The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Princess Pourquoi

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Princess PourquoiThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Princess PourquoiAuthor: Margaret Pollock SherwoodIllustrator: Sarah Stilwell WeberRelease date: June 23, 2016 [eBook #52402]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Ernest Schaal and The Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCESS POURQUOI ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Princess PourquoiAuthor: Margaret Pollock SherwoodIllustrator: Sarah Stilwell WeberRelease date: June 23, 2016 [eBook #52402]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Ernest Schaal and The Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)

Title: The Princess Pourquoi

Author: Margaret Pollock SherwoodIllustrator: Sarah Stilwell Weber

Author: Margaret Pollock Sherwood

Illustrator: Sarah Stilwell Weber

Release date: June 23, 2016 [eBook #52402]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Ernest Schaal and The Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCESS POURQUOI ***

By Margaret SherwoodTHE PRINCESS POURQUOI. Illustrated. $1.50.THE COMING OF THE TIDE. With frontispiece. 12mo, $1.50.DAPHNE: An Autumn Pastoral. 12mo, $1.00.HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.Boston and New York

By Margaret Sherwood

THE PRINCESS POURQUOI. Illustrated. $1.50.

THE COMING OF THE TIDE. With frontispiece. 12mo, $1.50.

DAPHNE: An Autumn Pastoral. 12mo, $1.00.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

Boston and New York

THE

PRINCESS POURQUOI

EVERY DAY HER BIG EYES GREW WISER

THE PRINCESS POURQUOI BY MARGARET SHERWOOD ILLUSTRATED [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY MDCCCCVII

Published October 1907

CONTENTS

THE PRINCESS POURQUOI1

THE CLEVER NECROMANCER43

THE PRINCESS AND THE MICROBE81

THE SEVEN STUDIOUS SISTERS131

THE GENTLE ROBBER175

⁂ The Princess Pourquoi, The Princess and the Microbe, and The Seven Studious Sisters appeared first inScribner's Magazine, The Clever Necromancer in theAtlantic Monthly, and The Gentle Robber inMcClure's Magazine. They are here reprinted by the courteous permission of the publishers of those magazines.

ILLUSTRATIONS

EVERY DAY HER BIG EYES GREW WISERFrontispiece

SIDE BY SIDE THEY WALKED TOGETHER22

"IT'S GOT TO BE KILLED," SAID THE PRINCESS STURDILY101

"WHAT!" THUNDERED HIS MAJESTY142

CAME RIDING FROM ALL PARTS OF THE KINGDOM148

HE BEGAN TO WEAR THE LOOK OF THOSE WHO SEE MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE185

FOR SOME HALF SMILED AND HID THEIR SMILES AS BEST THEY COULD203

A GLIMPSE OF AN HERETIC BEING BURNED TO DEATH210

THE PRINCESS POURQUOI

Once upon a time, in a country very far away, a new princess was born. As is usual in such cases, the King, her father, and the Queen, her mother, held a great christening feast, to which were invited all the crowned heads for miles around, all the nobility of their own kingdom, and the fairies whose good wishes were considered desirable. In the middle of the ceremony, as is also customary, a very angry little old lady, with a nose like a beak, burst into the room.

"May I ask why I was not invited?" she demanded. "These are here," and she pointed to the fairy who rules the hearts of men, and to the fairy who rules circumstance. She herself was the fairy who rules men's minds.

"You!" stammered his Majesty. "Why, it is only a girl. We—we thought you would be offended. Later, if a son should be born"—

"You thought!" shrieked the enraged little creature, gathering her shoulder-shawl about her. "You thought nothing whatever about it. I am insulted, and I shall be revenged. Before anything yet has been given to this child I shall curse her"—

"Oh!" begged the crowned heads and the nobility.

"Yes," said the fairy, stamping and growing angrier, "I shall curse her with amind."

"Anything but that," groaned his Majesty.

"Not that for a woman-child," moaned the mother, from under her silken coverlid.

"Yes," said the fairy, and her wicked black eyes snapped over her withered red cheeks. "She is a woman-child, and yet she shall think. She shall be alien to her own sex, and undesired by the other. She shall ask and it will not be given her. She shall achieve and it shall count her for naught. Men shall point the finger at her like this" (and she pointed one skinny forefinger at the King), "and shall whisper, 'There goes the woman with brains, poor thing!' As for your Majesty, in her shallyou find your punishment. She shall think what you do not know, and divine what you cannot find out. Now," added the wicked fairy, turning to the two godmothers who stood by the child's cradle, "see if you, with all your giving, can do anything to lessen the curse that I have spoken," and she rushed away like a whirlwind, leaving every face dismayed.

The fairy who rules circumstance stood by the cradle and spoke. Her face was the face of one who wavers two ways, and her voice was unsure.

"The child shall have fortune," she said, "good-fortune, so far as is consistent with what has already been given. I wish," she added apologetically, "that I had spoken first."

"Why didn't you?" grumbled his Majesty under his whiskers, but he dared not speak aloud, for he was afraid of circumstance, being a king.

The other fairy stood silent, looking down into the child's face.

"But she shall know love," she said softly, after a little time. The sleeping princess smiled.

From the time that it was spoken the curse was felt. Before the baby could talk, she would lie in the royal cradle, fixing upon the King, her father, and the Queen, her mother, when they came to see her, eyes so big, so wise, so full of question, that his Majesty fled, and her Majesty covered her face with her hands, wondering what it could be that the child remembered and sheforgot. The first word the Princess uttered was "Why." She said it so often that presently, through the whole length and breadth of the kingdom, she was known as the "Princess Pourquoi," though her real name was Josefa Maria Alexandra Renée Naftaline.

