The Pilgrims of the Rhine | Page 8

the foliage, or the moon
slept with a richer light upon some favoured glade.
It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were chatting

among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing, and
making love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms; and
the queen herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their
pleasure from a little mound covered with the thickest moss.
"It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us,"
said the fairy Nip.
The queen sighed.
"How handsome the prince is!" said Pipalee.
The queen blushed.
"He wore the prettiest dress in the world; and what a mustache!" cried
Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing.
"He was a coxcomb," said the lord treasurer, sourly. The lord treasurer
was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy at court; he was an
admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, and godfather,--it was
these virtues that had made him a lord treasurer. Unfortunately they had
not made him a sensible fairy. He was like Charles the Second in one
respect, for he never did a wise thing; but he was not like him in
another, for he very often said a foolish one.
The queen frowned.
"A young prince is not the worse for that," retorted Pipalee. "Heigho!
does your Majesty think his Highness likely to return?"
"Don't tease me," said Nymphalin, pettishly.
The lord treasurer, by way of giving the conversation an agreeable turn,
reminded her Majesty that there was a prodigious accumulation of
business to see to, especially that difficult affair about the emmet-wasp
loan. Her Majesty rose; and leaning on Pipalee's arm, walked down to
the supper tent.
"Pray," said the fairy Trip to the fairy Nip, "what is all this talk about

Prince Fayzenheim? Excuse my ignorance; I am only just out, you
know."
"Why," answered Nip, a young courtier, not a marrying fairy, but very
seductive, "the story runs thus: Last summer a foreigner visited us,
calling himself Prince Fayzenheim: one of your German fairies, I fancy;
no great things, but an excellent waltzer. He wore long spurs, made out
of the stings of the horse-flies in the Black Forest; his cap sat on one
side, and his mustachios curled like the lip of the dragon-flower. He
was on his travels, and amused himself by making love to the queen.
You can't fancy, dear Trip, how fond she was of hearing him tell stories
about the strange creatures of Germany,--about wild huntsmen,
water-sprites, and a pack of such stuff," added Nip, contemptuously, for
Nip was a freethinker.
"In short?" said Trip.
"In short, she loved," cried Nip, with a theatrical air.
"And the prince?"
"Packed up his clothes, and sent on his travelling-carriage, in order that
he might go at his ease on the top of a stage-pigeon; in short--as you
say--in short, he deserted the queen, and ever since she has set the
fashion of yawning."
"It was very naughty in him," said the gentle Trip.
"Ah, my dear creature," cried Nip, "if it had been you to whom he had
paid his addresses!"
Trip simpered, and the old fairies from their seats in the honeysuckles
observed she was "sadly conducted;" but the Trips had never been too
respectable.
Meanwhile the queen, leaning on Pipalee, said, after a short pause, "Do
you know I have formed a plan!"

"How delightful!" cried Pipalee. "Another gala!"
"Pooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: the spirit of the
age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity
proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this with
an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion of
General Stupefaction" had been recently established among the fairies,
and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the market. "The
Penny Proser" had contributed greatly to the increase of knowledge and
yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers.
"No," continued Nymphalin; "I have thought of something better than
galas. Let us travel!"
Pipalee clasped her hands in ecstasy.
"Where shall we travel?"
"Let us go up the Rhine," said the queen, turning away her head. "We
shall be amazingly welcomed; there are fairies without number all the
way by its banks, and various distant connections of ours whose nature
and properties will afford interest and instruction to a philosophical
mind."
"Number Nip, for instance," cried the gay Pipalee.
"The Red Man!" said the graver Nymphalin.
"Oh, my queen, what an excellent scheme!" and Pipalee was so lively
during the rest of the night that the old fairies in the honeysuckle
insinuated that the lady of honour had drunk a buttercup too much of
the Maydew.

CHAPTER II.
THE LOVERS.

I WISH only for such readers as give themselves heart