Page:The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray Vol.20.pdf/196

168 wonderful character. Clever Angelica certainly was, but as idle as possible. Play at sight, indeed! she could play one or two pieces, and pretend that she had never seen them before; she could answer half a dozen “Mangnall’s Questions”; but then you must take care to ask the right ones. As for her languages, she had masters in plenty, but I doubt whether she knew more than a few phrases in each, for all her pretence; and as for her embroidery and her drawing, she showed beautiful specimens, it is true, but who did them?

This obliges me to tell the truth, and to do so I must go back ever so far, and tell you about the.

the kingdoms of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried: on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which she performed her wonders.

When she was young, and had been ﬁrst taught the art of conjuring, by the necromancer her father, she was always practising her skill, whizzing about from one kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favors upon this prince or that. She had scores of royal godchildren; turned numberless wicked people into beasts, birds, millstones, clocks, pumps, bootjacks, umbrellas, or other absurd shapes; and, in a word, was one of the most active and officious of the whole college of fairies.

But after two or three thousand years of this sport, I suppose Blackstick grew tired of it. Or perhaps she thought, “What good am I doing by sending this princess to sleep for a hundred years? by ﬁxing a black pudding on to that booby’s nose? by causing diamonds and pearls to drop from one little girl’s mouth, and vipers and toads from another’s? I begin to think I do as much harm as good by