“Of course not. How absurd. There has never been anything for me to weep about.”
“That’s it! That’s it! That’s the curse! You can’t weep! You’ve got to be cured of happiness! Cured of happiness!”
This idea was so preposterous that I laughed loud and long; but while I was still laughing she took me by the hand and led me into a distant part of the castle, where I had never been before, until we came to the foot of a narrow, winding stair in a tall tower.
We climbed the stairs, and stopped at last, panting, on a little landing before a door. The Princess knocked, and without waiting for an answer opened the door and drew me in after her. We were in a small, circular room, evidently at the very top of the tower, from the windows of which I could see far across the city and beyond the distant mountains to the Great Sea.
Alb and the Princess Visit the One-Armed Sorcerer
In the center of this room was a spinning wheel, and before this spinning wheel was the One-Armed Sorcerer whom I had met in the adventure which had gained me the Princess for my wife; a spare old man, with bright blue eyes in a rosy face and long white hair and beard, and clothed in a blue gown spangled with silver stars. He rose, smiling at us kindly, and motioning us with his only hand (his left) to sit down; and when we were seated, the Princess told him the story of the old vagabond who had granted me a wish.
He nodded understandingly, and the Princess said: “We have come to you for help. Will you help him get rid of his curse?”
I laughed merrily. “I’m pretty well satisfied as I am,” I said. “I don’t wish to be cured of anything.”
“And yet,” said the One-Armed Sorcerer, “you ought to want to be cured. Your trouble is, that you can’t weep. Let me tell you something. When people can weep, it’s because there’s some good in them. When they can’t weep, it’s because all the good in them is frozen up hard. Nobody can weep all the time, any more than anybody can be happy all the time, unless it’s a bewitched creature like yourself. I’m not sure which would be worse, to weep all the time or to be happy all the time; but one thing I’m sure of, and that is that it’s best for us all to have a little weeping and a little happiness, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, woven together in all shades of light and dark; and if you want to come out in a beautiful pattern at last, there’s no other way to do it. Laugh and weep; weep and laugh; that’s the whole story, and a fine story it is too, and well worth having a part in.”