"The Once and the Future King" (i)

[fiefoe]

Which would be "The Sword In the Stone". It's amazingly dense and inventive and bittersweet, and the book completely had me by the time Merlyn turned Wart into a fish in the moat. T. H. White had his reasons for publishing multiple versions of this novel, but it does make some unfortunate mismatches between the audiobook version and the Chinese version I managed to get my hands on.

• It was not really Eton that he mentioned, for the College of Blessed Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of the same sort. Also they were drinking Metheglyn, not Port, but by mentioning the modern wine it is easier to give you the feel. <> ‘Isn’t so much the distance,’ said Sir Ector, ‘but that giant What’s—‘is—name is in the way. Have to pass through his country, you understand.’
• The best mowers mowed away in a line where the grass was still uncut, their scythes roaring in the strong sunlight. The women raked the dry hay together in long strips with wooden rakes, and the two boys with pitchforks followed up on either side of the strip, turning the hay inwards so that it lay well for picking up. Then the great carts followed, rumbling with their spiked wooden wheels, drawn by horses or slow white oxen. One man stood on top of the cart to receive the hay and direct operations, while one man walked on either side picking up what the boys had prepared and throwing it to him with a fork. The cart was led down the lane between two lines of hay, and was loaded in strict rotation from the front poles to the back, the man on top calling out in a stern voice where he wanted each fork to be pitched.
• For the hay was an element to them, like sea or air, in which they bathed and plunged themselves and which they even breathed in.
• A special shelf, and the most beautiful of all, held the hoods: very old cracked rufter hoods which had been made for birds before Kay was born, tiny hoods for the merlins, small hoods for tiercels, splendid new hoods which had been knocked up to pass away the long winter evenings.
• There were two little merlins which had only just been taken up from hacking, an old peregrine who was not much use in this wooded country but who was kept for appearances, a kestrel on which the boys had learned the rudiments of falconry, a spar—hawk which Sir Ector was kind enough to keep for the parish priest, and, caged off in a special apartment of his own at the far end, there was the tiercel goshawk Cully.
• the Wart had some of the falconer’s feelings and knew that a lost hawk was the greatest possible calamity. He knew that Hob had worked on Cully for fourteen hours a day to teach him his trade, and that his work had been like Jacob’s struggle with the angel. When Cully was lost a part of Hob would be lost too.
• ‘Name of King Pellinore,’ continued the Knight. ‘May have heard of me, what?’ The visor shut with a pop, like an echo to the What, but was opened again immediately.
• The Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar—hawk and Gos, the crazy conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from squirrels or crows, and he knew how the twigs and the tree foot were splashed with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings. This was the impression which he got from Merlyn. The old man was streaked with the droppings over his shoulders, among the stars and triangles of his gown, and a large spider was slowly lowering itself from the tip of his hat,
• three dozen rabbit wires, twelve corkscrews, some ants’ nests between two glass plates, inkbottles of every possible colour from red to violet, darningneedles, a gold medal for being the best scholar at Winchester,
• Archimedes looked closely at the mouse, blinked at the Wart, moved nearer on the finger, closed his eyes and leaned forward. He stood there with closed eyes and an expression of rapture on his face, as if he were saying Grace, and then, with the absurdest sideways nibble, took the morsel so gently that he would not have broken a soap bubble. He remained leaning forward with closed eyes, with the mouse suspended from his beak, as if he were not sure what to do with it. Then he lifted his right foot – he was right—handed, though people say only men are – and took hold of the mouse. He held it up like a boy holding a stick of rock or a constable with his truncheon, looked at it, nibbled its tail. He turned it round so that it was head first, for the Wart had offered it the wrong way round, and gave one gulp. He looked round at the company with the tail hanging out of the corner of his mouth – as much as to say, ‘I wish you would not all stare at me so’ – turned his head away, politely swallowed the tail, scratched his sailor’s beard with his left toe, and began to ruffle out his feathers.
