rs. He fell on his knees and closed his eyes, awaiting death.

A wave like a mountain broke over his head and cast him fainting on
the shore, which no living person had touched before him.

VII

When Graceful recovered his senses, the ice, clouds, and darkness had
disappeared. He was lying on the ground in the midst of a charming
country, covered with trees bathed in a soft light. In front of him
was a beautiful castle, from which bubbled a brook that flowed into a
sea as blue, calm, and transparent as the sky. Graceful looked about
him; he was alone--alone with the remains of his two companions, which
the waves had washed on the shore. Exhausted with suffering and
excitement, he dragged himself to the brook and bent over the water to
refresh his parched lips, when he shrank back with affright. It was
not his face that he saw in the water, but that of an old man with
silvery locks who strongly resembled him. He turned round; there was
no one behind him. He again drew near the fountain; he saw the old
man, or rather, doubtless, the old man was himself. "Great fairies,"
he cried. "I understand you. If it is my life that you wish in
exchange for that of my grandmother, I joyfully accept the sacrifice."
And without troubling himself further about his old age and wrinkles,
he plunged his head into the water and drank eagerly.

On rising, he was astonished to see himself again as he was when he
left home, only more beautiful, with blacker hair and brighter eyes
than ever. He picked up his hat, which had fallen near the spring, and
which a drop of water had touched by chance, when what was his
surprise to see the butterfly that he had pinned to it fluttering its
wings and seeking to fly. He gave it its liberty, and ran to the beach
for Fido and Pensive, then plunged them both into the blessed
fountain. Pensive flew upward with a joyful cry and disappeared amid
the turrets of the castle. Fido, shaking the water from both ears,
ran to the kennels of the palace, where he was met by magnificent
watch-dogs, which, instead of barking and growling at the new-comer,
welcomed him joyfully like an old friend. Graceful had at last found
the Fountain of Immortality, or rather the brook that flowed from
it--a brook already greatly weakened, and which only gave two or three
hundred years of life to those that drank of it; but nothing prevented
them from drinking anew.

Graceful filled his vial with this life-giving water and approach