7. Try Metaphysics.
After a long avoidance of the painful subject, the king and queen
resolved to hold a council 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 by this time
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 this 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 useless to be angry with her.
"Oh, 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
whipped-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 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.
The 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 reassert 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
at 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 ankle,
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.
