I was anxious to hear the end of this story, with which I had sympathized so much.
“Well, then at last even my box was sold. I don’t know whether it was daytime or night, for shut up in there I knew nothing about time. I felt myself all shaken up; a little later the box was opened and two big fingers fumbled around inside and rudely grasped one of the sticks, which in this last store I had heard called matches. Then: tric, trac! the head of the stick was struck violently against the side of the box and ffroo! it burned. I jumped with horror and waited anxiously as the little stick was consumed by its own flame between the big fingers. I understood everything at once. This was my destiny!”
“You suffered horribly, eh?”
“Oh! I passed days and nights in agony. Every four or five hours the box was opened and one of my matches was taken out to its death. Each time I hid among the lower sticks till, at last, there remained only three. I resigned myself to my dreadful end and began to count the hours of my life. By this time I knew that all my tree, my beautiful tree, with branches ten arms long, was all burned, fibre by fibre, and had absolutely vanished. It was no use to struggle.”
“Why didn’t you try flight?”
“How? What could I do? How could I open the box? And if it was open how could I fly without legs? If I had only had these legs that you have made for me! But enough of that! By chance the box was forgotten and laid where you found me. And you have saved me. I am your faithful servant forever. To you I am revealing myself for the third and last time.”
“Fiam, you are my dearest friend.”
“Do you know what the most evil thing in the world is?”
“No; what?”
“Those monsters that cut, and split and destroy and change, those new monsters that once didn’t even exist.”