Up into the sky rose the hundred horses and their great Coach, until the roof of the Little Emperor’s Palace with its bright yellow tiles looked only as big as a yellow autumn leaf—as a jasmine petal—as nothing at all! And along the Road of Stars they galloped, while notes of music sprayed from the wheels of the Coach, and, dropping to earth, gave the nightingales ideas for beautiful new songs.
On through the sky and above the earth until the night was over, and at last, instead of a road, the hundred horses were galloping along a river. All along the river bank tall poplars rustled and whispered in the wind of the Coach’s passing, and little waves, stirred up by the horses’ hoofs, slapped against the small houses that rose from the water, small pink houses and blue houses and white red-roofed houses, each with its rowboat tied to its steps. White swans and green ducks rocked on the ripples, their feathers gilded by sunshine, for it was bright day now, and the rain that had been pouring down had stopped. It was bright day, and yet no one saw the Dream Coach except a little French boy, whose eyes were falling shut in one little pink cottage.
“Philippe! Philippe!” the Driver called. “One last dream is left for you!”
What was Philippe’s dream?
That you shall hear.
“Hold still then, my little monkey!”
“But mother,” wailed Philippe, “I have the soap in my eye!”
“Soap is it, my angel?” asked his mother, lifting his face in her two wet hands. “Oh, but there is really no soap at all to speak about, just a bubble or two of suds. There!” and with the corner of her apron she wiped away the thick white lather around his eyelashes, so that Philippe looked like a little boy made of snow, except for his eyes which were large and brown and filled with tears from the painful smarting. From head to ankles he was covered with a froth of soapsuds, and his feet had stirred the warm water in the bottom of the wooden tub into rainbow-tinted mounds of bubbles which grew and grew and cascaded over the sides with a tiny fizzing sound.
“You are giving our young one a very thorough tubbing,” remarked Philippe’s father. He was sitting under the narrow window of their cottage, cutting the yellow-white sprouts from a bag of potatoes which he intended to plant in the dark of the next moon.