"CHAPTER VII.--TRY METAPHYSICS.
"After a long avoidance of the painful subject, the king and queen
resolved to hold a counsel of three upon it; and so they sent for the
princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece
of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an armchair, in a
sitting posture. Whether she could be said _to sit_, seeing she
received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not pretend to
determine.
"'My dear child,' said the king, 'you must be aware that you are not
exactly like other people.'
"'Oh, you dear funny papa! I have got a nose and two eyes and all the
rest. So have you. So has mamma.'
"'Now be serious, my dear, for once,' said the queen.
"'No, thank you, mamma; I had rather not.'
"'Would you not like to be able to walk like other people?' said the
king.
"'No indeed, I should think not. You only crawl. You are such slow
coaches!'
"'How do you feel, my child?' he resumed, after a pause of
discomfiture.
"'Quite well, thank you.'
"'I mean, what do you feel like?'
"'Like nothing at all, that I know of.'
"'You must feel like something.'
"'I feel like a princess with such a funny papa, and such a dear pet
of a queen-mamma!'
"'Now really!' began the queen; but the princess interrupted her.
"'Oh! yes,' she added, 'I remember. I have a curious feeling
sometimes, as if I were the only person that had any sense in the
whole world.'
"She had been trying to behave herself with dignity; but now she burst
into a violent fit of laughter, threw herself backwards over the
chair, and went rolling about the floor in an ecstasy of enjoyment.
The king picked her up easier than one does a down quilt, and replaced
her in her former relation to the chair. The exact preposition
expressing the relation I do not happen to know.
"'Is there nothing you wish for?' resumed the king, who had learned by
this time that it was quite useless to be angry with her.
"'O you dear papa!--yes,' answered she.
"'What is it, my darling?'
"'I have been longing for it--oh, such a time! Ever since last night.'
"'Tell me what it is.'
"'Will you promise to let me have it?'
"The king was on the point of saying _yes_; but the wiser queen
checked him with a single motion of her head.
"'Tell me what it is first,' said he.
"'No, no. Promise first.'
"'I dare not. What is it?'
"'Mind I hold you to your promise.--It is--to be tied to the end of a
string--a very long string indeed, and be flown like a kite. Oh, such
fun! I would rain rose-water, and hail sugar-plums, and snow
whipt-cream, and, and, and--'
"A fit of laughing checked her; and she would have been off again,
over the floor, had not the king started up and caught her just in
time. Seeing that nothing but talk could be got out of her, he rang
the bell, and sent her away with two of her ladies-in-waiting.
"'Now, queen,' he said, turning to her majesty, 'what _is_ to be
done?'
"'There is but one thing left,' answered she. 'Let us consult the
college of Metaphysicians.'
"'Bravo!' cried the king; 'we will.'
"Now at the head of this college were two very wise Chinese
philosophers--by name, Hum-Drum, and Kopy-Keck. For them the king
sent; and straightway they came. In a long speech, he communicated to
them what they knew very well already--as who did not?--namely, the
peculiar condition of his daughter in relation to the globe on which
she dwelt; and requested them to consult together as to what might be
the cause and probable cure of her _infirmity_. The king laid stress
upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen laughed;
but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility and retired in silence.
Their consultation consisted chiefly in propounding and supporting,
for the thousandth time, each his favourite theories. For the
condition of the princess afforded delightful scope for the discussion
of every question arising from the division of thought--in fact of all
the Metaphysics of the Chinese Empire. But it is only justice to say
that they did not altogether neglect the discussion of the practical
question, _what was to be done_.
"Hum-Drum was a Materialist, and Kopy-Keck was a Spiritualist. The
former was slow and sententious; the latter was quick and flighty; the
latter had generally the first word; the former the last.
"'I assert my former assertion,' began Kopy-Keck, with a plunge.
'There is not a fault in the princess, body or soul; only they are
wrong put together. Listen to me now, Hum-Drum, and I will tell you in
brief what I think. Don't speak. Don't answer me. I won't hear you
till I have done.--At that decisive moment, when souls seek their
appointed habitations, two eager souls met, struck, rebounded, lost
their way, and arrived each at the wrong place. The soul of the
princess was one of those, and she went far astray. She does not
belong by rights to this world at all, but to some other planet,
probably Mercury. Her proclivity to her true sphere destroys all the
natural influence which this orb would otherwise possess over her
corporeal frame. She cares for nothing here. There is no relation
between her and this world.
"'She must therefore be taught, by the sternest compulsion, to
take an interest in the earth as the earth. She must study every
department of its history--its animal history; its vegetable history;
its mineral history; its social history; its moral history; its
political history; its scientific history; its literary history; its
musical history; its artistical history; above all, its metaphysical
history. She must begin with the Chinese Dynasty, and end with
Japan. But first of all she must study Geology, and especially the
history of the extinct races of animals--their natures, their habits,
their loves, their hates, their revenges. She must----'
"'Hold, h-o-o-old!' roared Hum-Drum. 'It is certainly my turn now. My
rooted and insubvertible conviction is that the causes of the
anomalies evident in the princess's condition are strictly and solely
physical. But that is only tantamount to acknowledging that they
exist. Hear my opinion.--From some cause or other, of no importance to
our inquiry, the motion of her heart has been reversed. That
remarkable combination of the suction and the force pump, works the
wrong way--I mean in the case of the unfortunate princess: it draws in
where it should force out, and forces out where it should draw in. The
offices of the auricles and the ventricles are subverted. The blood is
sent forth by the veins, and returns by the arteries. Consequently it
is running the wrong way through all her corporeal organism--lungs and
all. Is it then all mysterious, seeing that such is the case, that on
the other particular of gravitation as well, she should differ from
normal humanity? My proposal for the cure is this:
"Phlebotomize until she is reduced to the last point of safety. Let it
be effected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a
state of perfect asphyxy, apply a ligature to the left ancle, drawing
it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another
of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates
constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the
receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of
French brandy, and await the result.'
"'Which would presently arrive in the form of grim Death,' said
Kopy-Keck.
"'If it should, she would yet die in doing our duty,' retorted
Hum-Drum.
"But their Majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile
offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally
unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed the most complete knowledge of the
laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was
impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing
all the other properties of the ponderable.
