A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde (free ebook novel .txt) 📖

not understand a single word of what he was saying, but

that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and

looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and

very much easier.

 

The Lizards also took an immense fancy to him, and when he grew

tired of running about and flung himself down on the grass to rest,

they played and romped all over him, and tried to amuse him in the

best way they could. ‘Every one cannot be as beautiful as a

lizard,’ they cried; ‘that would be too much to expect. And,

though it sounds absurd to say so, he is really not so ugly after

all, provided, of course, that one shuts one’s eyes, and does not

look at him.’ The Lizards were extremely philosophical by nature,

and often sat thinking for hours and hours together, when there was

nothing else to do, or when the weather was too rainy for them to

go out.

 

The Flowers, however, were excessively annoyed at their behaviour,

and at the behaviour of the birds. ‘It only shows,’ they said,

‘what a vulgarising effect this incessant rushing and flying about

has. Well-bred people always stay exactly in the same place, as we

do. No one ever saw us hopping up and down the walks, or galloping

madly through the grass after dragon-flies. When we do want change

of air, we send for the gardener, and he carries us to another bed.

This is dignified, and as it should be. But birds and lizards have

no sense of repose, and indeed birds have not even a permanent

address. They are mere vagrants like the gipsies, and should be

treated in exactly the same manner.’ So they put their noses in

the air, and looked very haughty, and were quite delighted when

after some time they saw the little Dwarf scramble up from the

grass, and make his way across the terrace to the palace.

 

‘He should certainly be kept indoors for the rest of his natural

life,’ they said. ‘Look at his hunched back, and his crooked

legs,’ and they began to titter.

 

But the little Dwarf knew nothing of all this. He liked the birds

and the lizards immensely, and thought that the flowers were the

most marvellous things in the whole world, except of course the

Infanta, but then she had given him the beautiful white rose, and

she loved him, and that made a great difference. How he wished

that he had gone back with her! She would have put him on her

right hand, and smiled at him, and he would have never left her

side, but would have made her his playmate, and taught her all

kinds of delightful tricks. For though he had never been in a

palace before, he knew a great many wonderful things. He could

make little cages out of rushes for the grasshoppers to sing in,

and fashion the long jointed bamboo into the pipe that Pan loves to

hear. He knew the cry of every bird, and could call the starlings

from the tree-top, or the heron from the mere. He knew the trail

of every animal, and could track the hare by its delicate

footprints, and the boar by the trampled leaves. All the wild-dances he knew, the mad dance in red raiment with the autumn, the

light dance in blue sandals over the corn, the dance with white

snow-wreaths in winter, and the blossom-dance through the orchards

in spring. He knew where the wood-pigeons built their nests, and

once when a fowler had snared the parent birds, he had brought up

the young ones himself, and had built a little dovecot for them in

the cleft of a pollard elm. They were quite tame, and used to feed

out of his hands every morning. She would like them, and the

rabbits that scurried about in the long fern, and the jays with

their steely feathers and black bills, and the hedgehogs that could

curl themselves up into prickly balls, and the great wise tortoises

that crawled slowly about, shaking their heads and nibbling at the

young leaves. Yes, she must certainly come to the forest and play

with him. He would give her his own little bed, and would watch

outside the window till dawn, to see that the wild horned cattle

did not harm her, nor the gaunt wolves creep too near the hut. And

at dawn he would tap at the shutters and wake her, and they would

go out and dance together all the day long. It was really not a

bit lonely in the forest. Sometimes a Bishop rode through on his

white mule, reading out of a painted book. Sometimes in their

green velvet caps, and their jerkins of tanned deerskin, the

falconers passed by, with hooded hawks on their wrists. At

vintage-time came the grape-treaders, with purple hands and feet,

wreathed with glossy ivy and carrying dripping skins of wine; and

the charcoal-burners sat round their huge braziers at night,

watching the dry logs charring slowly in the fire, and roasting

chestnuts in the ashes, and the robbers came out of their caves and

made merry with them. Once, too, he had seen a beautiful

procession winding up the long dusty road to Toledo. The monks

went in front singing sweetly, and carrying bright banners and

crosses of gold, and then, in silver armour, with matchlocks and

pikes, came the soldiers, and in their midst walked three

barefooted men, in strange yellow dresses painted all over with

wonderful figures, and carrying lighted candles in their hands.

