t 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 sceptre, 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