Philax lived upon the wild fruit he found in it. He passed his days in the deepest sorrow. The loss of the Princess distracted him, and sometimes, with his sword, which he had retained, he occupied himself with carving the name of Imis on the trunks of the trees, which were not adapted for so tender a practice; but when we are truly in love we frequently make things serviceable to our passion which appear to be least favourable for the purpose.
The Prince continued daily to travel through the forest, and he had been nearly a year on his journey, when one night he heard some plaintive voices, but could not distinguish any words. Alarming as these wailing sounds were at such an hour and in a place where the Prince had never yet met with mortal soul, the desire to be no longer alone, and to find at least some one as wretched as himself with whom he could weep over the misfortunes that had befallen them, made him wait with impatience for morning, when he might seek out the persons whose voices he had heard. He walked towards that part of the forest whence he fancied the sounds had proceeded, but hunted all day in vain; at length, however, towards evening, he discovered, in a spot which was clear of trees, the ruins of a castle which appeared to have been of great size and magnificence. He entered a court-yard, the walls of which were of green marble, and seemed still tolerably perfect. He found in it nothing but trees of prodigious height, standing irregularly in various parts of the enclosure. He advanced towards a spot where he perceived something elevated upon a pedestal of black marble. It proved to be a confused pile of armour and weapons, heaped one upon the other: helmets, shields, and swords of an ancient form, which composed a sort of ill-arranged trophy. He looked for some inscription which might inform him to whom these arms had formerly appertained. He found one engraved on the pedestal. Time had nearly effaced the characters, and it was with much difficulty that he deciphered these words:—
To the Immortal Recollection of the Glory of the Fairy Ceora.
It was here
That on the same day
She triumphed over Cupid
And punished her faithless lovers.
This inscription did not afford Philax all the information he desired; he therefore would have continued his search through the forest if night had not overtaken him. He seated himself at the foot of a cypress, and scarcely had been there a moment, before he heard the same voices which had attracted his attention the previous evening. He was not so much surprised at this as at perceiving that it was the trees themselves which uttered these complaints, just as if they had been human beings. The Prince arose, drew his sword, and struck with it the cypress which was nearest to him. He was about to repeat the blow, when the tree exclaimed, "Hold! hold! Assault not an unhappy Prince who is no longer in a state to defend himself!" Philax stayed his hand, and becoming accustomed to this supernatural circumstance, inquired of the cypress by what miracle it was thus a man and a tree at the same time. "I am willing to inform you," replied the cypress; "and as, during two thousand years, this is the first opportunity Fate has afforded me of relating my misfortunes, I will not lose it. All the trees you behold in this court-yard were princes, renowned in their time for the rank they held in the world, and for their valour. The Fairy Ceora reigned in this country. She was beautiful, but her science rendered her more famous than her beauty. She therefore made use of other charms to subject us to her sway. She had become enamoured of the young Oriza, a prince, whose admirable qualities rendered him worthy of a better fate. I should premise to you," added the cypress, "it is the oak which you see beside me." Philax looked at the oak, and heard it breathe a heavy sigh, drawn from it, no doubt, by the recollection of its misfortune. "To attract this prince to her Court," continued the cypress, "the Fairy caused a tournament to be proclaimed. We all hastened to seize this opportunity of acquiring glory. Oriza was one of the princes who disputed the prize. It consisted of fairy armour which would render the wearer invulnerable. Unfortunately, I was the conqueror. Ceora, irritated that Fate had not favoured her inclinations, resolved to avenge herself upon us. She enchanted the looking-glasses, with which a gallery of her castle was entirely lined. Those who saw her reflected but once in these fatal mirrors, could not resist feeling for her the most violent passion. It was in this gallery she received us the day after the tournament. We all saw her in these mirrors, and she appeared to us so beautiful, that those amongst us who had hitherto been indifferent to love, ceased to be so from that instant; and those who were in love with others became as suddenly faithless. We no longer thought of leaving the Fairy's palace: our only anxiety was to please her. In vain did state affairs demand our presence in our own dominions; nothing seemed of consequence to us save the hope of being beloved by Ceora. Oriza was the only one she favoured, and the passion of the other princes but gave the Fairy opportunities of sacrificing them to this lover who was so dear to her, and caused the fame of her beauty to be spread throughout the world. Love appeared for some time to have softened the cruel nature of Ceora; but at the end of four or five years she displayed her former ferocity. She revenged herself on the kings, her neighbours, for the smallest slight by the most horrible murders, and abusing the power which her enchantments gave her over us, she made us the ministers of her cruelties. Oriza strove in vain to prevent her injustice. She loved him; but she would not obey him. Having returned one day from fighting and subduing a giant whom I had challenged by her orders, I caused the arms of the vanquished to be brought into her presence. She was alone in the Gallery of Looking-glasses. I laid the giant's spoils at her feet, and pleaded my passion to her with inconceivable ardour, augmented, no