Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/165



HE displeased gnome had, as we have seen, left the upper world with the determination never again to behold the light of day; but beneficent Time gradually effaced the effects of his grief, although the tedious operation of healing his wound required not less than nine hundred and ninety-nine years. At length, when sadly oppressed by heaviness and ennui, and in a very bad humour, his favourite jester in the lower region—a merry frolicksome cobold—proposed one day a pleasure trip to the Giant Mountains, to which proposal his Highness most readily acceded. There needed no longer time than a minute, and the distant journey was accomplished. He found himself at once in the midst of his old pleasure grounds, to which he imparted its former appearance of verdure; invisible, however, to human eyes,—for the wanderers who crossed the mountains saw nothing but a gloomy wilderness. The sight of these objects, still viewed through the rosy light of his old love, renewed the whole remembrance of his bygone courtship; and his adventure with the beautiful Emma appeared as an event of yesterday; her image floated as vividly before his eyes as if she were indeed beside him. But, when he remembered how she had outwitted and deceived him, his wrath against the whole human race was again excited. “Miserable worms of the earth!” he exclaimed, as he looked up and beheld from the high mountains the steeples