One day the Princess Schneeboule said to me,—
“Oh, come, little baron, come to my favorite grotto, now that the sun’s rays are bright within it; there shalt thou see a wonder.”
“A wonder, Princess Schneeboule?”
“Yes, little baron, a wonder,” she repeated: “the Little Man with the Frozen Smile.”
“Little Man with the Frozen Smile?” I echoed.
“Come and see, come and see, little baron!” cried Schneeboule, hurrying on ahead.
In a few moments we had reached the grotto and bounded into it with the Princess leading the way.
Suddenly she halted in front of a magnificent block of crystal ice, clear as polished glass, and cried out,—
“There, look! There is the Little Man with the Frozen Smile!”
Even now, as the thought of that moment comes over me, I feel something of the thrill of half fear, half joy, as my eyes fell upon the little creature shut in that superb block of ice, himself a part of it, himself its heart, its contents, its mystery. There, in its centre, in easy posture, with wide opened eyes, and with what might be called a smile upon its face—that is a glint of kindliness and affection in its strange eyes with their overhanging brows, sat a small animal of the chimpanzee race. He had possibly been asleep when the icy flood struck him, dreaming of beautiful trees bending beneath purple fruit, of cloudless skies above and a coral beach below, and death had come to him so quickly that he had become a brother to this block of ice while the happy dream was still in his thoughts.