he fact is, that with all their knowledge and power, they
cannot get rid of the feeling that some men are greater than they are,
though they can neither fly nor play tricks. So at such times as there
happens to be twice the usual number of sensible electors, such a man
as Ralph Rinkelmann gets to be chosen.

They did not mean to insist on his residence; for they needed his
presence only on special occasions. But they must get hold of him
somehow, first of all, in order to make him king. Once he was crowned,
they could get him as often as they pleased; but before this ceremony
there was a difficulty. For it is only between life and death that the
fairies have power over grown-up mortals, and can carry them off to
their country. So they had to watch for an opportunity.

Nor had they to wait long. For old Ralph was taken dreadfully ill; and
while hovering between life and death, they carried him off, and
crowned him king of Fairyland. But after he was crowned, it was no
wonder, considering the state of his health, that he should not be able
to sit quite upright on the throne of Fairyland; or that, in
consequence, all the gnomes and goblins, and ugly, cruel things that
live in the holes and corners of the kingdom, should take advantage of
his condition, and run quite wild, playing him, king as he was, all
sorts of tricks; crowding about his throne, climbing up the steps, and
actually scrambling and quarrelling like mice about his ears and eyes,
so that he could see and think of nothing else. But I am not going to
tell anything more about this part of his adventures just at present.
By strong and sustained efforts, he succeeded, after much trouble and
suffering, in reducing his rebellious subjects to order. They all
vanished to their respective holes and corners; and King Ralph, coming
to himself, found himself in his bed, half propped up with pillows.

But the room was full of dark creatures, which gambolled about in the
firelight in such a strange, huge, though noiseless fashion, that he
thought at first that some of his rebellious goblins had not been
subdued with the rest, but had followed him beyond the bounds of
Fairyland into his own private house in London. How else could these
mad, grotesque hippopotamus-calves make their ugly appearance in Ralph
Rinkelmann's bed-room? But he soon found out that although they were
like the underground goblins, they were very different as well, and
would require quite different tre