They answered him, “Your weaving holds, sir, assuredly: yet you do not rejoice, as we rejoice.”
“Why, but,” said Koshchei, “but I do so hate flat incivility! And after overlooking my handiwork, the fellow might very well have said something intelligent. Nobody minds an honest criticism. Just to say nothing—and in that rather marked way, you know,—is stupid!”
For Koshchei also, they relate, was, in his fashion, an artist.
19.
Settlement: in Full
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BUT that lesser artist, Miramon Lluagor—once more a potent sorcerer, in his ivory tower, and once more preëminent among the dream-makers of this world,—knew nothing of how he had played havoc with the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Miramon only knew that upon the black stone cross were buzzing fretfully three bees, who had now no luster and no power to grant wishes to anybody; and that his wife Gisèle also was making noises, not fretfully but in a tearing rage.
“A pretty trick that was to play on me!” she said. “Oh, but I pity the woman that is married to an artist!”
“But why do you perpetually meddle without understanding?” he replied, as fretful as the accursed bees, as angry as the intolerable woman....
And they went on very much as before....