"And will you never regret the possession of it?"
"What could induce me?" asked Midas. "I ask nothing else to render me perfectly happy."
"Be it as you wish, then," replied the stranger, waving his hand in token of farewell. "Tomorrow, at sunrise, you will find yourself gifted with the Golden touch."
The figure of the stranger then became exceedingly bright, and Midas was forced to close his eyes. On opening them again he beheld only one yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all around him, the glistening of the precious metal which he had spent his life in hoarding up.
Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep or awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child's to whom a beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any rate, day had hardly peeped over the hills when King Midas was broad awake, and stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects that were within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch had really come, according to the stranger's promise. So he laid his finger on a chair by the bedside, and on various other things, but was grievously disappointed to perceive that they remained of exactly the same substance as before.
THE GIFT OF THE GOLDEN TOUCH
All this while, it was only the gray of the morning, with but a streak of brightness along the edge of the sky, where Midas could not see it. He lay in a very unhappy mood, regretting the downfall of his hopes, and kept growing sadder and sadder, until the earliest sunbeam shone through the window and gilded the ceiling over his head. It seemed to Midas that this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular way on the white covering of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his astonishment and delight, when he found that this linen fabric wad been changed to what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest gold! The Golden Touch had come to him with the first sunbeam!
Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window-curtain in order to admit a clear spectacle of the wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand—a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At this first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly-bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets with nowadays; but, on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! It was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown in distinct. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was delighted to ace himself in magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight.
Wise King Midas was so excited by his good fortune that the palace seemed not sufficiently spacious to contain him. He therefore went downstairs and smiled on observing that the balustrade of the staircase became a bar of burnished gold as his hand passed over it in the descent. He lifted the door latch (it was brass only a moment ago, but golden when his fingers quitted it) and went into the garden. Here, as it happened, he found a great number of beautiful roses in full bloom, and others in all the stages of lovely bud and blossom. Very delicious was their fragrance in the morning breeze. Their delicate blush was one of the fairest sights in the world—so gentle, so modest, and so full of erect composure did these roses seem to be.
But Midas knew a way to make them far more precious, according to his way of thinking, than roses had ever been before. So he took great pains in going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most freely; until every individual flower and bud, and even the worms at the heart of some of them, were changed to gold. By the time this good work was completed, King Midas was called to breakfast; and, as the morning air had given him an excellent appetite, he made haste back to the palace.