• He said he would not use magic. He said you could not use magic in Great Arts, just as it would be unfair to make a great statue by magic. You have to cut it out with a chisel, you see. Then Cully came down to finish the pigeon, and we pulled the string, and the loop slipped over the feathers and caught him round the legs.
• Sir Ector’s nose was blue, and had an icicle hanging from the end of it, while all except Merlyn had a ledge of snow upon their shoulders. Merlyn stood in the middle, holding his umbrella high because of the owl.
  ‘It’s done by hypnotism,’ said Sir Ector, with chattering teeth. ‘Like those wallahs from the Indies.
  ‘But that’ll do,’ he added hastily, ‘that’ll do very well. I’m sure you’ll make an excellent tutor for teachin’ these boys.’
• He was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.
• The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown—ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
• ‘For this once,’ said a large and solemn tench beside his ear, ‘I will come. But in future you will have to go by yourself. Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self—reliance.’
• What makes it a great deal more difficult to imagine is that everything which human beings would consider to be above the water level was fringed with all the colours of the spectrum. For instance, if you had happened to be fishing for the Wart, he would have seen you, at the rim of the tea saucer which was the upper air to him, not as one person waving a fishing—rod, but as seven people, whose outlines were red, orange, yellow green, blue, indigo and violet, all waving the same rod whose colours were as varied. In fact, you would have been a rainbow man to him, a beacon of flashing and radiating colours, which ran into one another and had rays all about. You would have burned upon the water like Cleopatra in the poem.
• It should perhaps be mentioned that Merlyn was a ponderous, deep—beamed fish of about five pounds, leather—coloured, with small scales, adipose in his fins, rather slimy, and having a bright marigold eye – a respectable figure.
• Therapeutic, / Elephantic, /Diagnosis, /Boom!
  Pancreatic, / Microstatic, /Anti—toxic, / Doom!
• Once the two travellers passed under a swan. The white creature floated above like a Zeppelin, all indistinct except what was under the water...  It continued to glare at them from above, like a white snake suddenly let down through the ceiling, until they were out of sight.
• ‘I am taking you to see one of those,’ said the tench,’ the Emperor of these purlieus. As a doctor I have immunity, and I dare say he will respect you as my companion as well – but you had better keep your tail bent in case he is feeling tyrannical.’
• Mr P. was four feet long, his weight incalculable. The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch – by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains. There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean—shaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless – but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs.
• So, as the arrow topped the trees and climbed into sunlight, it began to burn against the evening like the sun itself. Up and up it went, not weaving as it would have done with a snatching loose, but soaring, swimming, aspiring to heaven, steady, golden and superb. Just as it had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened.
• 'As nice a brace of young gentlemen,' said the witch, 'as ever stewed or roast. Fattened on real butcher's meat,I daresay, with milk and all.
• Knit one, knot one, purl two together, / Pip one and pop one and pluck the secret feather.
  Baste in a mod. oven. / God bless our coven.
  Tra-la-la! Three toads in a jar. / Te-he-he! Put in the frog's knee.
• 'Are you one of her familiars?' asked the Wart suspiciously. The poor creature did not take offense at this, and tried not to look hurt.
  'No,' he said. 'I'm not a familiar. I'm only a mangy old black goat, rather tattered as you see, and kept for sacrifice.'...
  'Not she. I shall be too rank for her sweet tooth, you may be sure. No, she will use my blood for making patterns with on Walpurgis Night.'
• At the first gong Madame Mim immediately turned herself into a dragon. It was the accepted opening move and Merlyn ought to have replied by being a thunderstorm or something like that. Instead, he caused a great deal of preliminary confusion by becoming a field mouse, which was quite invisible in the grass, and nibbled Madame Mim's tail,
• The ingenious magician had turned himself successively into the microbes, not yet discovered, of hiccoughs, scarlet fever, mumps, whooping cough, measles and heat spots, and from a complication of all these complaints the infamous Madame Mim had immediately expired.
