“There was a time when I was safe anywhere. But now a bitter enemy of my mother, whom she banished from her Kingdom, goes raging about the world; and I cannot be safe from being watched, pursued, and molested. Powerless as this bitter enemy is when I am at home, nothing can protect me from him, when I am flying abroad.”
“What sort of a hateful creature is it,” asked Fanchon, “that can do you so much harm?”
“I have told you,” said the Stranger Child, “that my mother is the Fairy Queen. Among her many Elves are some who hover in the sky, or dwell in the waters, and others who serve at the Fairy Court. Once, a long while ago, there came among those that served at Court, a stranger who called himself Papillon. He said that he was learned in all the sciences of the world, and could accomplish great things among us. My mother made him prime minister.
“Papillon soon showed his natural spite and wickedness. He pretended to the Queen that he loved children and could make them very happy. But instead of doing so, he hung himself like a weight of lead on the tails of the Purple Birds, so that they could not fly aloft. And when the children climbed the rose-trees, he dragged them down by the legs. Then he knocked their noses on the ground, and made them bleed. When the children sang, he crammed all sorts of nasty stuff down their throats; for sweet and happy singing he could not abide. And worst of all, he had a way of smearing the sparkling precious stones of the palace, and the lilies and roses, and even the shining rainbows, with a horrible black juice, so that everything beautiful became sorrowful or dead.
“And when he had done all this, he gave a loud hissing laugh, and said that everything was now as he wished it to be. Then, shouting that he was greater than my mother, he went flying up into the air, in the shape of an enormous fly with flashing eyes, and a long snout. After which he went humming and buzzing around my mother’s throne, in a most abominable fashion.
“When the Queen my mother and her Elves saw this, they knew that he had come among them under a false name, and that he was none other than Mouche, the gloomy King of the Gnomes. The entire Fairy Court thereupon rushed against him beating him with their wings, while the Purple Birds seized him with their glittering beaks and gripped him so tightly that he screamed with agony and rage. After which the birds shook him violently, and threw him down to the earth. He fell straight onto the back of his old Aunt, who was a great blue toad. And she carried him off to her hole.
“But five hundred of the children in the Fairy Court armed themselves with fly-flappers, to defend themselves against Mouche if he should ever venture to return. Now after he was gone, all the black juice disappeared, and everything became as shining and glorious as before.
“So you see, dear Children,” continued the Stranger Child, “what kind of a creature I have to fear. This horrible Mouche follows me about, and, if I did not hide myself quickly, he would injure me. And I assure you that if I were to take you with me to my home, Mouche would lie in wait for us, and kill us.”
Fanchon wept bitterly at the danger to which the Stranger Child was exposed. But Frederic said: “If that horrible Mouche is nothing but a great fly, I’ll soon hit him with father’s big fly-flapper! And if once I give him a good crack on his nose, Aunty Blue Toad will have a job carrying him to her hole again!”