"Why," she asked, when she was very small, "did trees grow this way, instead of the other end up? Why did people stand on their feet instead of on their heads? Why did you like some people better than others, and why couldn't it be just as easy to like them all alike?"

She was a good little girl, but she had all the credit of being a bad one. She saw through what she was not intended to see through; she heard what she was not meantto hear; she understood what others wished to keep hidden. Therefore it came to pass that she was very lonely. She had a way of climbing affectionately up to the neck of some favored person, drawing down the head for a loving embrace, and then asking some terrible question, whereupon she was quickly put down on the floor and left alone. There she would sit, with so grieved a look in her big blue eyes that the next one who entered would pity the golden-haired baby, and would take her up, only to become a victim to some other unanswerable inquiry.

When she was four and five, her questions were theological or philosophical. "Why was she made at all, if she were as naughty as people said? Wouldn't it have been less trouble not to have made her, orto have made her good? Why were you you, and I I? Who was going to bury the last man?" The king's philosophers stood about in silence and gnawed their beards. They were terribly afraid of the little girl with chubby legs and dimples. As she grew older, her questioning turned more toward social matters and practical affairs. "Why," she asked his Majesty, her father, who also was afraid of her, "did he say that he loved his neighbor and yet make war? Why was he king? Was it because he was wiser and better than other people?" She looked at him so long and so doubtfully that his Majesty wriggled in the royal chair. He felt that this wretched child was endangering his power. Sometimes he was so miserable that he would willingly have abdicated, buthe could not abdicate his little daughter. Besides, he was a king, and he did not have any place to go. Other children had been granted him, a line of little princesses, who wore long, stiff embroidered robes; and a nice, fat, stupid little prince, who was a great comfort to his father. All these other princelets obeyed the court etiquette and wore the court clothes, and never felt the ripple of an idea across their little minds, but they could not atone to the King for the thorn in his flesh known as Josefa Maria Alexandra Renée Naftaline.

The Princess Pourquoi objected to wearing a stomacher, for she liked to lie flat on her face in the park, watching the ants. She objected to making the court bow, and smiling the court smile, and puttingout her hand to be kissed. Why should she? The ladies-in-waiting could only tell her, "It was so." She objected to taking mincing walks in the royal gardens among the peacocks, and sometimes, to the horror of all the court, escaped and played games with peasant children outside. She disliked her lessons. Why should she say, like a parrot, what her governess told her to, when there were birds and beasts and creeping things outside to study, and a library inside full of things really worth learning? So she went her own way, growing wistful and more lonely, and every day her big eyes grew wiser and fuller of secrets. Those who saw her crossed themselves and murmured, "The Curse!"

Once his Majesty held a great festival tocelebrate the thousandth anniversary of the founding of his kingdom by his imperial ancestor, Multus Pulvius Questus, who had conquered 500,000 men with his own arm, and had laid the cornerstone of a great principality. The festival was a brilliant one, and all the royal neighbors came. Just before the ceremonies began, in the large audience chamber, the governess of the Princess Pourquoi, stung by questions she could not answer regarding the achievements of Multus Pulvius, burst out with:

"You are a naughty little girl, and if you act this way, the fairy prince will never come."

"I don't want a fairy prince," replied the Princess proudly, looking at her governess with steady blue eyes. "I want a real one."

A little prince standing near, in a red velvet suit, looked at her very hard.

As time went on, the Princess Pourquoi was not quite content. She was too eager for that.

"I shall be happy when I find out," she said sadly one day.

"Find out what, your Highness?" asked the chief philosopher.

"It," answered the girl, and she pointed toward the horizon. "What it means, where we came from, what you are for and I am for."

The chief philosopher took a golden goblet of wine that a page had brought him and drank it to its dregs. Perhaps he meant this for an answer. Then he winked at his fellow-philosopher, and the two went armin arm down a long path between box hedges in the garden. The Princess entered the royal palace and knelt at the feet of the King.

"Your Majesty," she asked, "why are people who do not know anything called wise men and philosophers?"

It was soon after this that the King made a great proclamation, offering the hand of his daughter to any one who would answer one of her questions satisfactorily. Suitors came by scores, although her unfortunate propensity was known, for the Princess was growing to be very beautiful, and his Majesty the King was very rich. The aspirant to her hand usually stood before the royal throne in the presence of the court, and the Princess was ushered in by the major domo.The Princess Pourquoi did not trouble herself to find new questions; she only asked some of the old ones over again, and the Crown Prince of Kleptomania, the Heir Apparent to the throne of Rumfelt Holstein, the reigning King of Nemosapientia, besides dozens of others, went sorrowfully back to their homes, rejected. When it was found that the ordeal was terrible, and the result always the same, the suitors gradually ceased coming, and the Princess Pourquoi remained a great matrimonial problem, aged fifteen, on the hands of her parents.

It was at this time that the Princess resolved to study, and to achieve something that was really her own. People should respect her, not because she was a princess, but because she could do great things. Shepleaded with his Majesty until he ordered the greatest scholar in his kingdom to act as tutor for her, the greatest sculptor to teach her modeling, the greatest painter to teach her how to draw. For five long years the Princess worked and was happy, but the eyes of her mother were full of pity when they rested on her, and the passers-by in the streets whispered, "Poor thing!" Mothers drew their little ones closer to them when they saw her, and said: "Take care! It is the woman with a mind!" And the young ladies of the court, when they came out into the park with their long trains, and saw the Princess seated by herself with a book under a tree, said to themselves, under their breath: "Like that, too, but for the grace of God!"

At one of the annual exhibitions of works of art in the city was a statue, anonymously exhibited, that won great praise. It was of white marble, and represented a woman standing on tiptoe and reaching up and out with one hand. The fingers closed on nothing, and the look of the face was disappointed. Perhaps the greatest skill was shown in the rendering of the eyes. Their expression was baffling, and no one could say whether the woman was blind or not.

