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Harriet had always a number of ill-natured comments to make on the dress and general appearance of people they passed. Julian smiled, but with no genuine pleasure. As always, he did his best to lead the girl's thoughts away from their incessant object, hers, elf. They were back again at the end of Gray's Inn Road by half-past four. "Well, I won't keep you," said Harriet, with the sour smile.
But many weeks were to pass before she recovered; a severe relapse again endangered her life. During the first days of illness she had talked to Lienhard in her fevered visions, called him by name, and warned him against the spiteful elf who would ruin him.
There was a little man I'll sketch him if I can, For he clung to mine and me Like the old man of the sea; And in spite of taunt and scoff We could not pitch him off, For the cross-grained, waspish elf Cared for no one but himself.
Körg was not slow to recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word. The elf looked down upon him half displeased, yet chuckling merrily withal. "You have nothing to fear from me," he continued, sweetly. "I am the guardian of the honest poor. This night I come to reveal to you a secret, which, rightly used, will bestow upon you riches, life-lasting and unlimited."
ONCE upon a time, two little Fairies went out into the world, to seek their fortune. Thistledown was as gay and gallant a little Elf as ever spread a wing. His purple mantle, and doublet of green, were embroidered with the brightest threads, and the plume in his cap came always from the wing of the gayest butterfly.
Battle-fields lay between us and tower walls, and the way was long and hard to find, yet can you deny, my elf, that you came in and plucked it and wore it away in your hair, to keep or to cast aside as pleased you?" Smiles and tears growing together, she caught the blossom from him and pressed it to her lips.
When it was evening the two brothers came and asked how he had got on, and he said, "pretty well so far," and that he had seen no one except at mid-day when a little mannikin had come and begged for a piece of bread, that he had given some to him, but that the mannikin had let it fall and had asked him to pick it up again; but as he did not choose to do that, the elf had begun to lose his temper, and that he had done what he ought not, and had given the elf a beating, on which he had told him where the King's daughters were.
To describe the feelings with which the unfortunate doctor went fasting about his day's work the manner in which that scene returned to him after every visit he made the continual succession in which wrath, dismay, alarm, bitter disgust with the falsehood of the brother who, no further gone than last night, had pretended to confide in him, but never breathed a syllable of this biggest unconcealable secret, swept through the mind of the victim; all culminating, however, in the softening of that moment, in the tiny figure, indomitable elf or fairy, shedding back with dainty fingers those soft abundant locks would be impossible.
What were the magic fetters with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed the fairy drink? "As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were love-mad. They lived in an unending revel of Love. They made a pomp and ceremonial of it.
His life now reads like a fairy-tale inserted by some jocular elf into that book of dolors entitled The Lives of Men of Genius. A protege of a potentate not usually lavish of his favours, and a valetudinarian, he is allowed to flit to Algiers and Corsica, to enjoy his beloved Provence in company with Mistral, to write for the theatres, and to continue to play the Bohemian.
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