Then as the giants turned dull and harsh faces toward the garden, the sun came above the circle of blue hills, so that the mingled shadows of these two giants fell across the garden. For an instant Jurgen saw the place oppressed by that attenuated mile-long shadow, as in heraldry you may see a black bar painted sheer across some brightly emblazoned shield. Then the radiancy of everything twitched and vanished, as a bubble bursts.
And Jurgen was standing in the midst of a field, very neatly plowed, but with nothing as yet growing in it. And the Centaur was with him still, it seemed, for there were the creature's hoofs, but all the gold had been washed or rubbed away from them in traveling with Jurgen.
"See, Nessus!" Jurgen cried, "the garden is made desolate. Oh,
Nessus, was it fair that so much loveliness should be thus wasted!"
"Nay," said the Centaur, "nay!" Long and wailingly he whinneyed,
"Nay!"
And when Jurgen raised his eyes he saw that his companion was not a centaur, but only a strayed riding-horse.
"Were you the animal, then," says Jurgen, "and was it a quite ordinary animal, that conveyed me to the garden between dawn and sunrise?" And Jurgen laughed disconsolately. "At all events, you have clothed me in a curious fine shirt. And, now I look, your bridle is marked with a coronet. So I will return you to the castle at Bellegarde, and it may be that Heitman Michael will reward me."
Then Jurgen mounted this horse and rode away from the plowed field wherein nothing grew as yet. As they left the furrows they came to a signboard with writing on it, in a peculiar red and yellow lettering.
Jurgen paused to decipher this.
"Read me!" was written on the signboard: "read me, and judge if you understand! So you stopped in your journey because I called, scenting something unusual, something droll. Thus, although I am nothing, and even less, there is no one that sees me but lingers here. Stranger, I am a law of the universe. Stranger, render the law what is due the law!"
Jurgen felt cheated. "A very foolish signboard, indeed! for how can it be 'a law of the universe', when there is no meaning to it!" says Jurgen. "Why, for any law to be meaningless would not be fair."