• The good armorers — the best lived at Warrington, and still live there — were careful to make all the forward or entering sides of their suits convex, so that the spear point glanced off them.  Curiously enough, the shields were more inclined to be concave. It was better that a spear point should stay on your shield, rather than glance off upwards or downwards, and perhaps hit a more vulnerable point of your body armor. The best place of all for hitting people was on the very crest of the tilting helm, that is, if the person in question were vain enough to have a large metal crest in whose folds and ornaments the point would find a ready lodging. Many were vain enough to have these armorial crests, with bears and dragons or even ships or castles on them
• That is my tutor,' said the Wart hurriedly, 'Merlyn, the magician.' Sir Grummore looked at Merlyn — magicians were considered rather middle-class by the true jousting set in those days
• The knights had now lost their tempers and the battle was joined in earnest. It did not matter much, however, for they were so encased in metal that they could do each other little damage. It took them so long to get up, and the dealing of a blow when you weighed the eighth part of a ton was such a cumbrous business, that every stage of the contest could be marked and pondered.
• Then they turned round and swayed backwards and forwards once or twice, in order to get their weight on their toes. When they leaned forward they had to run forward, in order to keep up with their weight, and if they leaned too far backwards they fell down. So even walking was a bit complicated. When they had got their weight properly distributed in front of them, so that they were just off their balance, each broke into a trot to keep up with himself. They hurtled together as it had been two boars.
• After several minutes he said, 'Is one allowed to speak as a human being, or does the thing about being seen and not heard have to apply?'
  'Everybody can speak.'
  'That's good, because I wanted to mention that you have been knitting your beard into that night-cap for three rows now.'
  'Well, I'll be fiddled.'
  'I should think the best thing would be to cut off the end of your beard. Shall I fetch some scissors.
  'Why didn't you tell me before?'
  'I wanted to see what would happen.'
  'You run a grave risk, my boy,' said Merlyn coldly, 'of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.'
• 'Nothing! Said he was a wolf, only the difference was a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside, his on the inside. Rip up my flesh and try. Ah, for quietus, with a bare bodkin!'
• All philosophers prefer to live in towers, as may be seen by visiting the room which Erasmus chose in his college at Cambridge, but Merlyn's tower was even more beautiful than his.
• 'Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda!' he exclaimed, and immediately vanished with a frightful roar.
  The Wart was still staring at his tutor's chair in some perplexity, a few moments later, when Merlyn reappeared. He had lost his hat and his hair and beard were all tangled up, as if by a hurricane. He sat down again, straightening his gown with trembling fingers.
  'Why did you do that?' asked the Wart.
  'I didn't do it on purpose.'
• Merlyn took off his sailor hat and held it out to the air for inspection.
  'This is an anachronism,' he said severely. 'That's what it is, a beastly anachronism.'
  Archimedes seemed to be accustomed to these scenes, for he now said in a reasonable voice: 'Why don't you ask for the hat by name, master? Say, 'I want my magician's hat.' not, 'I want the hat I was wearing.' Perhaps the poor chap finds it as difficult to live backwards in time as you do.'
• WART KNEW that if he told the elder boy about his conversation with Merlyn, Kay would very property refuse to be condescended to, and not come. So he said nothing. It was strange, but their battle had made them friends again, and each could look the other in the eye, with a kind of confused affection. They went together unanimously though shyly, without any need for explanations, and found themselves standing at the end of Hob's barley strip after mass, without the Wart having to use any ingenuity.
• Maid Marian showed them how to go sideways, one side after the other; how to stop at once when a bramble caught them, and take it patiently out; how to put their feet down sensitively and then roll their weight to that leg as soon as they were certain that no twig was under the foot; how to distinguish at a glance the places which gave most hope of an easy passage; and how a kind of rhythm in their movements would help them in spite of all these obstacles.
• On the morrow Wat and the Dog Boy were the firmest of friends. Their common experiences of being stoned by the mob and then turned into ornaments by Morgan served as a bond and a topic of reminiscence, as they lay among the dogs at night, for the rest of their lives; and, by the morning, they had both pulled off the noses which Merlyn had so kindly given them. They explained that they had got used to having no noses, now, and anyway they preferred to live with dogs.
