ing impetus and enormous innocence of evil; just as a pebble on
a railway can stagger the Scotch express. It is enough for the great
martyrs and criminals of the French revolution, that they have surprised
for all time the secret weakness of the strong. They have awakened and
set leaping and quivering in his crypt for ever the coward in the hearts
of kings.

.....

When Jack the Giant-Killer really first saw the giant his experience was
not such as has been generally supposed. If you care to hear it I will
tell you the real story of Jack the Giant-Killer. To begin with, the
most awful thing which Jack first felt about the giant was that he was
not a giant. He came striding across an interminable wooded plain, and
against its remote horizon the giant was quite a small figure, like a
figure in a picture--he seemed merely a man walking across the grass.
Then Jack was shocked by remembering that the grass which the man was
treading down was one of the tallest forests upon that plain. The man
came nearer and nearer, growing bigger and bigger, and at the instant
when he passed the possible stature of humanity Jack almost screamed.
The rest was an intolerable apocalypse.

The giant had the one frightful quality of a miracle; the more he became
incredible the more he became solid. The less one could believe in him
the more plainly one could see him. It was unbearable that so much of
the sky should be occupied by one human face. His eyes, which had stood
out like bow windows, became bigger yet, and there was no metaphor that
could contain their bigness; yet still they were human eyes. Jack's
intellect was utterly gone under that huge hypnotism of the face that
filled the sky; his last hope was submerged, his five wits all still
with terror.

But there stood up in him still a kind of cold chivalry, a dignity of
dead honour that would not forget the small and futile sword in his
hand. He rushed at one of the colossal feet of this human tower, and
when he came quite close to it the ankle-bone arched over him like a
cave. Then he planted the point of his sword against the foot and leant
on it with all his weight, till it went up to the hilt and broke the
hilt, and then snapped just under it. And it was plain that the giant
felt a sort of prick, for he snatched up his great foot into his great
hand for an instant; and then, putting it down again, he bent over and
stared at the ground until he had seen his enemy.

Then he picked