you all you wished to see, and now that you know all I can add nothing more. It’s nothing to me whether you liked what you saw; it is enough to know that what you saw was the truth. Science neither cares to please nor to displease. She is inhuman. It is not science but poetry that charms and consoles. And that is why poetry is more necessary than science. Go, King Loc, and get them to sing you a song.”

  And without uttering a word King Loc left the well.

  XVIII

  In which King Loc undertakes a terrible journey

  Having left the well of wisdom, King Loc went to his treasure house and out of a casket, of which he alone had the key, he took a ring which he placed on his finger. The stone set in the ring emitted a brilliant light, for it was a magic stone of whose power we shall learn more further on. Thereupon King Loc went to his palace, put on a travelling cloak and thick boots and took a stick; then he started on a journey across crowded streets, great highways, villages, galleries of porphyry, torrents of rock-oil, and crystal grottoes, all of which communicated with each other through narrow openings.

  He seemed lost in deep meditation and he uttered words that had no meaning. But he trudged on doggedly. Mountains obstructed his path and he climbed the mountains. Precipices opened under his feet and he descended into the precipices; he forded streams, he crossed horrible regions black with the fumes of sulphur. He trudged across burning lava on which his feet left their imprint; he had the appearance of a desperately dogged traveller. He penetrated into gloomy caverns into which the water of the ocean oozed drop by drop, and flowed like tears along the sea wrack, forming pools on the uneven ground where countless crustaceans increased and multiplied into hideous shapes. Enormous crabs, crayfish, giant lobsters and sea spiders crackled under the dwarfs feet, then crawled away leaving some of their claws behind, and in their flight rousing horrible molluscs and octopuses centuries old that suddenly writhed their hundred arms and spat fetid poison out of their bird-beaks. And yet King Loc went on undaunted. He made his way to the ends of these caverns, through the midst of a heaped up chaos of shelled monsters armed with spikes, with double saw-edged nippers, with claws that crept stealthily up to his neck and bleared eyes on swaying tentacles. He crept up the sides of the cavern by clinging to the rough surface of the rocks and the mailed monsters crept with him, but he never faltered until he recognised by touch a stone that projected from the centre of the natural arch. He touched the stone with his magic ring and suddenly it rolled away with a horrible crash, and at once a glory of light flooded the cavern with its beautiful waves and put to flight the swarming monsters bred in its gloom.

  As King Loc thrust his head into the opening through which daylight poured, he saw George of Blanchelande in his glass dungeon where he was lamenting grievously as he thought of Honey-Bee and of earth. For King Loc had undertaken this subterranean journey only to deliver the captive of the nixies.

  But seeing this huge dishevelled head, frowning and bearded, watching him from under his tunnel, George believed himself to be menaced by a mighty danger and he felt for the sword at his side forgetting that he had broken it against the breast of the woman with the green eyes. In the meantime King Loc examined him curiously.

  “Bah,” said he to himself, “it is only a child!” And indeed he was only an ignorant child, and it was because of his great ignorance that he had escaped from the deadly and delicious kisses of the Queen of the Nixies. Aristotle with all his wisdom might not have done so well.

  “What do you want, fathead?” George cried, seeing himself defenceless, “why harm me if I have never harmed you?”

  “Little one,” King Loc replied in a voice at once jovial and testy, “you do not know whether or not you have harmed me, for you are ignorant of effects and causes and reflections, and all philosophy in general. But we’ll not talk of that. If you don’t mind leaving your
tunnel, come this way.”

  George at once crept into the cavern, slipped down the length of the wall, and as soon as he had reached the bottom he said to his deliverer:

  “You are a good little man; I shall love you for ever; but do you know where Honey-Bee of Clarides is?”

  “I know a great many things,” retorted the dwarf, “and especially that I don’t like people who ask questions.”

  Hearing this George paused in great confusion and followed his guide in silence through the dense black air where the octopuses and crustaceans writhed. King Loc said mockingly:

  “This is not a carriage road, young prince.”

  “Sir,” George replied, “the road to liberty is always beautiful, and I fear not to be led astray when I follow my benefactor.”