doubt, by the power of the enchantment by which I was surrounded. But far from evincing the least gratitude for the success of my combat, or for the love I felt for her, Ceora treated me with the utmost contempt; and, retiring into a boudoir, left me alone in the gallery, in an indescribable state of despair and rage. I remained there some time, not knowing what resolution to take; for the enchantments of the Fairy did not permit us to fight with Oriza. Careful of the life of her lover, the cruel Ceora excited our jealousy, but took from us the natural desire to revenge ourselves on a fortunate rival. At length, after having paced the gallery for some time, I remembered that it was in this place I had first fallen in love with the Fairy, and exclaimed, 'It is here that I first felt that fatal passion which now fills me with despair; and you, wretched mirrors, who have so often represented the unjust Ceora to me, with a beauty which has enslaved my heart and reason, I will punish you for the crime of offering her to my view with too great attraction.' At these words, snatching up the giant's club, which I had brought to present to the Fairy, I dashed the mirrors to pieces. No sooner were they broken than I felt even greater hatred for Ceora than I had formerly felt love for her. The princes, my rivals, felt at the same moment their charms broken, and Oriza himself was ashamed of the love which the Fairy had for him. Ceora in vain attempted to retain her lover by her tears; he was insensible to her grief, and in spite of her cries, we set out all together, determined to fly from the terrible place, but in passing through the court-yard, the sky appeared to be on fire; a frightful clap of thunder was heard, and we found it was impossible for us to move. The Fairy appeared in the air, riding on a great serpent, and addressing us in a tone of voice which betrayed her rage,—'Inconstant princes,' said she, 'I am about to punish you, by a torture which will never end, for the crime you have committed in breaking my chains, which were too great an honour for you to bear; and as for you, ungrateful Oriza, I triumph after all in the love you have felt for me. Content with this victory, I shall visit you with the same misfortune as your rivals; and I command,' added she, 'in memory of this adventure, that when the use of mirrors shall be known to all the world, the breaking of these fatal glasses shall always be a certain sign of the infidelity of a lover.' The Fairy disappeared in the air after having pronounced these words. We were changed into trees; but the cruel Ceora, no doubt with the idea of increasing our suffering, left us our reason. Time has destroyed the superb castle, which was the victim of our misfortune; and you are the only visitor we have seen during the two thousand years that we have been in this frightful forest."
Philax was about to reply to this speech of the cypress tree, when he was suddenly transported into a beautiful garden; he there found a lovely nymph, who approached him with a gracious air, saying, "If you wish it, Philax, I will allow you in three days to see the Princess Imis."
The Prince, transported with joy at so unexpected a proposition, threw himself at her feet to express his gratitude. At that same moment Pagan was in the air, concealed in a cloud with the Princess Imis: he had told her a thousand times that Philax was unfaithful, but she had always refused, on the word of a jealous lover, to believe it. He now conducted her to this spot, he said, to convince her of the fickleness of the Prince she so unjustly preferred to him. The Princess saw Philax throw himself, with an air of extreme delight, at the feet of the nymph; and was in despair that she could no longer deceive herself on a point which she feared to believe more than anything in the world. Pagan had placed her at a distance from the earth, which prevented her hearing what Philax and the nymph said; and it was by his orders that the latter had presented herself to him.
Pagan led Imis back to his island, where after having convinced her of the infidelity of Philax, he found he had only redoubled the grief of that beautiful Princess without rendering her at all more favourable to himself.
In despair at finding this pretended infidelity, from which he had expected so much success, was useless to him, he resolved to be revenged on the constancy of the lovers: he was not cruel, like the Fairy Ceora, his ancestress, so he bethought him of a different punishment to that with which she had visited her unfortunate lovers. He did not wish to destroy either the Princess, whom he had so tenderly loved, nor even Philax, whom he had already made suffer so much; so, confining his revenge to the destruction of a passion which had so opposed his own, he erected in his island a Crystal Palace, and took care to put into it everything that would render life agreeable but the means of leaving it; he shut up in it nymphs and dwarfs to wait on Imis and her lover; and, when everything was prepared for their reception, he transported them both there. They at first thought themselves on the summit of happiness, and blessed Pagan a thousand times for the mildness of his anger. As for Pagan, although at first he could not bear to see them together, he expected that this spectacle would one day be less painful to him. But in the meanwhile, he departed from the Crystal Palace, after having, with a stroke of his wand, engraved on it this inscription:—
Absence, danger, pleasure, pain, Were all employ'd, and all in vain, Imis' and Philax' hearts to sever. Pagan, whose power they dared defy, Condemned them, for their constancy, To dwell together here for ever!
They say that at the end of some years, Pagan was as much avenged as he desired to be; and that the beautiful Imis and Philax fulfilled the prediction of the Fairy of the Mountain, by wishing as fervently to recover the aigrette of lilies in order to destroy the agreeable enchantment, as they had formerly desired to preserve it as a safeguard against the evils which had been foretold would befal them.