"What masculine strength of handling!" said the artists.

"What wonderful inner meaning!" said the philosophers.

The Princess Pourquoi came one day to visit it, and stood a long time watching thepeople who saw it. The outspoken praise made her eyes glisten. A workingman, in a peasant's blue blouse, strolled near. There was fine powder of chipped stone upon his sleeve.

"There is great power there," said the workingman, "but the work is crude."

The peasant was hustled out of the room, and an admiring crowd gathered about the statue of the groping woman. Some one whispered that it was not a man's work at all, but the work of a woman. Surprise, incredulity, disapproval passed in waves over the faces of the crowd. The rumor was established as a fact, though the woman's name was withheld. Every one could see faults now.

"We suspected it from the first," saidthe philosophers. "The lack of virility is apparent."

"You can see the woman's carelessness in regard to details in every fold of the drapery!" said the artists.

The Princess Pourquoi listened. Presently she faced the crowd.

"It is my work," she said simply. Then she summoned her lackeys and ordered her carriage, and disappeared before artists or philosophers could find any knot-holes to crawl through.

Their Majesties, the royal parents, were greatly pleased when they heard of this scene. Perhaps this condemnation of her statue would bring their daughter to her senses.

It was very fortunate that just at this time there came rumors of the advent ofthe Fairy Prince. From Bobitania, a kingdom leagues away, he was reported to be approaching, presumably to woo the Princess Pourquoi. The King and the Queen chuckled in secret together the day a messenger arrived to announce the advent of his Royal Highness, Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor Christian Ernst, Heir-Apparent to the throne of Bobitania. This was a very great principality, indeed. Surely the Princess would for once act like other people, and would, for the sake of all that was to be gained, profess herself satisfied in regard to her questions.

The royal household was ordered into its very best clothing. The King and the Queen, the Prince and the Princesses, shimmered in velvet and jewels. The pages wereresplendent in yellow and silver. The philosophers were profound in rich black. The woolly white dogs of the ladies-in-waiting were combed and tied with the colors of Bobitania, crimson and black. Everywhere, in jewels, in flower devices, among the hangings on the wall, were displayed the arms of Bobitania, a crimson star on a dusky background.

After the ceremonies of greeting were over, when Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor had bent before the King and the Queen on their throne, and had had presented to him all the royal offspring, the Princess Pourquoi was requested to show his Highness the garden of flowers, that his eyes might be refreshed after his long journey. So side by side they walked, talking together,between long rows of stately chrysanthemums, white, yellow, and red, she very erect in her brocaded gown, whose deep blue folds swept the grass, he all smiles and obeisance, in a slashed suit of scarlet and black. The waiting-women, by two and two, came on behind.

SIDE BY SIDE THEY WALKED TOGETHER

As they paced the garden, the peacocks retreated slowly, a statelier procession than they. They passed a fountain where a single workman was busy sculpturing a figure from a block of gray granite. His face was shaded by a cap, but the splendid action of strong arms and muscular shoulders was visible. The Princess paused, and the waiting-women turned, pretending to be busy with the box of the hedges or the pink-tipped daisies at their feet. The face ofPrince Ludwig Jerome Victor grew uneasy, for he felt that the hour for his questioning had come. But the Princess was not thinking of him, for her eyes were following the workman's fingers.

"Why blue jean for one man's arm and velvet with pearls for another?" she said half to herself. "Why hunger for that man, and for me surfeit?"

"Most gracious Princess," answered Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor, secure in his reply, "the earth with all upon it is glad to lie as dirt beneath the feet of the most beautiful lady in the world."

He fell upon one knee and kissed her hand. She looked down intently into his narrow, upraised face.

"Queen among princesses," he begged,"question me and accept my answer. From far Bobitania I have come to woo, and if I fail, I die. What is the question I must answer?"

"You have answered," said the Princess. "Rise."

The hand of the workman had paused, uplifted, with a sculptor's hammer in its grasp. There was a queer little smile upon his face below the shadow of the cap.

The waiting-women paced in silence behind the Princess back to the presence of the King.

"Most august Sovereign," said the Prince, bending his knee in the royal presence, "I have come to place my kingdom at your daughter's feet. Deign to ask her if I have found favor in her eyes."

"What say you, my daughter?" asked the King, his delight shining through his face. "Is it not a noble prince and a fair offer?"

"My Lord and Father," said the Princess Pourquoi, bending in courtesy, then standing erect, more haughty than before, "it is no prince, but a man with a lackey's soul. He may come to reign, but a king he can never be. As for my hand, he may not again touch it. I go to make it clean."

Then she turned and walked, in a great silence, between the parted lines of frightened people, out of the audience-chamber and away.

How Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor Christian Ernst went away in great anger, how the royal apologies were presented in vain, how the Princess Pourquoi was imprisonedfor three days in her chamber with no books to read and was held in deep disgrace by all the court, is a long story, and one that would take much time to tell. But the Princess only smiled serenely, presented her duty to her parents, saying that she was deeply grieved if her necessary words had hurt them, and, the first day she was free, went walking in the royal garden alone.

The artisan was there at the fountain, working at the same stone figure. The Princess stood in silence and watched him. At her approach he had taken off his cap and had laid it on the grass. Yellow autumn leaves fell on his blue blouse and on her crimson velvet robe.

"Do you like to work?" asked the Princess Pourquoi timidly.

A look of amusement crept into the man's keen, dark eyes, and his lips quivered with a suppressed smile.

"Yes, your Highness," he answered, making an inclination of his head. And he went on working.

"Why?" asked the Princess Pourquoi.

"Gracious Lady and Princess," replied the artisan, "I do not know."

