The sick man looked and smiled.
“Ay,” he said, “the Little Folk have remembered us. They have brought us rich store in return for my poor spadeful of earth.”
Then the prince and princess and all the court understood that this poor man whom they had helped was that very day labourer who had come to the christening of the princess. And swift as a moonbeam—and not unlike one—Prince Hesperus darted from beside the princess and alighted on the man’s pillow.
“Ah,” he cried, “can you not, then, tell me who it is who has the power to make one different from everybody else in the world?”
In half delirium the day labourer heard the voice of the prince and caught the question. But he did not know that it was the voice of the prince, and he fancied it to be the voice of the whole world, as it were throbbing with the prince’s question. And he cried out loudly in answer:—
“No one has that power! No one is different! Those who seem different hold no truth. We are all alike, all of us that live!”
Swiftly the prince turned to the king and the queen and the court.
“The uninvited Human Being,” he cried, “did she say that the princess should be different from all the world, or that she should merely seem different?”
The queen and the court could not remember, but the king, who was a wise fairy, instantly remembered.