“Is it possible that there can be so much pleasure to be found away from home and friends?” asked Witikind, still somewhat doubtfully, and looking up with anxiety at the expression of sadness which seemed to spread itself over his mother’s face.
“Possible, Witikind? I would I had the opportunity of enabling you to make the experiment this very moment! How I should like to see you a Page of Honour to the King, It would make a man of you at once.”
Witikind thought it would be a very fine thing to be made a man of at once, and his heart was more inclined to a change than it had yet been. “And I suppose then, father, I should ride a horse instead of a pony, and wear a sword, and be treated by every body as if I were a man.”
“Of course, you would,” replied the Count,—“at least, in a very short time.”
“Then, father, I do think that I should like to go and live at court.”—The Count kissed the boy and withdrew.
It is a very well known, but at the same time a most remarkable circumstance in the natural history of Fairies, that they are not only sure to be found in the most unexpected places, but they are certain to arrive in the very nick of time, for the purpose of overhearing some conversation which was never intended for their ears, but which they never fail to turn to account in some manner for which the speakers are wholly unprepared. It was so on the present occasion.
Our friend, the Lady Abracadabra, who had been paying a visit to some old acquaintances among the Gnomes who inhabited the silver mines in the mountains, in the immediate vicinity of Count Rudolf’s castle, had heard from her subterranean hosts such an interesting account of the goodness and benevolence of Countess Ermengarde, that she had resolved to introduce herself to her. And as she had been led to believe that to be poor, or afflicted, was a ready passport to that lady’s presence, she assumed the garb and appearance of a lame beggar-woman, and in this disguise entered the domain of Taubennest, and approached the castle. No gate was closed against her, no insolent, pampered menial thrust her from the door. The Countess had long since forbidden her servants to turn away one who sought relief at her hands. “We have enough for all,” she was wont to say, “and, therefore, if we give not according to our ability, we may expect that the ability to give, will be taken away from us. If we do not make a good use of our money; our money is like to make itself wings, and fly elsewhere.”
Of course where so much was given, there must have been some unworthy recipients of her bounty. And when this was urged upon her by some of her less liberal friends, she made no attempt to deny the probability of the assertion; “but,” said she, “I would rather bestow my alms on a hundred unworthy recipients, than miss an opportunity of aiding one poor creature who needed my bounty.”
And so the weary traveller, and the needy applicant, were under no fears of being repulsed when they approached the portals of Taubennest, and thus it happened that the Lady Abracadabra wandered forward unobserved, or, if observed, unchecked, until she came close to the platform on which the conversation which has been recorded, took place.
“And so you would like to see the court, would you, my pretty master?” said she, as soon as little Witikind had expressed his wish on the subject.