The Princess stared at his deft fingers and the quivering muscles of his arms. Then she strolled away to pick a late white rose, and presently wandered back, as if forgetful where her feet were going.

"I have seen you before," she remarked absent-mindedly.

He bent again, and murmured something respectful that she could not hear. Thechance given him to continue the subject he did not improve.

"Once," continued the Princess, "in a hovel among other hovels at the foot of the hill. Through the open door of the sick-room where I stood, I saw you sitting at a poor man's table, sharing his black bread and muddy ale. Why were you there?"

"He was my friend," said the artisan. "His hut was then my home."

"Why do you wear a workingman's blouse and carve in stone?" demanded the Princess abruptly.

"Madame and Princess," replied the man, "it is the work that I have chosen," and he went on chipping away fine flakes of stone.

The lady walked away again, this time following a wayward peacock across the grass. The workingman paused to look after her, with the sunshine falling on her brown hair. Then he picked up a chisel that he had dropped, and, in doing so, bent to kiss the grass where her feet had rested, for she had trodden very close.

When the Princess came back the next time, she spoke with the quiet air of one who is greeting an old friend.

"You criticised my statue," she remarked. "You called it crude."

"Whoever reported my poor opinion to the Princess," said the man, "had evidently heard but part of what I said."

The Princess showed no curiosity as to the rest.

"Why were the others so unjust?" she demanded. "They praised my work when they thought it was a man's. They turned upon it and called it bad when they knew a girl had done it, and did not yet know that it was a princess. What can one do when it is all so unfair?"

The artisan answered not a word, but went on chipping, chipping, bending all his energy to the curve of a finger. The Princess watched with eyes in which all the blue of the autumn sky and all the shining of the autumn sun seemed centred. When the young man at length looked at her, her head was thrown back, and her face wore the look of one who feels her blood to be royal.

"Do you know," she asked sternly, though the expression of her eyes was ofone who pleads, "what fate is reserved for the man who answers even one of my questions satisfactorily."

"Gracious Lady and Princess," he said humbly, "I have answered nothing, for I did not know. My mind, too, has questioned ceaselessly into the injustice of many things. I only"—

"You only," said the Princess, with a sweep of her hand,—"you onlykept on working! Come!"

Refusing to walk at her side, he followed at a little distance, stepping unsurely, as one would walk in a dream. The lackeys looked at him and sneered as he went. His Majesty the King and her Majesty the Queen looked down in impatience from the throne when they saw the PrincessPourquoi leading in a peasant clad in blue jean.

"Some injury to redress!" muttered his Majesty. "Always a new grievance! I never have time to sleep or think."

The Princess swept across the audience-chamber with the air of one whom nature, not circumstance alone, had made a queen. She bent before her royal parents, then laid her hand upon that of the artisan.

"Your Majesties will remember," she said, "the decree made regarding me when I was fifteen years old. This man alone has answered one question of mine to my satisfaction. I come to beg"—and her face wore a frightened look, yet shone with a sudden gleam of mischief—"I come to beg that he incur the penalty."

Her Majesty fainted and was carried from the room. His Majesty turned purple, and the calves of his legs swelled with rage. The ladies-in-waiting hid their faces behind their hands and whispered, "Shameless!" The philosophers shook their heads and muttered, "The Curse!" As soon as the King could find his voice he thundered: "Away with him to the donjon keep! Let the executioner come and do his duty! Cut off the head of the impostor who would steal my daughter's hand!"

"He is no impostor," said the Princess scornfully. "Whatever his birth may be, his soul is royal."

The men-at-arms came forward to seize him, but the Princess flung herself between him and them. He put her gently aside,and stepped forward to defy them all, but his eyes rested all the while on her with a look that made great throbbings in her wrists. The clash of arms in the chamber was interrupted by the sound of commotion outside. Shouts of "Make way!" were heard. Then there were cries of: "A messenger, a messenger from his Grace of Bobitania!" Free way was left in the crowded hall for a man in a travel-stained riding-costume, who entered and hurried toward the throne.

"May it please your Grace," he panted, "his Majesty the King of Bobitania desires to make known that the Heir-Apparent to the throne, who disappeared many weeks ago, has not been discovered. News has just reached Bobitania that his valet, whostole much of the Prince's clothing after his disappearance, has been here representing himself to be the Prince. Let it therefore be known that the person who of late called himself Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor Christian Ernst of Bobitania is an impostor, being the son of a liberated serf, and the grandson of a swineherd."

The nobles, the ladies-in-waiting, the philosophers crowded about the messenger. While he was explaining that Prince Ludwig Jerome Victor was eccentric, though deeply loved by every man, woman, and child in Bobitania; how he had insisted on learning a trade; how he had often disappeared for a time, living in disguise among his poorest subjects—the Princess was looking at the stone-cutter's face and smiling.She forbore to cast one glance of triumph upon the King.

The messenger took his leave of his Majesty and turned to go. Suddenly he fell upon his knees and kissed the hand of the peasant.

"My Lord the Prince!" he cried. And the vaulted ceiling gave back the cry, for all the people in waiting took it up and shouted for the Prince who wore blue jean.

"Why did you do it?" asked the Princess Pourquoi, two hours later, when she stood in the garden with her betrothed, the real Ludwig Jerome Victor Christian Ernst, Heir-Apparent to the throne of Bobitania.

"Gracious Lady and Princess," he answered, laughing, "I wanted to be real."

Then he told her how, many years ago, he, a tiny princeling, had heard a naughty little princess, in that very audience-chamber, demanding, not a fairy prince, but a real one.

"I took the only way I knew to become real," he said. "Have I found favor in your eyes, O beloved of my heart?"

"How long beloved?" asked the Princess anxiously, for she was much ashamed of the way in which she had wooed him.

