The Doll Story MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett
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to be expedient. He took Princess Pirlipat very carefully to pieces, screwed off her hands and her feet, and examined her interior structure. Unfortunately, he found that the bigger she got the more deformed she would be, so that he didn’t see what was to be done at all. He put her carefully together again, and sank down beside her cradle—which he wasn’t allowed to go away from—in the deepest dejection.
The fourth week had come, and Wednesday of the fourth week, when the king came in, with eyes gleaming with anger, made threatening gestures with his scepter, and cried:
‘Christian Elias Drosselmeier, restore the princess, or prepare for death!’
Drosselmeier began to weep bitterly. The little princess kept on cracking nuts, an occupation which seemed to afford her much quiet satisfaction. For the first time the Arcanist was struck by Pirlipat’s remarkable appetite for nuts, and the circumstance that she had been born with teeth. And the fact had been that immediately after her transformation she had begun to cry, and she had gone on crying till by chance she got hold of a nut. She at once cracked it, and ate the kernel, after which she was quite quiet. From that time her nurses found that nothing would do but to go on giving her nuts.
‘Oh, holy instinct of nature—eternal, mysterious, inscrutable Interdependence of Things!’ cried Drosselmeier, ‘thou pointest out to me the door of the secret. I will knock, and it shall be opened unto me.’
He at once begged for an interview with the Court Astronomer, and was conducted to him closely guarded. They embraced, with many tears, for they were great friends, and then retired into a private closet, where they referred to many books treating of sympathies, antipathies, and other mysterious subjects. Night came on. The Court Astronomer consulted the stars, and, with the assistance of Drosselmeier (himself an adept in astrology), drew the princess’s horoscope. This was an exceedingly difficult operation, for the lines kept getting more and more entangled and confused for ever so long. But at last—oh what joy!—it lay plain before them that all the princess had to do to be delivered from the enchantment which made her so hideous, and get back her former beauty, was to eat the sweet kernel of the nut Crackatook.
Now this nut Crackatook had a shell so hard that you might have fired a forty-eight pounder at it without producing the slightest effect on it. Moreover, it was essential that this nut should be cracked, in the princess’s presence, by the teeth of a man whose beard had never known a razor, and who had never had on boots. This man had to hand the kernel to her with his eyes closed, and he might not open them till he had made seven steps backwards without a stumble.
Drosselmeier and the astronomer had been at work on this problem uninterruptedly for three days and three nights; and on the Saturday the king was sitting at dinner, when Drosselmeier—who was to have been beheaded on the Sunday morning—burst joyfully in to announce that he had found out what had to be done to restore Princess Pirlipat to her pristine beauty. The king embraced him in a burst of rapture, and promised him a diamond sword, four decorations, and two Sunday suits.
‘Set to work immediately after dinner,’ the monarch cried: adding, kindly, ‘Take care, dear Arcanist, that the young unshaven gentleman in shoes, with the nut Crackatook already in his hand, is on the spot; and be sure that he touches no liquor beforehand, so that he mayn’t trip up when he makes his seven backward steps like a crab. He can get as drunk as a lord afterwards, if he likes.’
Drosselmeier was dismayed at this utterance of the king’s, and stammered out, not without trembling and hesitation, that, though the remedy was discovered, both the nut Crackatook and the young gentleman who was to crack it had still to be searched for, and that it was matter of doubt whether they ever would be got hold of at all. The king, greatly incensed, whirled his scepter round his crowned head, and shouted, in the voice of a lion:
‘Very well, then you must be beheaded!’
It was exceedingly fortunate for the wretched Drosselmeier that the king had thoroughly enjoyed his dinner that day, and was consequently in an admirable temper, and disposed to listen to the sensible advice which the queen, who was very sorry for Drosselmeier, did not spare to give him. Drosselmeier took heart, and represented that he really had fulfilled the conditions, and discovered the necessary measures, and had gained his life, consequently. The king said this was all bosh and nonsense; but at length, after two or three glasses of liqueurs, decreed that Drosselmeier and the astronomer should start off immediately, and not come back without the nut Crackatook in their pockets. The man who was to crack it (by the queen’s suggestion) might be heard of by means of advertisements in the local and foreign newspapers and gazettes.
Godpapa Drosselmeier interrupted his story at this point, and promised to finish it on the following evening.
* * * *
Next evening, as soon as the lights were brought, Godpapa Drosselmeier duly arrived, and went on with his story as follows:—
Drosselmeier and the court astronomer had been journeying for fifteen long years without finding the slightest trace of the nut Crackatook. I might go on for more than four weeks telling you where all they had been, and what extraordinary things they had seen. I shall not do so, however, but merely mention that Drosselmeier, in his profound discouragement, at last began to feel a most powerful longing to see his dear native town of Nürnberg once again. And he was more powerfully moved by this longing than usual one day, when he happened to be smoking a pipe of kanaster with his friend in the middle of a great forest in Asia, and he cried:
‘Oh, Nürnberg, Nürnberg! Dear native town—he who still knows thee not, place of renown—though far he has traveled, and great cities seen—as London, and Paris, and Peterwardeen—knoweth not what it is happy to be—still must his longing heart languish for thee—for thee, O Nürnberg, exquisite town—where the houses have windows both upstairs and down!’
As Drosselmeier lamented thus dolefully, the astronomer, seized with compassionate sympathy, began to weep and howl so terribly that he was heard throughout the length and breadth of Asia. But he collected himself again, wiped the tears from his eyes, and said:
‘After all, dearest colleague, why should we sit and weep and howl here? Why not come to Nürnberg? Does it matter a brass farthing, after all, where and how we search for this horrible nut Crackatook?’
‘That’s true, too,’ answered Drosselmeier, consoled. They both got up immediately, knocked the ashes out of their pipes, started off, and traveled straight on without stopping, from that forest right in the center of Asia till they came to Nürnberg. As soon as they got there, Drosselmeier went straight to his cousin the toy maker and doll-carver, and gilder and varnisher, whom he had not seen for a great many long years. To him he told all the tale of Princess Pirlipat, Dame Mouseyrinks, and the nut Crackatook, so that he clapped his hands repeatedly, and cried in amazement:
‘Dear me, cousin, these things are really wonderful—very wonderful, indeed!’
Drosselmeier told him, further, some of the adventures he had met with on his long journey—how he had spent two years at the court of the King of Dates; how the Prince of Almonds had expelled him with ignominy from his territory; how he had applied in vain to the Natural History Society at Squirreltown—in short, how he had been everywhere utterly unsuccessful in discovering the faintest trace of the nut Crackatook. During this narrative, Christoph Zacharias had kept frequently snapping his fingers, twisting himself round on one foot, smacking with his tongue, etc.; then he cried:
‘Ee—aye—oh!—that really would be the very deuce and all.’
At last he threw his hat and wig in the air, warmly embraced his cousin, and cried:
‘Cousin, cousin, you’re a made man—a made man you are—for either I am much deceived, or I have got the nut Crackatook myself!’
He immediately produced a little cardboard box, out of which he took a gilded nut of medium size.
‘Look there!’ he said, showing this nut to his cousin; ‘the state of matters as regards this nut is this. Several years ago, at Christmas time, a stranger man came here with a sack of nuts, which he offered for sale. Just in front of my shop he got into a quarrel,