• It was that rather sad time of year when for the first time for many months the fine old sun still blazes away in a cloudless sky, but does not warm you, and the hoar-frosts and the mists and the winds begin to stir their faint limbs at morning and evening, with the gossamer, as the sap of winter vigor remembers itself in the cold corpses which brave summer slew.
• just so there are waves of sound higher than the bat's squeak, which Mozart once heard delivered by Lucrezia Ajugari in 1770, and lower than the distant thunder which pheasants hear (or is it that they see the flash?) before man.
• The truth is that nowadays the farm laborer is ready to accept so little money because he does not have to throw his soul in with the bargain, as he would have to do in a town, and just the same freedom of spirit has obtained in the country since Sir Ector. The villeins were laborers; they lived in the same one-roomed hut with their families, few chickens, litter of pigs, or cow possibly called Crumbocke; most dreadful and insanitary! But they liked it. They were healthy, quite free of an air with no factory smoke in it, and, which was most of all, their heart's interest was bound up with their skill in labor. They knew that Sir Ector loved and was proud of them. They were more valuable to him even than his cattle, and, as he valued his cattle more than anything else except his children, this was saying a good deal. He walked and worked among them, thought of their welfare, and could tell the good workmen from the bad. He was the eternal farmer, in fact; one of those people who seem to be employing labor at thirty shillings a week, but are actually paying half as much again in voluntary overtime, providing a cottage free or at nominal rent, and possibly making an extra present of their milk and eggs and home-brewed beer.
• It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around the castle the snow lay as it ought to he. It hung heavily on the battlements, like extremely thick icing on a very good cake, and in a few convenient places it modestly turned itself into the clearest icicles of the greatest possible length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village, when it saw a chance of falling upon some amusing character and giving pleasure to all.
• It was now Sir Ector's turn to wind up the proceedings. He stood up importantly and delivered the following speech: 'Friends, tenants and otherwise. Unaccustomed as I am to public speakin' — '
  There was a faint cheer at this, for everybody recognized the speech which Sir Ector had made for the last twenty years, and welcomed it like a brother.
• He had to cut everything up handsomely, leaving two vertebrae on the tail to make the chine look attractive, and almost ever since he could remember he had been either pursuing a hart or cutting it up into joints. He was not particularly fond of doing this. The harts and hinds in their herds, the boars in their singulars, the skulks of foxes, the richesses of martens, the bevies of roes, the cetes of badgers and the routs of wolves: all came to him more or less as something which you either skin or flayed and then took home to the cook. You could talk to him about os and argos, suet and grease, croteys, fewmets and fiants, but he only looked polite. He knew that you were showing off your knowledge of these words, which were to him a business.
• There was a single note from one of the lymers.
  'Hoo arere,' cried the huntsman.
  The lymer's note grew in confidence, faltered, then rose the full bay.
  'Hoo arere! Here how, amy. Hark to Beaumont the valiant! Ho moy, ho moy, hole, hole, hole, hole!'
  The lymer was taken up by the tenor bells of the braches. The noise grew to a crescendo of excitement as the blood-thirsty thunder of the alaunts pealed through the lesser notes.
• Over this there was a bit of excitement. King Pellinore, who had really been scarcely himself all day, made the fatal mistake of asking when the hounds were going to be given their quarry. Now, as everybody knows, a quarry is a reward of entrails, etc., which is given to the hounds on the hide of the dead beast (sur le quir), and, as everybody else knows, a slain boar is not skinned. It is disemboweled without the hide being taken off, and, since there can be no hide, there can be no quarry. We all know that the hounds are rewarded with a fouail, or mixture of bowels and bread cooked over a fire, and, of course, poor King Pellinore had used the wrong word.
