Little Poems in Prose

Gnomes, the Salamanders, the Sylphides, the Sylphs, the Nixies, the Undines and their women-folk,—I mean the law which allows the Fairies in such a case as this, when all the gifts are gone, the power of giving yet one more additional and exceptional, provided always that she have sufficient imagination to create it on the spur of the moment. The good Fairy then replied, with a self- possession worthy of her high rank, “I give your son—I give him—the gift of pleasing.” “But please how?—To please?—Why to please?” the little shop-keeper obstinately asked, for he was doubtless one of that very common class of reasoners who are incapable of rising to the height of the logic of the ab- surd. “Because, because!” replied the incensed Fairy, turning her back upon him, and rejoining her companions, she said to them, “What do you think of this empty-headed little French- woman who wishes to understand everything; and who, having obtained for his son the best of all gifts, still dares to ask questions and to discuss the inscrutable?”