  Little King Loc bit his lips. On reaching the gallery of porphyry he pointed out to the youth a flight of steps cut in the rock by the dwarfs, by which they ascend to earth.

  “This is your way,” he said, “farewell.”

  “Do not bid me farewell,” George replied, “say I shall see you again. After what you have done my life is yours.”

  “What I have done,” King Loc replied, “I have not done for your sake, but for another’s. It will be better for us never to meet again, for we can never be friends.”

  “I would not have believed that my deliverance could have caused me such pain,” George said simply and gravely, “and yet it does. Farewell.”

  “A pleasant journey,” cried King Loc, in a gruff voice.

  Now it happened that these steps of the dwarfs adjoined a deserted stone quarry less than a mile from the castle of Clarides.

  “This young lad,” King Loc murmured as he went on his way, “has neither the wisdom nor the wealth. Truly I cannot imagine why Honey-Bee loves him, unless it is because he is young, handsome, faithful and brave.”

  As he went back to the town he laughed to himself as a man does who has done some one a good turn. As he passed Honey-Bee’s cottage he thrust his big head into the open window just as he had thrust it into the crystal tunnel, and he saw the young girl, who was embroidering a veil with silver flowers.

  “I wish you joy, Honey-Bee,” he cried.

  “And you also, little King Loc, seeing you have nothing to wish for and nothing to regret.”

  He had much to wish for, but, indeed, he had nothing to regret. And it was probably this which gave him such a good appetite for supper. Having eaten a huge number of truffled pheasants he called Bob.

  “Bob,” said he, “mount your raven; go to the Princess of the Dwarfs and tell her that George or Blanchelande, long a captive of the nixies, has this day returned to Clarides.”

  Thus he spoke and Bob flew off on his raven.

  XIX

  Which tells of the extraordinary encounter of Jean the

  master tailor, and of the blessed song the birds in the

  grove sang to the duchess

  When George again found himself on the earth on which he was born, the very first person he met was Jean, the master tailor, with a red suit of clothes on his arm for the steward of the castle. The good man shrieked at sight of his young master.

  “Holy St. James,” he cried, “if you are not his lordship George of Blanchelande who was drowned in the lake seven years ago, you are either his ghost or the devil in person.”

  “I am neither ghost nor devil, good Jean, but I am truly that same George of Blanchelande who used to creep to your shop and beg bits of stuff out of which to make dresses for the dolls of my sister Honey-Bee.”

  “Then you were not drowned, your lordship,” the good man exclaimed. “I am so glad! And how well you look. My little Peter who climbed into my arms to see you pass on horseback by the side of the Duchess that Sunday morning has become a good workman and a fine fellow. He is all of that, God be praised, your lordship. He will be glad to hear that you are not at the bottom of the sea, and that the fish have not eaten you as he always declared. He was in the habit of saying many pleasant things about it, your lordship, for he is very amusing. And it is a fact that you are much mourned in Clarides. You were such a promising child. I shall remember to my dying day how you once asked me for a needle to sew with, and as I refused, for you were not of an age to use it without danger, you replied you would go to the woods and pick beautiful green pine needles. That is what you said, and it still makes me laugh. Upon my soul you said that. Our little Peter, also, used to say clever things. Now he is a cooper and at your service, your lordship.”

  “I shall employ no one else. But give me news of Honey-Bee and the Duchess, Master Jean.”

  “Alack, where do you come from, your lordship, seeing that you do not know that it is now seven years since the Princess Honey-Bee was stolen by the dwarfs of the mountain? She disappeared the very day you were drowned; and one can truly say that on that day Clarides lost its sweetest flowers. The Duchess is in deep mourning. And it’s that which makes me say that the great of the earth have their sorrows just as well as the humblest artisans, if only to prove that we are all the sons of Adam. And because of this a cat may well look at a king, as the saying is. And by the same token the good Duchess has seen her hair grow white and her gaiety vanish. And when in the springtime she walks in her black robes along the hedgerow where the birds sing, the smallest of these is more to be envied than the sovereign lady of Clarides. And yet her grief is not quite without hope, your lordship; for though she had no tidings of you, she at least knows by dreams that her daughter Honey-Bee is alive.”

  This and much else said good man Jean, but George listened no longer after he heard that Honey-Bee was a captive among the dwarfs.