  So King Pellinore's trousers were taken down amid loud huzzas, and the protesting monarch was bent over the dead beast and given a hearty smack with a sword blade by Sir Ector. King Pellinore then said, 'I do think you are all a lot of beastly cads,' and wandered off mumbling into the forest.
• I happened on it in this gorse bush here, with snow all over its poor back and tears in its eyes and nobody to care for it in the wide world. It's what comes of not leading a regular life. Before, it was all right. We got up at the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half-past ten. Now look at it. It's gone to pieces altogether, and it will be your fault if it dies. You and your hummocky bed.'
• It had bounded off into the snow with every sign of gratitude, to be followed two hours later by the excited King, and the watchers from the battlements had observed it confusing its snowy footprints most ingeniously, as it reached the edge of the chase — it was running backwards, bounding twenty foot sideways, rubbing out its marks with its tall, climbing along horizontal branches, and performing many other tricks with evident enjoyment. They had also seen King Pellinore, who had dutifully kept his eyes shut and counted ten thousand while this was going on, becoming quite confused when he arrived at the difficult spot, and finally galloping off in the wrong direction with his brachet trailing behind him.
• 'What is your favorite bird?' asked Merlyn politely, to keep the peace.
  Archimedes thought this over for some time, and then said, 'Well, it's a large question, you know. It's rather like asking you what is your favorite book. On the whole, however, I think that I must prefer the pigeon.'
  'To eat?'
  'I was leaving that side of it out,' said the owl in civilized tones.
• He lay under the great bearskin and stared out of the window at the stars of spring, no longer frosty and metallic, but as if they had been new-washed and had swollen with the moisture.
• 'I like it very much. Do you know, when I was a fish there were parts of the water which were colder or warmer than the other parts, and now it is the same in the air.'
  'The temperature of both,' said Archimedes instructively, 'depends upon the vegetation of the bottom. Woods or weeds, they make it warm above them.'
• 'You must stall. That means you must launch yourself upwards until you lose flying speed, and then, just as you feel yourself beginning to tumble — why, you sit down. Haven't you ever noticed how birds usually fly upwards to perch? They don't come straight down on the branch, but dive below it and then rise. At the top of their rise they stall and sit down.'
• You know how a spinning top which is beginning to lose its spin slowly describes circles with its highest point before falling down. The leg of the top remains in the same place, but the apex makes circles which get bigger and bigger towards the end. This is what Archimedes was absent-mindedly doing. His feet remained stationary, but he moved the upper part of his body round and round, like somebody trying to see from behind a fat lady at a cinema, and uncertain which side of her gave the best view. As he could also turn his head almost completely round on his shoulders, you may imagine that his antics were worth watching.
• Here, in the luminous hollow of a tree stump that had been blasted by lightning and whittled clean by the winds of knowledge, they alighted on the outstretched hands of the goddess. Athene was invisible, or at least the Wart never remembered having seen her afterwards. At the time he did not notice that she was invisible — it only struck him when he woke up next morning — because he was aware of her without seeing her. He was aware that her unthinkable beauty was neither that of age nor of youth. That her eyes were the only things you thought of looking at, and that to be her was terrible, whereas to be with her was the only joy. If you can understand this, she was in herself so unhappy that words only melt in such temperatures, but towards other people she was the spirit of invincible mercy and protection. She lived, of course, beyond sorrow and solitude, and, if you follow me, the suffering which had brought her there had left her with a kind of supernatural good manners.
• So it is with humans. We cannot hear the trees talking, except as a vague noise of roaring and hushing which we attribute to the wind in the leaves, because they talk too slowly for us. These noises are really the syllables and vowels of the trees.
• 'Great men,' remarked a close-grained svelte lime, 'are always going back to the trees. Grindling Gibbons would never carve his nets and baskets out of anything but me.'
  'And Salvator Rosa,' said a chestnut, 'was always painting me.'
  'Corot,' said a willow sighing, 'was fond of me.'
  'How your humans do spin about,' remarked a crafty elm coldly.
