Chapter 17

On leaving the well of science King Loc went to his treasure, took a ring from a box of which he alone had the key, and put it on his finger. The bezel of this ring shone brightly, for it was made of a magic stone whose virtue will be discovered in the course of this story.
King Loc then went to his palace, where he put on a travelling cloak, drew on heavy boots, and took a stick. The he set out through the crowded street, the broad roads, the villages, and the halls of porphyry, the lakes of petroleum, and the grottos of crystal which communicated with each other by narrow openings.
He seemed pensive and spoke words which had no sense. But he walked on steadily. Mountains blocked the way and he climbed the mountains; cliffs yawned at his feet and he went down the cliffs; he crossed fords, he passed through grisly regions darkened by the fumes of sulphur. He walked over burning lava, in which his feet printed themselves; he seemed to be an extremely determined traveller. He entered dark caverns where the sea water, trickling in drops, fell like tears along the weeds and made pools in the uneven soil in which innumerable crustaceans grew monstrously. Enormous crabs, giant crayfish, spiders of the sea, cracked under the feet of the dwarf and made off, leaving behind a claw, and waking in their flight hideous hoary cuttle-fish, who suddenly waved their hundred arms and spat from their beaks a reeking poison. King Loc went on all the same. He reached the end of these caverns staggering under a load of monsters armed with stings, double jagged pincers, claws that curled up to his neck, and sullen eyes brandished at the end of long branches. He climbed the side of the cavern clinging to the roughnesses of the rock, and the armoured beast went up with him, and he only stopped when be found by groping a stone that jutted out of the vaulted summit. With his magic ring he touched this stone, which immediately fell with a great crash, and immediately a flood of light poured its lovely streams into the cavern and put to flight the beasts bred in darkness.
King Loc put his head through the opening where the light came from, saw George of the White Moor thinking of Bee and the earth, and mourning in his glass prison. For King Loc had made this subterranean journey to release the prisoner of the Sylphs. But seeing this big head, all hair, eyebrows, and beard, look at him from the bottom of the crystal funnel, George thought a great danger threatened him, and he felt for the sword at his side, forgetting he had broken it on the bosom of the green-eyed woman. Meanwhile King Loc examined him curiously.
"Pooh!” he said to himself, “it is only a child."
Certainly it was a very simple child, and he owed to his great simplicity his escape from the delicious and mortal kisses of the queen of the Sylphs. Aristotle with all his learning could not have got out of it so easily.
George, seeing himself defenceless, said:
"What do you want of me, big head? Why hurt me, if I have never hurt you?”
King Loc answered in a jovial and gruff tone:
“My darling, you do not know if you have hurt me, for you are ignorant of effect and cause, of reflex action, and generally of all philosophy. But do not let us talk of this. If you are not reluctant to leave your funnel, come through here."
George immediately insinuated himself into the cavern, slid down the wall, and as soon as he reached the bottom:
"You are a good little man," he said to his deliverer, “I will like you all my life; but do you know where Bee of the Clarides is?”
"I know a great many things," answered the dwarf, "and especially that I do not like inquisitive people."
George, hearing these words, remained quite abashed, and he silently followed his guide through the thick and murky air where cuttle-fish and crabs were moving. Then King Loc said to him with a grin:
“The road is rather rough, my young prince.”
“Sir," George answered him, "the way to freedom is always pleasant, and I am not afraid of being lost by following my benefactor."
Little King Loc bit his lips. When he reached the hall of porphyry, he showed the young man a staircase made in the stone by which the dwarfs go up above ground.
“Here is your road," he said to him, "goodbye."
"Do not say good-bye," replied George, "tell me you will see me again. My life belongs to you after what you have done for me."
King Loc answered:
"What I have done was not for you, but for another. We had better not see each other again, because we might not like each other."
George replied unaffectedly and seriously:
"I did not think that my release would give me pain. And yet it has. Good-bye, sir."
"I wish you a good journey," King Loc cried roughly.
Now this staircase ended in a lonely quarry which lay less than a league from the castle of the Clarides.
King Loc pursued his way muttering:
“This boy has neither the learning nor the wealth of the dwarfs. I do not really know why he is loved by Bee, unless it is that he is young, handsome, loyal, and bold."
He returned to the town laughing to himself like a man who has played a practical joke on some one. Passing in front of Bee's house, he pushed his big head through the window, as he had done into the glass funnel, and he saw the young girl embroidering a veil with silver flowers.
“Rejoice, Bee," he said to her.
"And you," she answered, “little King Loc, may you never have anything to wish for, or at least anything to regret."
There was something he wished for, but really he had nothing to regret. This thought gave him a large appetite for supper. After eating a great number of truffled pheasants, he called Bob.
“Bob," he said to him, “get on your crow: go to the princess of the dwarfs and tell her that George of the White Moor, who was for a long time a prisoner of the Sylphs, returned to-day to the Clarides."
He spoke, and Bob flew off on his crow.

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