THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE

CONTENTS.


CHAP.

I. THE MOUNTAIN

II. THE WHITE PIGEON

III. THE MISTRESS OF THE SILVER MOON

IV. CURDIE'S FATHER AND MOTHER

V. THE MINERS

VI. THE EMERALD

VII. WHAT IS IN A NAME?

VIII. CURDIE'S MISSION

IX. HANDS

X. THE HEATH

XI. LINA

XII. MORE CREATURES

XIII. THE BAKER'S WIFE

XIV. THE DOGS OF GWYNTYSTORM

XV. DERBA AND BARBARA

XVI. THE MATTOCK

XVII. THE WINE CELLAR

XVIII. THE KING'S KITCHEN

XIX. THE KING'S CHAMBER

XX. COUNTER-PLOTTING

XXI. THE LOAF

XXII. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN

XXIII. DR. KELMAN

XXIV. THE PROPHECY

XXV. THE AVENGERS

XXVI. THE VENGEANCE

XXVII. MORE VENGEANCE

XXVIII. THE PREACHER

XXIX. BARBARA

XXX. PETER

XXXI. THE SACRIFICE

XXXII. THE KING'S ARMY

XXXIII. THE BATTLE

XXXIV. JUDGMENT

XXXV. THE END




THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE.




CHAPTER I.

THE MOUNTAIN.


Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and
mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father
inside the mountain.

A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing
so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet
more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how
beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them,--and what
people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them
with admiration, perhaps we do not always feel quite awe enough of them.
To me they are beautiful terrors.

I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of
the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up
and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of
blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted
metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump
of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried
sunlight--that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all
the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its
boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped--up and away, and
there they stand in the cool, cold sky--mountains. Think of the change,
and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about
the very look of a mountain: from the darkness--for where the light has
nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness--from the heat,
from the endless tumult of boiling unrest--up, with a sudden heavenward
shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of
snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers;
and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their
little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at
night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the
rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that
are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the
molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the
glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance--no
longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and
cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and
the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its
sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and
the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like
the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down
the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these,
think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and
be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers,
and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with
floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside,
who shall tell what lies there?