"All my life long," he answered. And the peacocks never told how he kissed her.

His Majesty the King and her Majesty the Queen were delighted with the match. The royal father spent hours in telling the young Prince how great a delight his daughter's mind had always been to him,and how he should miss companionship with her when she was far away in Bobitania. All the court agreed with their Highnesses that they had had suspicions of the valet-prince from the very first, and the lackeys mentioned to the Princess the fact that from the first they had suspected the stone-cutter to be something more than appeared on the outside. The Princess Pourquoi became very popular up and down the length and breadth of the kingdom, and the philosophers, as they sipped their wine in the afternoon sunshine, said over and over what a wonderful child she had been, and how they had always prophesied a great destiny for her.

So there was a great wedding, the preparations for which shook Christendom toits foundations. All the crowned heads that were known were there. Barbaric kings from beyond Bobitania graced the ceremony in gorgeous embroidered robes sewn with diamonds and rubies and pearls. No colors that are known could paint the procession with its rainbow tints of banners and of clothing. Man has not senses enough to take in a description of the food that was provided. Peacocks' brains, served in golden dishes, were the simplest viands there.

The Princess Pourquoi was attired in white velvet, with a train eleven feet and six inches long; her lord and master glowed like a tropical bird in scarlet, and Christendom exclaimed that there had never been so beautiful a pair. While the trumpetswere blowing and the dishes were rattling, and the after-dinner speeches of the philosophers were reaching their most blatant point, Prince Victor was quietly telling his bride that he had no intention of giving up his occupation of stone-cutter, and none of sitting upon his father's throne unless requested to by all the inhabitants of Bobitania. They talked in snatched whispers about the drawing-schools they would establish for the poor, and the model cottages that should be built from end to end of Bobitania, and they made great plans for the Princess's further work in sculpture. What else they said in sweet whispers, I shall not tell, for it was no one's affair but their own.

The most magnificent guest of all wasthe fairy godmother who had cursed the bride in her cradle. This wicked person was attired in black samite, made with incredible puffs and a train. She had a stomacher picked out with jet, and wore a very stiff ruff underneath her hooked chin. Her general expression was very fierce, but once she was heard to murmur, hiding a pleased smile behind her bony hand:—

"A pretty age of the world, when not even the curse of a mind can harm a woman!"

THE CLEVER NECROMANCER

Once, a long, long, long, long,longtime ago, there was a city by the sea, and it was called Marmorante. Little gray mists floated down the gray streets, past the tall gray houses with carven windows and doors; pale, silvery fogs wrapped tower and spire, and oftentimes low, dark clouds hung sullenly for days together over gabled roofs and dull red chimneys; nor could the bravest winds that blew nor the swiftest golden sunbeams drive mist and cloud and fog away.

In Marmorante lived all manner of folk: a duke, a count, two marquises, and several squires; there were merchants many, with white-sailed ships that cut the waves; there were wool-combers and flax-beaters and haberdashers and marketmen; but most of all there were women: countesses, duchesses, and stately marchionesses; wives of merchants, wool-combers, haberdashers, flax-beaters,—women, women, women, maidens innumerable, and hosts of little girls. There were little girls with flaxen ringlets, little girls with long braids of yellow hair; dark-haired, slender maidens, maidens with white arms, maidens with blue eyes, brown eyes, or gray—every kind of maiden that ever lived, in life or in story.

Life went on quietly in the city by the sea. In the gray mornings count and countess talked amicably together in their great hall, and wool-carder and his wife gossiped cheerily as they rolled and carded the white fleece; in the gray afternoons Sir Knight walked in the castle garden among the flowers with my lady, and the butcher's 'prentice met his maid by the postern door: by embroidery frame and spinning-wheel, by tiring-room and kitchen spit, all was gray peace.

Then one day, when the clouds hung low, a raven croaked above the castle wall; black rooks cawed dismally with hints of coming disaster; and bats, mistaking clouded noon for night, flew out with squeaks and gibberings at noonday—yetnothing happened. Peasants' carts came creaking, as was their wont, to the city gate, with blue-smocked Jean or yellow-trousered Pierrot driving roan mare or piebald steed, and bringing bags of grain and great rolls of tanned skins to market. Old women with their flower baskets on their arms came nodding and courtesying, giving hollyhock or rose for toll to the porter, who would not say them nay because of their skinny arms and hungry faces. At last came one who was not of the line of sun-browned farmers, withered dames, or ruddy boys who drove in flocks of sheep.

It was a man, tall and long, and thin of face, clad in doublet and hose of sober drab, and he had naught with him save three small, transparent bags or bladders, onerose-colored, one purple, and one yellow, which seemed to be filled with but empty air.

"What bringest hither?" asked the porter, in a surly voice.

"Naught save my rattle," answered the tall man in drab; and with that he struck the bags together, so that there came out a tinkling sound wondrous cunning and small.

"Is danger therein?" said the man at the gate, holding back. "Mayhap they go off, like powder, and do harm."

Then the tall man smiled a strange, three-cornered smile, for his chin was long and protruding, and strained his lips that way.

"Ay," he confessed, "they go off, but they do no hurt;" then he paid his pennytoll and went unmolested in. The porter stood long, with arms akimbo, and looked after him.

"'Tis some fool," said the porter, and went back to his mug of ale.

The sad-hued man went on through the narrow streets that let in only a strip of the sky's blue, and anon he came to the open market-place, where little was doing that day, for the flowers were wilted, and the vegetables for the most part gone; only the lambs that were left bleated piteously now and then. The stranger sprang upon a counter where wheat had been sold, and he struck his little bags together, so that they rattled merrily as he called aloud:—

"Come, hear, hear, hear! Come, hear the words of wisdom I shall say, the greatestwords that shall ever meet your ears. Come, hear, hear, hear! To-day I speak, and to-morrow I may not: 'tis the chance of a lifetime, and not to be overlooked. Come, hear, hear, hear!"

