limmer in the grass, to the postern, which King Loc easily
opened, for the dwarfs are masters of metals, nor can locks, padlocks,
bolts, chains or bars ever stop them.

She climbed the winding stairs that led to her mother's room, and she
paused to clasp her beating heart with both her hands. Softly the door
opened, and by the light of a night lamp that hung from the ceiling she
saw her mother in the holy silence that reigned, her mother frailer and
paler, with hair grey at the temples, but in the eyes of her daughter
more beautiful even than in past days as she remembered her riding
fearlessly in magnificent attire. As usual the mother beheld her
daughter as in a dream, and she opened her arms as if to caress her. And
the child, laughing and sobbing, was about to throw herself into those
open arms; but King Loc tore her away, and like a wisp of straw he bore
her through the blue landscape to the Kingdom of the Dwarfs.

XV

In which we shall see how King Loc suffered

Seated on the granite step of the underground palace, Honey-Bee watched
the blue sky through the cleft in the rock, I and saw the elder-trees
turn their spreading white parasols to the light. She began to weep.

"Honey-Bee," said King Loc as he took her hand in his, "why do you weep,
and what is it you desire?" And as she had been grieving these many
days, the dwarfs at her feet tried to cheer her with simple airs on the
flute, the flageolet, the rebeck, and the cymbals. And other dwarfs, to
amuse her, turned such somersaults one after the other that they pricked
the grass with the points of their hoods with their cockades of leaves,
and nothing could be more charming than to watch the capers of these
tiny men with their venerable beards. Tad so kind and Dig so wise, who
had loved her since the day they had found her asleep on the shore of
the lake, and Pic, the elderly poet, gently took her arm and implored
her to tell them the cause of her grief. Pau, a simple just soul,
offered her a basket of grapes, and all of them gently pulled the edge
of her skirt and said with King Loc:

"Honey-Bee, Princess of the Dwarfs, why do you weep?"

"Little King Loc," Honey-Bee replied, "and you, little men, my grief
only increases your love, because you are good; you weep with me. Know
that I weep when I think of George of Blanchelande, who should now be a
cavalier, but whom I shall never see again. I love him and I wish to be
his wife."

King Loc too