  'What a speed they live at. It is rather good sport trying to spot them, and then to drop an old bough on their heads if you can get them directly underneath. But of course you have to stand very stiff and give no signs of dropping it till the actual moment. The cream of the joke is that they make the coffins out of me afterwards.'
• The dream, like the one before it, lasted about half an hour. In the last three minutes of the dream some fishes, dragons and such-like ran hurriedly about. A dragon swallowed one of the pebbles, but spat it out. In the ultimate twinkling of an eye, far tinier in time than the last millimeter on a six-foot rule, there came a man. He split up the one pebble which remained of all that mountain with blows; then made an arrowhead of it, and slew his brother.
• Being invisible is not so pleasant as it sounds. After a few minutes of it you forget where you last left your hands and legs — or at least you can only guess to within three or four inches — and the result is that it is by no means easy to make your way through a brambly wood. ... You can generally tell where your body is, either by the unnatural bend of a thorn branch, or by the pain of one of its thorns, or by the strange feeling of centralness which all human beings have, because we keep our souls in the region of our liver.
• 'Well, you shan't have a poached egg, you shall just stay there until you pay my ransom. How do you suppose I am to run my business if I don't have my ransoms? What about my concentration camps, and my thousand-dollar wreaths at funerals? Do you suppose that all this is run on nothing? Why, I had to send a wreath for King Gwythno Garanhir which consisted of a Welsh Harp forty feet long, made entirely out of orchids. It said, 'Melodious Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest.'
• 'The candle,' said the vicar wanly, 'is eternal punishment, extinguished by means of a needle — that is by the passion of Christ.'<> 'Very good indeed,' said Merlyn, patting him on the back.
• You were not supposed to use a bow longer than your own height, for it was considered that by doing so you were expending unnecessary energy, rather like using an elephant-gun, to shoot an ovis ammon with. At any rate, modest men were careful not to over-bow themselves. It was a form of boasting.
• 'Oh, no,' said the Wart. 'Or rather, oh yes, and for the same reason. But I don't really mind. I am sure I shall make a better squire than old Kay would. Look at the saffron going into that frumenty: it just matches the firelight on the hams in the chimney.'
  'It is lovely', said Merlyn. 'Only fools want to be great.'
• 'The best thing for disturbances of the spirit,' replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, 'is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the poor mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
• We badgers thought very hard and decided to ask three boons. We wanted to change our skins for shields, our mouths for weapons, and our arms for garden forks. These boons were granted to us. Everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of us in very queer ones. For instance, one of the lizards decided to swap his whole body for blotting-paper, and one of the toads who lived in the antipodes decided simply to be a waterbottle.
• 'Some red propaganda, no doubt,' remarked Sir Grummore. King Pellinore closed his eyes tight, extended his arms in both directions, and announced in capital letters, 'Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.'
  'Who said that?' asked Sir Grummore.
  'But the sword said it, like I tell you.'
  'Talkative weapon,' remarked Sir Grummore skeptically.
• 'I must go,' replied their tutor. 'We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.
• 'Oh, Merlyn,' cried the Wart, 'help me to get this sword.' There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with it. All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were otters and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and serpents and falcons and fishes and goats and dogs and dainty unicorns and newts and solitary wasps and goat-moth caterpillars and corkindrills and volcanoes and mighty trees and patient stones. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about, but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.
• The coronation was a splendid ceremony, and, what was still more splendid, it was like a birthday or Christmas Day. Everybody sent presents to the Wart, for his prowess in having learned to pull swords out of stones, and several burghers of the City of London asked him to help them in taking stoppers out of unruly bottles, unscrewing taps which had got stuck, and in other household emergencies which had got beyond their control. The Dog Boy and Wat clubbed together and sent him a mixture for the distemper, which contained quinine and was absolutely priceless. Goat sent him a watch-chain plaited out of his own beard... An anonymous hedgehog sent four or five dirty leaves with some fleas on them. The Questing Beast and King Pellinore put their heads together and sent some of their most perfect fewmets, all wrapped up in the green leaves of spring in a golden horn with a red velvet baldrick.