Now with the rattling of the bags, and the rattling of the man's voice, many people came running hither: squire and 'prentice and count, marchioness and merchant's lady, and the cook from the castle, all hurrying toward the empty sound. Soon a great crowd was gathered, of men and of maidens, of women with white wimples and folded kerchiefs, and of little girls with yellow hair.

"Come, hear, hear, hear!" repeated the man, in slow singsong, watching the people with his narrow blue eyes which wererimmed with red; then, so swiftly that none could see, he bent his head and touched his lips to the transparent bags. He spoke, and lo! a miracle, for out of his mouth came a beautiful, iridescent mist of words that floated and floated and broke against the gray fog, and rested across the eyes of an elderly woman who stood buxom and comely, and fell like a halo upon the fair hair of a young girl standing bareheaded in the sun, and flashed like an opal, flickered like a flame, so that at last the whole market-place was full of floating color; yet all that the man had said was, "Be good and you will be happy," with variations.

"A necromancer!" said the red-faced butcher under his breath.

"A prophet!" cried the countess, as a floating bit of the colored mist lighted on her lips.

"I never heard such truth," said the fair-haired maiden, with a bar of iridescent cloud across her eyes.

Watching and silent the Necromancer stood, the three-cornered smile upon his lips. They prayed him to do his trick again, but he shook his head and would not.

"To-morrow," he said, "at twoP.M.;" and he smiled at the shower of golden coin that rained into his bell-crowned hat.

When they were sure that nothing more was forthcoming, they went marveling away; but all about the silvery fog that clung to the steeples, and the gray mists that lay along the streets, and the cloudsthat hung sullenly above, still hovered little rosy flecks of flame and hints of rainbow color.

Day after day the Necromancer stood in the market-place, and put his lips secretly to his colored bags, and spoke. He had searched all the copy-books of the kingdom, and had taken familiar truths, such as: "The good die young;" "To be selfish is to be miserable;" "Haste makes waste;" "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush;" and he clothed them in rainbow colors and breathed his mist about them, so that they stalked in beauty wonderful and strange, and the folk who listened did not know their own ideas when they met them face to face, because of the garment of many-colored words in which they came.Then the women went mad throughout the city, mad for the loud-sounding voice and the rattle of the bags, rose-colored, purple, and yellow. By her broidery frame the Countess Angélique forgot to draw green thread of silk through the dim web, and in her lap her white hands lay idle. Walking to and fro by her spinning-wheel, little Jeanne wove into the blue yarn the glittering phrases of yesterday, so that the strands tangled and knotted at the spindle. Margot, the cook, forgot her chickens roasting on the spit, but turned and turned them by the glowing coals till they were burned and black; and Joan the butcher's wife could no longer tell haunch of venison from flitch of bacon, but greeted customers with a vacant stare, for her mind was quite gone,gone the way of the wind, after the wonderful bits of colored fog.

Now the fair-haired maid who had stood awed in the market-place on the day when the enchanter came was a rich merchant's daughter, and her given name was Blanche. She was betrothed to one Hugh of a neighboring city, and he came often to Marmorante, lodging always at the sign of the Red Dragon. Thus had been his wooing, as he stood one day with the maid and her father by the lattice that looked forth on the street.

"Wilt have me?" he asked, and the words cost him much, for he was a man of plain speech, and oft of no speech at all.

The maid stood in the sunshine and looked upon him, and he thought her agoodly sight. Green was her gown, and cut square at the throat, and with it the color of her eyes seemed green, and he knew not if her hand or her neck were whiter.

"I could give thee white velvet to thy train," he stammered, and the old man, her father, stood and watched.

"Dost love me?" asked the maid, for she was one that had heard old ballads sung; and the man opened wide his honest eyes.

"Ay, surely, else had I not asked thee to wife."

"Then will I wed thee," said the maid, and the wooer stood gazing at her, not daring the kiss that was in his mind.

"'Tis a good chaffer," said young Hugh."We shall get on rarely together;" and thereafter, as heretofore, he had no eyes for aught save the maiden's face. All this was a month agone, and to-day, when he came again, the maid would have it that he must needs go forth with her to the market-place to listen to this wonder; and he followed, willing enough, for he would have gone into the very dragon's teeth after the hem of her gown. Howsoever, the thought of going to listen to mere speech seemed to him but folly.

When they came to the open place, and he saw what was there, his eyes opened wide, and he whistled softly for sheer amazement, for never yet had he seen so great a concourse gathered together. There were women in velvet and in satin,women in homespun and in blue jean, even women in rags; and there were maidens as many and as lovely as the leaves upon the maple tree when it turns to rosy color in the fall, maidens dull or bright of hair as the case might be, but always bright of eye and of cheek. Far and near they gathered, crowding close together; many stood on bench or on counter, straining white necks forward; and all the windows that looked upon the market were crowded with fair faces. Presently, with long and pensive stride, came the lean man in drab; and as he came, honest Hugh heard the sudden, sharp breathing of the maid at his side, and felt her lean forward as if she were one quivering ear.

What followed puzzled the young mansorely. It was one of the great days of the Necromancer: forth from his mouth came a violet speech in the form of a bubble, and it floated over the heads of the people in lovely changing shades that ranged all the way from deep purple to the palest tint that is not yet white. Midway across the gray cloud it burst, and its gleaming bits drifted hither and yon, and the speaker smiled as he saw the eager fingers raised to catch the tiny vapors which melted as soon as touched. Forth came another and another; it was a day of loveliest froth. Anon came a speech of the color of gold that shimmered and shone in the sunlight, and burst into sparkles a thousand ways, and so golden bubble followed golden bubble. All the little girls with floating hairor yellow braids ran after them, with hands lifted high to catch them before they burst, and the least maids wept because the taller ones caught more than they.

