The Princess Dewbell was confessed to be the queen of the ball, notwithstanding that the beauty and grace and wit of the whole realm were there, for it was the birth-night festival of the fairy princess, and her royal father, with all a parent's fond pride, had exhausted invention, and impoverished extravagance, to give éclat to the occasion. The walls of his ancestral palace were sparkled all over with dew-drops, which a troop of early bees had spent all the summer mornings in collecting and preserving in the royal patent dew-preserver, invented by one of the native geniuses of the realm. These brilliant mirrors, flashing in the light of ten thousand fire-flies of the royal household, whose whole lives had been expended in learning how to carry their dainty lamps about so as to produce the finest effects, reflected the forms of the ladies and the dazzling military trappings of the handsome cavaliers, (there was war at that time between the glorious empire of Fairydom and the weak and infatuated republic of Elfland on its southern borders, and the epaulette and spurs were the only pass to the hearts of the fair,) imbuing them with an infinitude of prismatic hues, all softened into a kind of timed starlight, exquisite as the dying voice of music. In this gorgeous saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the benevolent old King Paterflor and his modest and still lovely queen Sweetbine, all were noble and accomplished and beautiful and gay; but the charms of the Princess Dewbell, just bursting into the richness of full-grown fairyhood, were so surpassing that none had ever been found to question, even in their own hearts, her supremacy. This, perhaps, may appear strange to many of my pretty readers, but they must remember that mine is a faithful chronicle of fairies—not of women. The princess was standing lightly touching—it could not be said that she leaned against—the slender stalk of a garden lily, that rose like an emerald column of classic mould above her lovely form, and expanded into a graceful dome of transparent and crimson-veined cornelian above her head. Her eyes were cast pensively (at the Musical Fund Hall it would have been called coquettishly) upon the ground, and ever and anon she tossed her proud head with an imperious gesture, until the streaming curls waved and parted around her cheek and neck, like vine-leaves about a marble column as the south wind creeps among them soliciting for kisses. The lady Dewbell, amid all this scene of enchantment, which spread out before and around her, as if her own loveliness had breathed it into existence, still was discontented; sad, perhaps, at the total absence of care in her bosom, and sighing for a sorrow. Unhappy lady Dewbell! She had so many hundred times been told, what she herself believed full well, that she was absolutely the most beautiful creature in existence, that the tale had lost its interest. The champagne of flattery, its creaming foam long ago melted into the brain, stood untasted before her, dull and flat as the subsided fountain poured by the last rain-shower into the tulip's cup. And so the fairy princess stood listless and apart from the joyous revel, her little form swaying lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the lily-stem against which she more perceptibly rested. It is well for Root and Collins and Plumbe that the royal daguerreotyper was laid up in a cowslip, with a broken skylight which he had received in a rough-and-tumble with a gnat, about the ownership of a particular ray of light, at last sunsetting.
But if the lady Dewbell were queen of the ball, the noble knight Sir Timothy Lawn was as undisputedly worthy of the post of honor among her gallant train of admirers. Indeed, it was universally known, of course as a profound secret among the gossips of the palace, that Sir Timothy was the declared lover of the proud Dewbell, and it was even whispered that she had actually been seen hanging around his neck one bright June morning, in a sweet clover-nook by the brook-side, while he bent tenderly over her, his eyes filled with tears of rapture. But as this story could only be traced to a rough beetleherd, who said he saw the lovers thus as he was driving his herd of black cattle to water, it was not generally believed. At any rate, all the ladies were decidedly of opinion that Sir Timothy was in every way a match for the haughty beauty, and that if she did not accept him while he was in the humor she would be very likely to go farther and fare worse. In fact, several old maids and bluestockings, over their dishes of scandal and marsh-fog, (both of which they made uncommonly strong,) openly avowed it as their opinion, that he was a great deal too good for her, and that, if the truth must be told, the princess was an impertinent, saucy and irreverent creature, who hadn't the slightest respect for her superiors. "As to her beauty," said one of these crones, whose little face was very much of the size and complexion of a dried camomile-flower, and who was shrewdly suspected of qualifying her marsh-fog with pale pink-brandy—"As for her beauty, that is all in my eye. I have seen plenty of your plump, smooth-skinned pieces of paint and affectation fade in my time, little as I have yet seen of life. Mark my words—before we have reached our prime, my great lady princess will be as ugly as—"
"As ugly as yourself, granny! Ha, ha, ha! ho, ho, ho! haw, haw, haw!" shouted a mirthful voice, while an indescribably comic face, half cat and half baby, appeared for a single glimpse above the burdock leaf behind which the spinsters were holding their conversazione.
"There 's that imp Puck again, as sure as I am a woman!" exclaimed the gentle Mrs. Mullenstalk, rising hastily and spilling a dish of fog all over the front of her new green and yellow striped grass dress, as she ran toward the spot whence the voice had proceeded. "I'll to the palace this very night, and lay my complaint against that wretch. We'll see whether virtuous ladies are to be insulted in this manner, and their helplessness trampled under foot!"
The intruder had already disappeared; but as the amiable Mrs. Mullenstock got her spectacles adjusted, she just caught sight of him throwing a somerset into a pumpkin-flower; while his laugh still sounded faintly upon the air, mingled with snatches of a wild refrain, of which she could only distinguish these lines:
"Oh ho, Granny Mullenstock, how envious you be;
I'll plague you to death, or the hornets catch me!"
The spinster shook her fist and grinned horribly at the broad-mouthed, innocent yellow flower, down whose throat the varlet had leaped—but chancing at that moment to catch a glimpse of her own face in a little bit of mica, which served her for a toilet-mirror, she uttered the least bit of a little shriek in the world and fainted—her companions, who had by this time gathered round her, exchanging sly winks and malicious looks of gratification as she went off.
But we must return to the ball-room, where the fire-flies have got sleepy, and many of them had already put out their lamps and retired, and the brilliant company of dancers and promenaders has dwindled down to a few sets, composed of those ladies who had not been asked to dance in the height of the evening, and some sour-looking gentlemen in very tight coats and pants, who had "got the mitten" from their sweethearts at the door, and were desperately trying to do the amiable out of sheer revenge. At length even these disappeared; the saloons were entirely deserted, save by the beautiful mother moonbeam, who slept upon the fragrant turf, her babe, the silver starlight, folded lovingly within her bosom.
Yet no, the scene is not quite solitary. Carefully bending aside the tall, slender spears of diamond-tipped grass that perpetually guarded the sacred domain of the imperial palace, a cavalier in full armor appears, making way for a lady, whose long veil of the finest spider's web completely conceals her head and form, making her seem like an exhalation, taking, as its highest gift of grace, the shape of woman. The two advance slowly and cautiously to the centre of the saloon, and then the cavalier, throwing himself on his knees, (that's the way fairies invariably make love,) beseeches his companion to have pity upon him. The lady throws back her veil with a motion of indescribable grace, and looking down into the upturned face of her lover, seriously a moment, then lightly, utters a low laugh, and replies,