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CHAPTER 35
The End
The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and
women that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and
true, and brought them to his master. So a new and upright court
was formed, and strength returned to the nation.
But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered
everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. Then came
Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the
king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built
smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners, and they mined the
gold, and smelted it, and the king coined it into money, and
therewith established things well in the land.
The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home.
When he told the good news to Joan, his wife, she rose from her
chair and said, 'Let us go.' And they left the cottage, and
repaired to Gwyntystorm. And on a mountain above the city they
built themselves a warm house for their old age, high in the clear
air.
As Peter mined one day, at the back of the king's wine Cellar, he
broke into a cavern crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed
therefrom, and the king used it wisely.
Queen Irene - that was the right name of the old princess - was
thereafter seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when
she was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when
nobody else had a notion whither she had gone, said she was with
the dear old Uglies in the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her
business might be with others there as well. All the uppermost
rooms in the palace were left to her use, and when any one was in
need of her help, up thither he must go. But even when she was
there, he did not always succeed in finding her. She, however,
always knew that such a one had been looking for her.
Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to
meet him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened
the door, lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch
had been glorified by her fire! And there burned the fire - a huge
heap of red and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess,
an old grey-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly
wagging her tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly
so long restrain itself from springing as to be sure of its victim.
The queen was casting roses, more and more roses, upon the fire.
At last she turned and said, 'Now Lina!' - and Lina dashed
burrowing into the fire. There went up a black smoke and a dust,
and Lina was never more seen in the palace.
Irene and Curdie were married. The old king died, and they were
king and queen. As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better
city, and good people grew in it. But they had no children, and
when they died the people chose a king. And the new king went
mining and mining in the rock under the city, and grew more and
more eager after the gold, and paid less and less heed to his
people. Rapidly they sank toward their old wickedness. But still
the king went on mining, and coining gold by the pailful, until the
people were worse even than in the old time. And so greedy was the
king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail, he caused
the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that followed
him had left standing to bear the city. And from the girth of an
oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir
tree of fifty.
One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell
with a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women
went up with its dust, and then there was a great silence.
Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned
with a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the
river. All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very
name of Gwyntystorm had ceased from the lips of men.
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