Young merchant Hugh stood watching, with his hand upon his chin.

"'Tis a strange sight," he murmured to himself. "Jugglers enow have I seen in the East, and many of their devices have I learned, but I have seen naught like this."

Then he turned to his betrothed.

"Dost know the trick, Blanche?" he asked, but when he saw her face, he knew that there was somewhat amiss with his words. All awed was she, and in her eyes was the look of one who had seen a vision; and, glancing about, he saw that the other women and maids wore thesame expression. He came home pondering, having noted the shower of coin that had fallen into the Necromancer's hat; nor could he understand, for he gave ever good measure for the gold that was given him. Also he was sore troubled, for his betrothed had no words for him, only looks of high disdain.

"Well, daughter," said the old merchant, as the two came in, "what saith the prophet to-day?"

"Oh!" cried the maiden, "all was wonderful and full of beauty. Each day is his discourse more marvelous than yesterday's."

"But what was it all about?" he asked, laying his hand upon her hair, for he was tender of her.

"How could I presume to tell?" she asked, with a grieved red lip. "'Twas too wonderful to put into words;" and she swept from the room, with no glance for her lover.

Young merchant Hugh, to whom the very rushes on which the maiden stepped were dear because of his great speechless love, gazed after her, jealous of the look upon her face, and cruelly wounded by her scorn.

"I will find out the trick," said the young man to himself, between set teeth; and he was one who ever made good his words.

Now the maiden Blanche was glad when her lover begged to go forth with her the next day and the next, at twoP.M.

"Mayhap he may learn something of this wondrous speech," she said wistfully, thinking to herself that it would be sweet to be wooed in violet words and words of the color of gold. When he bent shyly to kiss her before they went, with lips that trembled for the great love they might not say, she drew stiffly back, nor would she thereafter permit touch or caress, and much she spoke of the joy of a maiden's life that would leave time free for thought; yet she took him gladly with her for a week of days. Ever he listened, as one spellbound, nor once removed his glance from the Necromancer's face; and he was keen of eye, and wont in traffic to detect word or look of fraud, and he saw what no one else had seen.

"I have it!" he cried, and he slapped his fist upon the palm of his left hand. "Those be bags of many-colored words that he hath with him, and he but sucks them up and breathes them forth."

That day he sent his sweetheart home with Dame Cartelet, that lived hard by, and was as besotted as she on the man with the magic words; then he went and lay in wait in the street through which the Necromancer passed each day in going home; and as he waited, he turned back his velvet cuffs, and felt lovingly of the muscle of shoulder and arm. So it was not long before a tall man in drab went running through the narrow streets on the outskirts of the town, crying and wringing his hands, and the rattling bags of rosecolor, and purple, and gold were gone from his neck.

"Oh, my vocabulary!" he wailed. "Oh, my bags, my bags, my bags! What am I but a man undone without my bag of adjectives!"

The dogs and the children that ran at his heels did not understand, nor did smith and weaver as they stood in their doorways.

"Oh, my other bag, my bag of epithets, of polysyllabic epithets!" cried the fugitive as he ran.

A squealing pig joined the chase, and the men children and maid children who ran after laughed aloud. The women who watched from lattice or stone doorstep were of those who, by means of ten skillfullyselected adjectives from the rose-colored bag, and a dozen golden epithets from the bag of yellow, had been made to gape and quiver with the sense of the birth of new truth, yet they failed to recognize the juggler, for iridescent mist and ruddy vapor had vanished from his head and shoulders, and they saw naught save a lean and ugly man fleeing under a gray sky; and, hearing, they yet did not understand his cry of deep dismay.

"Oh, my exclamation points, my lost exclamation points! Oh, my pet hiatus that laid all low when nothing else would avail!"—and so he passed out of their sight, and out of the city of Marmorante.

At the sign of the Red Dragon that afternoon, young merchant Hugh wasclosely locked in his room. Behind great iron bolts he sat upon a three-legged stool, and worked with the colored, rattling bags.

"'Tis well that men have devised this thing," he said, holding a mirror before his face, as he sucked air from the bag of rose; "else could I not see if all goes well." And his heart was well-nigh bursting with joy when he saw that the breath of his mouth was even as the breath of the Necromancer upon the air. Then he slipped downstairs and begged for a cup of ale, and as the maid served him in the kitchen, he blew out a whiff from the bag of gold, and of a sudden her face became as the faces of the women who stood in the market-place under the spell of the juggler, and Hugh was glad.

The next day he hid the bags in a neckerchiefof fine silk, and went to the house of his sweetheart, asking to see her; but when she came, it was with a face set and cold, and she paused with the great oaken table between them.

"Hugh," she said, unsmiling, "I have been thinking."

"'Tis foolish work for a woman," he answered stoutly.

"That which thou dost say but confirms my thought," she answered, still more coldly. "We cannot be wed; waking and sleeping have I considered this matter, and thus have I resolved."

"Now, why?" cried honest Hugh bluntly.

"We have so little in common," said Blanche.

"Thou shalt have all," he stammered, forgetting, in his hurt, the magic bags. "Why, 'tis for thee I send forth all my ships. I will be but thy pensioner."

A shadow of pain passed over the maiden's face.

"I mean not goods nor possessions, nor any manner of vulgar things; 'tis of mind and soul I speak, and ours be far apart."

"My goods be not vulgar!" cried young merchant Hugh. "Rare silks and cloths from the East have I, and purest pearls, for thy white throat. No common thing is there in all my store."

