to carry their dainty lamps about so as to produce the
finest effects, reflected the forms of the ladies and the dazzling
military trappings of the handsome cavaliers, (there was war at that
time between the glorious empire of Fairydom and the weak and
infatuated republic of Elfland on its southern borders, and the
epaulette and spurs were the only pass to the hearts of the fair,)
imbuing them with an infinitude of prismatic hues, all softened into a
kind of timed starlight, exquisite as the dying voice of music. In
this gorgeous saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the
benevolent old King Paterflor and his modest and still lovely queen
Sweetbine, all were noble and accomplished and beautiful and gay; but
the charms of the Princess Dewbell, just bursting into the richness of
full-grown fairyhood, were so surpassing that none had ever been found
to question, even in their own hearts, her supremacy. This, perhaps,
may appear strange to many of my pretty readers, but they must
remember that mine is a faithful chronicle of fairies--not of women.
The princess was standing lightly touching--it could not be said that
she leaned against--the slender stalk of a garden lily, that rose like
an emerald column of classic mould above her lovely form, and expanded
into a graceful dome of transparent and crimson-veined cornelian above
her head. Her eyes were cast pensively (at the Musical Fund Hall it
would have been called coquettishly) upon the ground, and ever and
anon she tossed her proud head with an imperious gesture, until the
streaming curls waved and parted around her cheek and neck, like
vine-leaves about a marble column as the south wind creeps among them
soliciting for kisses. The lady Dewbell, amid all this scene of
enchantment, which spread out before and around her, as if her own
loveliness had breathed it into existence, still was discontented;
sad, perhaps, at the total absence of care in her bosom, and sighing
for a sorrow. Unhappy lady Dewbell! She had so many hundred times been
told, what she herself believed full well, that she was absolutely
the most beautiful creature in existence, that the tale had lost its
interest. The champagne of flattery, its creaming foam long ago melted
into the brain, stood untasted before her, dull and flat as the
subsided fountain poured by the last rain-shower into the tulip's cup.
And so the fairy princess stood listless and apart from the joyous
revel, her little form sway