“The king marvelled; for not only had there never been any fountain in that place, but he knew that no wild fawn could wander there from the distant forests, and no dove had he ever seen so snowy white and with wings radiant as though stained by the rainbow-hues of the flying spray.
“Suddenly it was as though a mist fell from his eyes. He saw and understood. His old mother, his wife, his little son, had not passed away, although they were dead. His mother had been fair and beautiful even in her white-hair years; and of the beauty of his wife, whom he loved so passing well, the poets had sung from one end of the land to another; while his little son had been held to be so perfect that there was none like him.
“And now the king saw that the beauty of his mother had passed into a living fount of waters, whose spray cooled the air and made a sound of aerial music and a laughing radiance everywhere; and that the beauty of the woman whom he had loved so passing well was transmuted into the wild fawn which drank at the water’s edge; and that the beauty of his little son was now the white dove which beat its wings in the rainbow spray.
“The king rejoiced therein with a great joy. Many of his people thought him mad, but he smiled at that saying, and with grave eyes prayed that that madness would come to all true and noble souls in his kingdom.
“For a year and a day this joy was his. Then the fountain ceased to rise, and the dove to beat its pinions in the spray, and the wild fawn to drink at the water’s edge. The rumour went from mouth to mouth that this was because the plague had come again. The king was heavy with sorrow, for he had taken his deepest happiness in the beauty of these three lovely things, as, of yore, in the beauty of his aged mother, and in the beauty of the woman whom he loved, and in the beauty of his little son. So once again he remembered how he had been helped. With shame at his heart he upbraided himself because he had lived too much to the things of the moment and so had lost touch with those which were of the enduring life. That night he spent in unspoken prayer and prolonged meditation; and at dawn on the morrow he went slowly and sadly forth, hoping against hope that his life might be gladdened again.
“The sun rose as he crossed the glade of ilex and pine. There was no fountain, as he well knew; but where the fountain had been he saw a garth of wild hyacinths, of a blue so wonderful that no Maytide sky was ever more delicately wrought of azure and purple. And above this were two little brown birds, which sang with so sweet voice and bewildered rapture that his heart melted within him.
“Then he knew that in these new joys he had found again the beauty he had lost.
“When, in the change of the days, the hyacinths spilt their blue wave into the rising green of the fern, and the birds ceased singing their lovely aerial songs, the king no longer grieved, for now he knew that what was beautiful would not perish but drift from change to change.
“And so it was. For when, weary of his pain, he went forth one night to the lovely glade of ilex and pine, he saw the ground white with the little blooms we call Stars of Bethlehem, and among these a glow-worm lay and glowed like a lamp in a white wilderness, and from an ancient ilex came the voice of a nightingale.
“Thus the king was comforted.