the possession of it?"

"What could induce me?" asked Midas. "I ask nothing else, to render me
perfectly happy."

"Be it as you wish, then," replied the stranger, waving his hand in token
of farewell. "To-morrow, at sunrise, you will find yourself gifted with
the Golden Touch."

The figure of the stranger then became exceedingly bright, and Midas
involuntarily closed his eyes. On opening them again, he beheld only one
yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all around him, the glistening of the
precious metal which he had spent his life in hoarding up.

Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep or
awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child's, to whom a
beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any rate, day
had hardly peeped over the hills, when King Midas was broad awake, and,
stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects that were
within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch had really
come, according to the stranger's promise. So he laid his finger on a
chair by the bedside, and on various other things, but was grievously
disappointed to perceive that they remained of exactly the same substance
as before. Indeed, he felt very much afraid that he had only dreamed about
the lustrous stranger, or else that the latter had been making game of
him. And what a miserable affair would it be, if, after all his hopes,
Midas must content himself with what little gold he could scrape together
by ordinary means, instead of creating it by a touch!

All this while it was only the gray of the morning, with but a streak of
brightness along the edge of the sky, where Midas could not see it. He lay
in a very disconsolate mood, regretting the downfall of his hopes, and
kept growing sadder and sadder, until the earliest sunbeam shone through
the window, and gilded the ceiling over his head. It seemed to Midas that
this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular way on the
white covering of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his astonishment
and delight, when he found that this linen fabric had been transmuted to
what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest gold! The Golden
Touch had come to him with the first sunbeam!

Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room,
grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of
the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golde