The Genius, Thetel, again tried to rise, but he fell away, with a hollow groan, into innumerable colourless flocks, which, driven by the wind, were lost in the bushes.
With the most horrible cries of agony, the Leech-Prince shrunk up, and vanished into the earth, while an indignant roar was heard, as if she reluctantly received into her bosom the odious fugitive. Leuwenhock and Swammerdamm had sunk down from the microscopes into themselves, and it was plain, from their sighs and groans, that they were undergoing a severe punishment.
But Dörtje Elverdink and George Pepusch,--or, as we should now call them, Princess Gamaheh and the Thistle, Zeherit,--had awakened from their swoon, and knelt before the king. Their eyes were cast to earth, as if unable to bear the burning splendour of the carbuncle.
Peregrine addressed them all with solemnity:
"Thou, who shouldst deceive men as the Genius, Thetel, thou wert compounded, by the evil demon, of clay and feathers, and therefore the beaming of love destroyed thee, empty phantom, and thou wert reduced to thy original nothing.
"And thou too, blood-thirsty monster of the night, thou wast forced to fly from the fire of the carbuncle into the bosom of the earth.
"But you, poor dupes, unhappy Swammerdamm, wretched Leuwenhock, your whole life was one incessant error. You sought to inquire into Nature, without suspecting the import of her inward being. You were presumptuous enough to wish to penetrate into her workshop and watch her secret labours, imagining that you could, without punishment, look into the fearful mysteries of those depths, which are inscrutable to the human eye. Your hearts remained cold and insensible; the real love has never warmed your bosom. You imagined that you read the holy wonders of nature, with pious admiration, but, in endeavouring to find out the condition of those wonders, even in their inmost core, yourself destroyed that pious feeling, and the knowledge, after which you strove, was a phantom merely, that has deceived you, like prying, inquisitive children.
"Fools! For you the beams of the carbuncle no longer have hope or consolation."
"Ha! ha! There is hope, there is consolation; the old one betakes herself to the old ones; there's love! there's truth! there's tenderness! And the old one is now really a queen, and takes her little Swammerdamm and her little Leuwenhock into her kingdom, and there they are princes, and wind gold thread and silver thread, and do many other useful things."
So spoke the old Alina, who suddenly stood between the two microscopists, clad in a strange dress, which nearly resembled the costume of the Queen of Golconda in the opera. But Leuwenhock and Swammerdamm had so shrunk up, that they seemed to be scarcely a span high, and the Queen of Golconda, putting her puppets into two ivory cradles, rocked and nursed them, and sang to them,--Lullaby, lullaby, baby mine, &c.