the clear
moonlight nights she missed the sailing clouds, which showed her
pictures of the city and pictures from history.

The child grasps at the picture-books, the Dryad grasped at the
cloud-world, her thought-book. A sudden, cloudless sky was for her a
blank leaf; and for several days she had only had such leaves before
her.

It was in the warm summer-time: not a breeze moved through the
glowing hot days. Every leaf, every flower, lay as if it were
torpid, and the people seemed torpid, too.

Then the clouds arose and covered the region round about where the
gleaming mist announced "Here lies Paris."

The clouds piled themselves up like a chain of mountains,
hurried on through the air, and spread themselves abroad over the
whole landscape, as far as the Dryad's eye could reach.

Like enormous blue-black blocks of rock, the clouds lay piled over
one another. Gleams of lightning shot forth from them.

"These also are the servants of the Lord God," the old clergyman
had said. And there came a bluish dazzling flash of lightning, a
lighting up as if of the sun itself, which could burst blocks of
rock asunder. The lightning struck and split to the roots the old
venerable oak. The crown fell asunder. It seemed as if the tree were
stretching forth its arms to clasp the messengers of the light.

No bronze cannon can sound over the land at the birth of a royal
child as the thunder sounded at the death of the old oak. The rain
streamed down; a refreshing wind was blowing; the storm had gone by,
and there was quite a holiday glow on all things. The old clergyman
spoke a few words for honorable remembrance, and a painter made a
drawing, as a lasting record of the tree.

"Everything passes away," said the Dryad, "passes away like a
cloud, and never comes back!"

The old clergyman, too, did not come back. The green roof of his
school was gone, and his teaching-chair had vanished. The children did
not come; but autumn came, and winter came, and then spring also. In
all this change of seasons the Dryad looked toward the region where,
at night, Paris gleamed with its bright mist far on the horizon.

Forth from the town rushed engine after engine, train after train,
whistling and screaming at all hours in the day. In the evening,
towards midnight, at daybreak, and all the day through, came the
trains. Out of each one, and into each one, streamed people from the
country of every king. A new wonder of the world had summoned