The Pilgrims of the Rhine | Page 8

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 and soul up to me,--if they begin to cavil I have done with them; their fancy should put itself entirely under my management; and, after all, ought they not to be too glad to get out of this hackneyed and melancholy world, to be run away with by an author who promises them something new?
From the heights of Bruges, a Mortal and his betrothed gazed upon the scene below. They saw the sun set slowly amongst purple masses of cloud, and the lover turned to his mistress and sighed deeply; for her cheek was delicate in its blended roses, beyond the beauty that belongs to the hues of health; and when he saw the sun sinking from the world, the thought came upon him that /she/ was his sun, and the glory that she shed over his life might soon pass away into the bosom of the "ever-during Dark." But against the clouds rose one of the many spires that characterize the town of Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into heaven, rested the eyes of Gertrude Vane. The different objects that caught the gaze of each was emblematic both of the different channel of their thoughts and the different elements of their nature: he thought of the sorrow, she of the consolation; his heart prophesied