When I speak of ages, it must be borne in mind that all this time taken together was only a short quarter of an hour in the land of Spirits, ... or rather that it was absolutely nothing. For time was invented for the convenience of mankind, as we give spelling-books to children. For Spirits, then, now, and in the future is exactly the same thing. They comprehend yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow in one glance,—just as we read a word without spelling. What was and shall be, is.
The Egyptians and Phœnicians knew this very well, but we seem to have forgotten it.
A few million years later, then, he rose to the rank of an elephant; and, a spirit-minute or so after that,—that is ten years, I mean human years this time—before the beginning of my story, he was transferred to the class of human beings.
What he had done amiss, as an elephant, I do not know.
But, Fancy had said, if he did not want to be put back another step, instead of being shortly restored to his rank as a prince of Spirits, he must look to his ways as a human being; not make any more verses about brigands, or sell any more Bibles; and then, why, perhaps it might come to pass.
Alas, he would have to put up with Juffrouw Pieterse’s not wearing a train. “That,” said Fancy, “is so, and can’t be helped.”
Fancy appeared to be a sort of maid-of-honour of Wouter’s mother, who came to visit him in his banishment, so as to cheer him up a bit, and tell him to take courage, for the temporary punishment that had fallen to his lot did not mean that people had ceased to love him.
She promised to come and see him from time to time.
“But,” Wouter had asked, “how is my little sister?”
“Your sister has been punished too—you know the law. But she is a dear child. She is submitting to it patiently, and promises to do better in the future. In the beginning she was a bubble of air, and conducted herself irreproachably as such. Then she became a moonbeam, and in this capacity also no one had any fault to find with her. She shone so that it was a pleasure to see her, and your mother had need of all her strength of mind to keep from granting her a respite. So she was soon promoted to be a perfume, and filled the Universe to such a degree that she gave us a headache. This happened about the time when you were beginning to eat grass. Then she became a butterfly. But your mother found that this was not a suitable position for a girl, and therefore soon changed her into a constellation—see, there she is—below us.”