Certainly there was a great deal to look at in the forest, and when

she was tired he would find a soft bank of moss for her, or carry

her in his arms, for he was very strong, though he knew that he was

not tall. He would make her a necklace of red bryony berries, that

would be quite as pretty as the white berries that she wore on her

dress, and when she was tired of them, she could throw them away,

and he would find her others. He would bring her acorn-cups and

dew-drenched anemones, and tiny glow-worms to be stars in the pale

gold of her hair.

 

But where was she? He asked the white rose, and it made him no

answer. The whole palace seemed asleep, and even where the

shutters had not been closed, heavy curtains had been drawn across

the windows to keep out the glare. He wandered all round looking

for some place through which he might gain an entrance, and at last

he caught sight of a little private door that was lying open. He

slipped through, and found himself in a splendid hall, far more

splendid, he feared, than the forest, there was so much more

gilding everywhere, and even the floor was made of great coloured

stones, fitted together into a sort of geometrical pattern. But

the little Infanta was not there, only some wonderful white statues

that looked down on him from their jasper pedestals, with sad blank

eyes and strangely smiling lips.

 

At the end of the hall hung a richly embroidered curtain of black

velvet, powdered with suns and stars, the King’s favourite devices,

and broidered on the colour he loved best. Perhaps she was hiding

behind that? He would try at any rate.

 

So he stole quietly across, and drew it aside. No; there was only

another room, though a prettier room, he thought, than the one he

had just left. The walls were hung with a many-figured green arras

of needle-wrought tapestry representing a hunt, the work of some

Flemish artists who had spent more than seven years in its

composition. It had once been the chamber of Jean le Fou, as he

was called, that mad King who was so enamoured of the chase, that

he had often tried in his delirium to mount the huge rearing

horses, and to drag down the stag on which the great hounds were

leaping, sounding his hunting horn, and stabbing with his dagger at

the pale flying deer. It was now used as the council-room, and on

the centre table were lying the red portfolios of the ministers,

stamped with the gold tulips of Spain, and with the arms and

emblems of the house of Hapsburg.

 

The little Dwarf looked in wonder all round him, and was half-afraid to go on. The strange silent horsemen that galloped so

swiftly through the long glades without making any noise, seemed to

him like those terrible phantoms of whom he had heard the charcoal-burners speaking—the Comprachos, who hunt only at night, and if

they meet a man, turn him into a hind, and chase him. But he

thought of the pretty Infanta, and took courage. He wanted to find

her alone, and to tell her that he too loved her. Perhaps she was

in the room beyond.

 

He ran across the soft Moorish carpets, and opened the door. No!

She was not here either. The room was quite empty.

 

It was a throne-room, used for the reception of foreign

ambassadors, when the King, which of late had not been often,

consented to give them a personal audience; the same room in which,

many years before, envoys had appeared from England to make

arrangements for the marriage of their Queen, then one of the

Catholic sovereigns of Europe, with the Emperor’s eldest son. The

hangings were of gilt Cordovan leather, and a heavy gilt chandelier

with branches for three hundred wax lights hung down from the black

and white ceiling. Underneath a great canopy of gold cloth, on

which the lions and towers of Castile were broidered in seed

pearls, stood the throne itself, covered with a rich pall of black

velvet studded with silver tulips and elaborately fringed with

silver and pearls. On the second step of the throne was placed the

kneeling-stool of the Infanta, with its cushion of cloth of silver

tissue, and below that again, and beyond the limit of the canopy,

stood the chair for the Papal Nuncio, who alone had the right to be

seated in the King’s presence on the occasion of any public

ceremonial, and whose Cardinal’s hat, with its tangled scarlet

tassels, lay on a purple tabouret in front. On the wall, facing

the throne, hung a life-sized portrait of Charles V. in hunting

dress, with a great mastiff by his side, and a picture of Philip

II. receiving the homage of the Netherlands occupied the centre of

the other wall. Between the windows stood a black ebony cabinet,

inlaid with plates of ivory, on which the figures from Holbein’s

Dance of Death had been graved—by the hand, some said, of that

famous master himself.

 

But the little Dwarf cared nothing for all this magnificence. He

would not have given his rose for all the pearls on the canopy, nor

one white petal of his rose for the throne itself. What he wanted

was to see the Infanta before she went down to the pavilion, and to

ask her to come away with him when he had finished his dance.

Here, in the Palace, the air was close and heavy, but in the forest

the wind blew free, and the sunlight with wandering hands of gold

moved the tremulous leaves aside. There were flowers, too, in the

forest, not so splendid, perhaps, as the flowers in the garden, but

more sweetly scented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that

flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls;

yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled

roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and

irises lilac and gold. There were grey catkins on the hazels, and

the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted

cells. The chestnut had its spires of