"Now I have her! I have my Elizabeth! Now you shall get it, you little mischievous rascals!"
On getting home he put the toad into a costly silver casket, as if it was the greatest treasure.
To account for John's joy, you must know that Klas Starkwolt had often told him that the underground people could not endure any ill smell, and that the sight, or even the smell, of a toad made them faint, and suffer the most dreadful tortures, and that by means of one of those odious animals one could compel them to do anything. Hence there are no bad smells to be found in the whole glass empire, and a toad is a thing unheard of there. This toad must certainly have been enclosed in the stone from the creation, as it were, for the sake of John and Elizabeth.
Resolved to try the effect of his toad, John took the casket under his arm and went out, and on the way he met two of the little people in a lonesome place. The moment he approached they fell to the ground, and whimpered and howled most lamentably as long as he was near them.
Satisfied now of his power, he, the next morning, summoned the fifty principal persons, with their wives and children, to his apartment. When they came he addressed them, reminding them once again of his kindness and gentleness towards them, and of the good terms on which they had hitherto lived. He reproached them with their ingratitude in refusing him the only favour he had ever asked of them, but firmly declared that he would not give way to their obstinacy.
"Therefore," said he, "for the last time, think for a minute, and if you then say 'No,' you shall feel that pain which is to you and your children the most terrible of all pains."
They did not take long to deliberate, but unanimously replied "No"; and they thought to themselves, "What new scheme has the youth hit on with which he thinks to frighten wise ones like us?" and they smiled as they said "No." Their smiling enraged John above all, and he ran back a few hundred paces to where he had laid the casket with the toad under a bush.
He was hardly come within a few hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, and cried—
"Have mercy, have mercy! We feel you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require."
He let them kick a few seconds longer, and then took the toad away. They then stood up and felt no more pain. John let all depart but the six chief persons, to whom he said—