Page:Nutcracker and Mouse-King (1853).djvu/79

Rh fourth week had commenced—yes, Thursday had come, when the king looked in with flashing eyes, and shaking his sceptre at him, cried, "Christian Elias Drosselmeier, cure the princess, or thou must die." Drosselmeier began to weep bitterly, but the Princess Pirlipat lay as happy as the day, and cracked nuts. Pirlipat's uncommon appetite for nuts now occurred for the first time to the mechanist, and the fact likewise that she had come into the world with teeth.

In truth, immediately after her transformation, she had screamed continually until a nut accidentally came in her way, which she immediately put into her mouth, cracked it, ate the kernel, and then became quite composed. Since that time her nurses found that nothing pleased her so well as to be supplied with nuts. "Oh, sacred instinct of Nature! eternal, inexplicable sympathy of existence!" cried Christian Elias Drosselmeier. "Thou pointest me to the gates of this mystery. I will knock, and they will