  “The dwarfs hold Honey-Bee captive under the earth,” he pondered; “a dwarf rescued me from my crystal dungeon; these little men have not all the same customs; my deliverer cannot be of the same race as those who stole my sister.”

  He knew not what to think except that he must rescue Honey-Bee.

  In the meantime they crossed the town, and on their way the gossips standing on the thresholds of their houses asked each other who was this young stranger, but they all agreed that he was very handsome. The better informed amongst them, having recognised the young lord of Blanchelande, decided that it must be his ghost, wherefore they fled, making great signs of the cross.

  “He must be sprinkled with holy water,” said one old crone, “and he will vanish leaving a disgusting smell of sulphur. He will carry away Master Jean, and he will of course plunge him alive into the fire of hell.”

  “Softly! old woman,” a citizen replied, “his lordship is alive and much more alive than you or I. He is as fresh as a rose, and he looks as if he had come from some noble court rather than from the other world. One does return from afar, good dame. As witness Francoeur the squire who came back from Rome last midsummer day.”

  And Margaret the helmet-maker, having greatly admired George, mounted to her maiden chamber and kneeling before the image of the Holy Virgin prayed, “Holy Virgin, grant me a husband who shall look precisely like this young lord.”

  So each in his way talked of George’s return until the news spread from mouth to mouth and finally reached the ears of the Duchess who was walking-in the orchard. Her heart beat violently and she heard all the birds in the hedge-row sing:

  “Cui, cui, cui,

  Oui, oui, oui,

  Georges de Blanchelande,

  Cui, cui, cui.

  Dont vous avez nourri l’enfance

  Cui, cui, cui,

  Est ici, est ici, est ici!

  Oui, oui, oui.”

  Francoeur approached her respectfully and said: “Your Grace, George de Blanchelande whom you thought dead has returned. I shall make it into a song.” In the meantime the birds sang:

  “Cucui, cui, cui, cui, cui,

  Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui, oui,

  Il est ici, ici, ici, ici, ici, ici.”

  And when she saw the child who had been to her as a son, she opened her arms and fell
senseless at his feet.

  XX

  Which treats of a little satin shoe

  Everybody in Clarides was quite convinced that Honey-Bee had been stolen by the dwarfs. Even the Duchess believed it, though her dreams did not tell her precisely. “We will find her again,” said George. “We will find her again,” replied Francoeur. “And we will bring her back to her mother,” said George.

  “And we will bring her back,” replied Francoeur. “And we will marry her,” said George.

  “And we will marry her,” replied Francoeur. And they inquired among the inhabitants as to the habits of the dwarfs and the mysterious circumstances of Honey-Bee’s disappearance.

  And so it happened that they questioned Nurse Maurille who had once been the nurse of the Duchess of Clarides; but now as she had no more milk for babies Maurille instead nursed the chickens in the poultry yard. It was there that the master and squire found her. She cried: “Psit! Psit! psit! psit! lil — lil — lil — lil — psit, psit, psit, psit!” as she threw grain to the chicks.

  “Psit, psit, psit, psit! Is it you, your lordship? Psit, psit, psit! Is it possible that you have grown so tall — psit! and so handsome? Psit, psit! Shoo! shoo, shoo! Just look at that fat one there eating the little one’s portion! Shoo, shoo, shoo! The way of the world, your lordship. Riches go the rich, lean ones grow leaner, while the fat ones grow fatter. There’s no justice on earth! What can I do for you, my lord? May I offer you each a glass of beer?”

  “We will accept it gladly, Maurille, and I must embrace you because you nursed the mother of her whom I love best on earth.”

  “That’s true, my lord, my foster child cut her first tooth at the age of six months and fourteen days. On which occasion the deceased duchess made me a present. She did indeed.”

  “Now, Maurille, tell us all you know about the dwarfs who carried away Honey-Bee.”

  “Alas, my lord, I know nothing of the dwarfs who carried her away. And how can you expect an old woman like me to know anything? It’s ages ago since I forgot the little I ever knew, and I haven’t even enough memory left to remember where I put my spectacles. Sometimes I look for them when they’re on my nose. Try this drink; it’s fresh.”