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"Seventeen by no means an antique. Speaking of princesses and ogres, has it occurred to you that you would bring a fortune in the market?" "Mr. Chase!" "You know, it's barely possible that you may be put in a matrimonial shop window if Von Blitz and his friends should capture you alive. Ever think of that?" "Good heavens! You why, what a horrible thing to say!"
The king's daughter has for some inscrutable reason been promised to three ogres, who come successively to fetch her; and a certain Ritter Red professes to be man enough to rescue her, but on the approach of the first ogre proves to be a coward and climbs a tree. But the king has another daughter, whom an ogre has carried off to the bottom of the sea.
Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency and we would make this regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual.
Think of the obscene word becoming a living entity, the profane oath a thing of life; the filthy or impure thought, assuming form and vitality, all starting forward to exist forever among the creations of infinite purity. Who would own one of these ogres in comparison with the beautiful things of God?
Ogres! Would you be one of them? To see me turn my head shivering with loathing as you pass? This is why I sent for you, because I loved you, to entreat you, Wilfrid, from my soul, not to blacken the dear happy days when I knew you! Will you hear me? That woman is changeing you doing all this. Resist her! Think of me in this one thing! Promise it, and I will go at once, and want no more.
Suppose we take a glance at those famous Hindu demons, the Rakshas, who are the originals of all the ogres and giants of our nursery tales? Now the Rakshas were very terrible creatures indeed, and in the minds of many people in India are so still, for they are believed in even now.
My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they were good children but just children, that is all.
As I looked at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fairy tale, and more and more in a cavern of ogres. Was this a little fondling whom they had picked up in some forest, where lie the picked bones of the queen, her tender mother, and the tough old defunct monarch, her father? No. Doubtless they were quite good-natured people, these.
Now at this time there lived in Kyoto a general named Raiko, who had made himself famous for his brave deeds. Some time before this he made the country ring with his name, for he had attacked Oeyama, where a band of ogres lived with their chief, who instead of wine drank the blood of human beings. He had routed them all and cut off the head of the chief monster.
When the stories of ghosts and goblins went around, I kept quiet. I smiled grimly to myself. I thought of my nights of fear, and knew that mine were the real things real as life itself, not attenuated vapors and surmised shadows. For me no terrors resided in the thought of bugaboos and wicked ogres.
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