Then the little foot of Blanche tapped impatiently on the stone floor.

"'Tis of no avail that I try to make thee understand! I say there be depths in mynature that thou mayst not satisfy; also am I full busy this morning and must beg to be excused"—and with that she drew open the heavy oaken door, leaving him in the long room as one dazed.

Then he bethought him of his bags, and drew them out too late, taking a whiff from each as a sob rose in his throat. Suddenly the fair hair of Blanche appeared again in the doorway, and she smiled as a stranger upon him.

"I forgot to say that I wish thee all manner of good, and great prosperity," she said amiably.

Then out of Hugh's mouth came a purple speech, and a speech of the color of gold; and little iridescent mists floated through the air, while a rose-colored bubblerested for a moment on the white eyelids of the maiden. The dull-paneled room was as the breaking of a rainbow; yet all he had said was, "Wilt not wed me, Blanche?" But he said it in rose color and purple and gold.

"What have I done?" cried the maiden sorrowfully; and he rejoiced to see that the look upon her face was as it had been when she had listened to the Necromancer's philosophies and faiths.

Then he turned and smiled, saying: "I love thee, Blanche," and he spoke in the juggler's speech, which made a glory on the maiden's hair, and about her gown of green. With outstretched hands she came toward him, and she laid her head upon his breast, smiling up at him.

"I was mad but now, Hugh," she breathed. "Our two souls be but one."

"Wilt come with me to the market-place this afternoon?" he asked.

"Nay," sighed the maiden. "I care not for the market-place, for I am happy here, where I have found my home."

"I speak there," he said bluffly, "at twoP.M."

"Thou!" and the maiden's laughter rang out like the touch of silver bells, "and of what?"

"Of phases of occult thought," he answered gravely.

"Ay," cried Blanche, and she raised her face to kiss him. "Ay, Hugh, be sure that I shall be there when thou dost talk philosophies."

The young merchant was good as his word, and that afternoon he stood in the market-place upon a counter, rattling the juggler's bags as he waited. As before, men, women, and maidens came, by tens, by twenties, by hundreds, till there was no spot where he could look without meeting a pair of wistful eyes.

"It looks to be but plain Hugh, the merchant," whispered one to another.

"Hath he undertaken to sell his wares here?" asked one.

"He hath choice pearls," whispered a maiden who was not yet wholly given over to occult thought.

But Hugh had begun to speak, and faces of wonder were lifted to him, for he was strong of lung, and the breath from themagic bags went farther than ever before.

"Our friend the Necromancer is indisposed, and I must take his place," he began. "Like him, I have chosen a theme from the depths of human thought; and now, hear! hear! hear!"

Then eloquence poured forth from the man's lips so fast, so full a stream, that the very welkin was rose-tinted, and a great rainbow seemed to overspread the sky. Gray clouds above the tallest spires broke into tints of opal, and all the air shaded into the violet and purple of exclamation points, and of the pet hiatus, which was hard to work, but came well off. Golden glory haunted carven door and window, and words of flame crept around the traceryof arch and gable. Women sobbed for very joy; others wrote madly on their tablets; maidens gasped with red lips slightly opened; never, during the whole lecture season, had come so big a wind from out the bags, and honest Hugh blushed with mingled shame and triumph when he saw the face of his betrothed, for it wore the look of one who had seen the white vision of naked truth.

Following the fashion of the Necromancer, he had taken a maxim, and had dressed it up so that men knew it not, and so that it came forth as revelation. All that he had said from the first to the last was the truth that he knew best: "Honesty is the best policy;" but this was the way in which he had said it, with constantly shifting color:

"Glory awaits the equable! All-hails are the portion of him, who, unswerving, with eyes upon the path ahead, with lofty head erect, perambulates his chosen path through this world's tangled wilderness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though golden cohorts beckon. The goal is for the upright feet. The crown waits.... What matter if the victor be sobbing and breathless, so that he be conqueror?" (Observe the hiatus.) "So saith golden-tongued Plato; so saith heavy-browed Aristotle of persuasive speech; so saith Aulus Gellius, withdrawn in his inner truth, and his brother, Currant Gellius, whose essence clings; so say the holy fathers, subtle Basil, myriad-minded Chrysostom; so saith the copy-book."

When the speech was over, and the bags hidden away, Hugh bore as best he might the tears and congratulations of the women, their murmured plaudits, and inspired looks.

"'Tis the first time I have ever failed to give honest measure," he said shamefacedly to himself as they flocked about him.

That night, as he sat with the maiden and her father, he spoke of departing on the morrow with a ship that would sail for Morocco to be gone many months, and his sweetheart came to him, creeping into his arms.

"Do not leave me, Hugh," she pleaded. "It is so far away."

"I must go, little one," he answered,smoothing her fair hair. "Men sit not ever by the fire to hear tabby purr."

"Say them again," she pleaded, "say again the words thou didst speak this morning, that I may have them with me when thou art far away."

"Far in illimitable recesses of time and of space," he began shamefacedly, "before phenomena existed, thy bodiless soul and mine met and mingled as one"—

"Where hast learned that jargon, Hugh?" asked the old merchant, with a loud guffaw.

"Hush!" said Hugh, with loving hands upon the maiden's ears so that she might not hear. "All is fair in love, father!"

But Hugh was still an honest merchant, and never in his long and happy life did he use the stolen vocabulary in bargaining, orto gain dishonest advantage in trade. Only, when the face of Blanche, his wife, grew sad, he would take out the colored bags, which he kept secretly locked in an iron chest, and then the old smiles would come back to her beautiful face, and with them the look of awe wherewith she regarded her husband, as the mist of purple, and the flecks of rose color, and the bubbles of gold, fell on hair and eye and ear.

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