His Royal Highness was in such a rage that he actually lifted his royal foot to kick the prince. The Queen fainted; the courtiers cried, “Oh!” Prince Buttons ran away in the midst of the hubbub; Santa Claus disappeared; and, to make matters better, the court suddenly found itself in darkness. It was high noon, but the sun had popped out of the sky like a snuffed-out candle. Nobody could find candles or matches, and if the confusion was great in the palace, it was worse in the city. People were left standing in darkness at the shops and ferries and depots. People who were eating dinners, and people who were getting them, and people who had just come out to see Christmas, were all served alike. Everybody was in a fright; some screamed one thing and some another; and all the time there was nothing the matter, only Prince Pepin, who was in a hurry to see the arch of Chinese lanterns, had ordered the sun to set.
“See here, Pepin,” cried the King in a passion, “order the sun up again, and if I catch you doing such a thing——”
Pepin, who was afraid of his father, did not wait for the rest of the sentence; so, just as everybody had lighted candles, or turned on the gas, there was the sun again.
“Seems to me,” said Pepin, sulkily, “I am not having my own way after all,” and he went in a wretched humour to play battle-door and shuttlecock. He made bad strokes, and the shuttlecock tumbled on the ground. “Hateful thing, forever coming down!” cried Pepin.
“It only obeys the law of gravitation, my dear,” said the Queen.
“I wish there was no law of gravitation,” snapped Pepin.
Whisk! Pepin was flying through the air as if he had been shot from a gun. Kicking frantically, he saw the King, the Queen, everything, coming after him! Something hit him hard on the nose. He was in a perfect storm of great round apples, flying in all directions! Bang! bump! on his head, in his mouth, on his shoulders! How he wished they had stayed in the market! Pepin dodged and squalled; the air was full of stones and timbers; a horse was kicking just over his head; somebody had him by the hair, and somebody else by the legs, for, of course, everybody clutched in all directions to save himself.
“Oh!” screamed Pepin amidst the general uproar of barking, neighing, braying, clucking and shouting, “I wish the law of gravitation was back again.”
At once Pepin, the King, the Queen, and the people, were on their feet. Everything was in its accustomed place,—everybody a little rumpled, but nobody hurt. The King was disposed to be angry, but the Queen declared that Pepin was only a little thoughtless, the courtiers murmured, “Quite natural,” and the Court Journal pronounced the affair the best joke of the season; but the people looked very glum over it.
That made no difference to Pepin, who continued his jokes very much at his ease. Often, when he was lazy, the sun did not rise until noon; and people might twist and turn in bed, or go about their business by candle-light, as they chose; when, on the contrary, he found his play amusing, he sometimes kept the sun in the sky till nine o’clock at night, while all the children in the city were crying for sleepiness. Three nations declared war on King Nutcracker, because Pepin sometimes ordered a dead calm for weeks, and sometimes had the winds blowing from all quarters at once, and navigation was quite impossible. The doctors were almost worn out, and the people died on all sides from constant violent changes of weather, for, if my young master got heated in his play, he made nothing of ordering the thermometer down to sixty degrees. The farmers were all in despair, for Pepin hardly allowed a drop of rain to fall; and having a fancy for skating in summer, he ruined what harvest there was by a week of ice and snow in July.