at the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your
hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near the
outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able to know
at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay, more--you
will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing, just as if there
were no glove made like a man's hand between you and it.

'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with
further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for you
will know the foot--what it is and what beast's it is. According, then,
to your knowledge of that beast will be your knowledge of the man you
have to do with. Only there is one beautiful and awful thing about it,
that if any one gifted with this perception once uses it for his own
ends, it is taken from him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he
is in a far worse condition than before, for he trusts to what he has
not got.'

'How dreadful!' Said Curdie. 'I must mind what I am about.'

'Yes, indeed, Curdie.'

'But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to help
it?'

'Yes. But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never make
a serious mistake.'

'I suppose you want me, ma'am, to warn every one whose hand tells me
that he is growing a beast--because, as you say, he does not know it
himself.'

The princess smiled.

'Much good that would do, Curdie! I don't say there are no cases in
which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar cases,
and if such come you will know them. To such a person there is in
general no insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not because he
is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man. It is the
dying man in him that it makes uncomfortable, and he trots, or creeps,
or swims, or flutters out of its way--calls it a foolish feeling, a
whim, an old wives' fable, a bit of priests' humbug, an effete
superstition, and so on.'

'And is there no hope for him? Can nothing be done? It's so awful to
think of going down, down, down like that!'

'Even when it's with his own will?'

'That's what seems to me to make it worst of all,' said Curdie.

'You are right,' answered the princess, nodding her head; 'but there is
this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember--that they do not
know what or how horrid their coming fate is. Many a l