Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/273

1858.] Larrièrepensée. Maya, I give thee for a birth-gift another crown. Receive the Spark!"

Queen Lura shrieked; but Anima stretching out her wand, a snake of black diamonds, with a blood-red head, touched the child's eyes, and from the serpent's rapid tongue a spark of fire darted into either eye, and sunk deeper and deeper,—for two tears flowed above, and hung on Maya's silky lashes, as she looked with a preternatural expression of reproach at the Fairy.

Now all was confusion. Queen Lura tried to faint,—she knew it was proper,—and the grand-equerry rang all the palace bells in a row. Anima gave no glance at the little Princess, who still sat upright in Mrs. Lita's petrified arms, but went proudly from the hall alone.

The flower-fairies dropped their wands with one sonorous clang upon the floor, and with bitter sighs and wringing hands flitted one after another to the portal, bewailing, as they went, their wasted gifts and powers.

"Why should I give her beauty?" cried the Fairy Rose; "all eyes will be dazzled with the Spark; who will know on what form it shines?"

So the red rose dropped and died.

"Why should I bring her innocence?" said the Fairy Lily; "the Spark will burn all evil from her, thought and deed!"

Then the white lily dropped and died.

"Is there any use to her in grace?" wept the Fairy Eglantine; "the Spark will melt away all mortal grossness, till she is light and graceful as the clouds above."

And the eglantine wreaths dropped and died.

"She will never want humility," said the Fairy Violet; "for she will find too soon that the Spark is a curse as well as a crown!"

So the violet dropped and died.

Then the Sun-dew denied her pity; the blue Forget-me not, constancy; the Iris, pride; the Butter-cup, gold; the Passion-flower, love; the Amaranth, hope: all because the Spark should gift her with every one of these, and burn the gift in deeply. So they all dropped and died; and she could never know the flowers of life,—only its fires.

But in the end of all this flight came a ray of consolation, like the star that heralds dawn, springing upward on the skirt of night's blackest hour. The raging bees that had swarmed upon the golden chandelier returned to the ceiling and their song; the scattered flowers revived and scented the air: for the Fairy Cordis came,—too late, but welcome; her face bright with flushes of vivid, but uncertain rose,—her deep gray eyes brimming with motherhood, a sister's fondness, and the ardor of a child. The tenderest garden-spider-webs made her a robe, full of little common blue-eyed flowers, and in her gold-brown hair rested a light circle of such blooms as beguile the winter days of the poor and the desolate, and put forth their sweetest buds by the garret window, or the bedside of a sick man.

Mrs. Lita nearly dropped the baby, in her great relief of mind; but Cordis caught it, and looked at its brilliant face with tears.

"Ah, Head of the Fairies, help me!" murmured Queen Lura, extending her arms toward Cordis; for she had kept one eye open wide enough to see what would happen while she fainted away.

"All I can, I will," said the kindly fairy, speaking in the same key that a lark sings in. So she sat down upon a white velvet mushroom and fell to thinking, while Maya, the Princess, looked at her from the rose where she lay, and the Queen, having pushed her down robe safely out of the way, leaned her head on her hand, and very properly cried as much as six tears.

Soon, like a sunbeam, Cordis looked up. "I can give the Princess a counter-charm, Queen Lura," said she,—"but it is not sure. Look you! she will have a lonely life,—for the Spark burns, as well as shines, and the only way to mend that matter is to give the fire better fuel than