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 answered, "and I think you must be making fun of me."

"I am not making fun of you at all," she replied, "but as you are not able to understand what I say to you, I am going to show you a sight which will appear strange, and which I will make as brief as possible. Follow me!"

She led me into the most beautiful part of her residence. It was a little limpid lake, resembling a green diamond set in a ring of flowers, in which were sporting fish of all hues of orange and cornelian, Chinese amber-coloured carp, black and white swans, exotic ducks decked in jewels, and, at the bottom, pearl and purple shells, bright-coloured aquatic salamanders; in short, a world of living wonders, gliding and plunging above a bed of silvery sand, on which were growing all sorts of water-plants, one more charming than another. Around this vast basin were ranged in several circles a colonnade of porphyry, with alabaster capitals. The entablature was made of the most precious minerals, and almost disappeared under a growth of clematis, jessamine, briony and honeysuckle, amid which a thousand birds made their nests. Roses of all tints and all scents were reflected in the water as well as the porphyry columns and the beautiful statues of Parian marble placed under the arcades. In the midst of the basin a fountain threw a thousand jets of diamonds and pearls.

The bottom of the architectural amphitheatre opened upon flower-beds shaded by giant trees, loaded to their summits with blossoms and fruit, their branches interlaced with trailing vines, forming above the porphyry colonnade a colonnade of verdure and flowers.

There the Fairy made me seat myself with her at the entrance to a grotto, whence there issued a melodious cascade, flowing over fresh moss sparkling with diamond drops of water.

"All that you see there is my work," she said to me; "all that is made of dust. It is by the shaking of my gown in the clouds that I have furnished all the materials of this paradise. My friend Fire, who threw them into the air, has taken them back to re-cook them, to crystallise or compact them, after which my servant Wind took them about with him amid the moisture and electricity of the clouds, and then cast them upon the earth; this wide plain has then arisen from my fecund substance, and rain has made sands and grass of it, after having made rocks into porphyries, marbles, and metals of all sorts."

I listened without understanding, and I thought that the Fairy was continuing to mystify me. How she could have made the earth out of dust still passes my comprehension; that she could have made marble and granites and other minerals merely by shaking the skirt of her gown, I could not believe. But I did not dare to contradict her, though I turned involuntarily towards her to see whether she was speaking seriously of such an absurdity.

What was my surprise to find she was no longer behind me! but I heard her voice, seemingly coming from under the ground, calling me. At the same time I also passed under ground without being able to resist, and found myself in a terrible place where all was fire and flame. I had heard tell of the infernal region; I thought that was it. Lights, red, blue, green, white, violet—now pale, now swelling, replaced daylight, and, if the sun penetrated to this place, the vapours which arose from the furnace made it wholly invisible.

Formidable sounds, sharp hisses, explosions, claps of thunder, filled this clouded cavern in which I felt myself enclosed. In the midst of all this I perceived little Fairy Dust, who had gone back to her dirty colourless dress. She came and went, working, pushing, piling, clutching, pouring out I know not what acids; in a word, giving herself up to an incomprehensible labour.

"Don't be afraid," she said to me, in a voice that rose above the deafening noises of this Tartarus. "You are here in my laboratory. Don't you know anything about machinery?"

"Nothing at all," I shouted, "and I don't want to learn about it in such a place as this."

"Yes, you wanted to know, and you must resign yourself to me. It is very pleasant to live on the surface of the earth, with flowers, birds, and domesticated animals, to bathe in still waters, to eat nice-tasting fruits, to walk upon carpets of greensward and daisies. You imagined that life has always existed in that way, under such blessed conditions. It is time you should learn something about the beginning of things, and of the power of Fairy Dust, your grandmother, your mother, and your nurse."

As she spoke the little creature made me roll with her into the depths of the abysm,