Hieroglyphic Tales: The Dice-Box: A Fairy Tale

The Dice-Box: A Fairy Tale

TALE III.

Translated from the French Translation of the Countess DAUNOIS, for the
Entertainment of Miss CAROLINE CAMPBELL. [Eldest daughter of lord
William Campbell; she lived with her aunt the countess of Ailesbury.]

There was a merchant of Damascus named Aboulcasem, who had an only
daughter called Pissimissi, which signifies _the waters of Jordan_;
because a fairy foretold at her birth that she would be one of Solomon's
concubines.

Azaziel, the angel of death, having transported Aboulcasem
to the regions of bliss, he had no fortune to bequeath to his beloved
child but the shell of a pistachia-nut drawn by an elephant and a
ladybird. Pissimissi, who was but nine years old, and who had been been
kept in great confinement, was impatient to see the world; and no sooner
was the breath out of her father's body, than she got into the car, and
whipping her elephant and ladybird, drove out of the yard as fast as
possible, without knowing whither she was going. Her coursers never
stopped till they came to the foot of a brazen tower, that had neither
doors nor windows, in which lived an old enchantress, who had locked
herself up there with seventeen thousand husbands. It had but one single
vent for air, which was a small chimney grated over, through which it
was scarce possible to put one's hand. Pissimissi, who was very impatient, ordered her coursers to fly with her up to the top of the
chimney, which, as they were the most docile creatures in the world,
they immediately did; but unluckily the fore paw of the elephant
lighting on the top of the chimney, broke down the grate by its weight,
but at the same time stopped up the passage so entirely, that all the
enchantress's husbands were stifled for want of air. As it was a
collection she had made with great care and cost, it is easy to imagine
her vexation and rage. She raised a storm of thunder and lightning that
lasted eight hundred and four years; and having conjured up an army of
two thousand devils, she ordered them to flay the elephant alive, and
dress it for her supper with anchovy sauce. Nothing could have saved the
poor beast, if, struggling to get loose from the chimney, he had not
happily broken wind, which it seems is a great preservative against
devils. They all flew a thousand ways, and in their hurry carried away
half the brazen tower, by which means the elephant, the car, the
ladybird, and Pissimissi got loose; but in their fall tumbled through
the roof of an apothecary's shop, and broke all his bottles of physic.
The elephant, who was very dry with his fatigue, and who had not much
taste, immediately sucked up all the medicines with his proboscis, which
occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well
he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His
evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of
Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran
fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many
whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years,
nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by
what had happened, it was impossible for him to draw the car for
eighteen months, which was a cruel delay to Pissimissi's impatience,
who during all that time could not travel above a hundred miles a day,
for as she carried the sick animal in her lap, the poor ladybird could
not make longer stages with no assistance. Besides, Pissimissi bought
every thing she saw wherever she came; and all was crouded into the car
and stuffed into the seat. She had purchased ninety-two dolls, seventeen
baby-houses, six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of
gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops
with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the
newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount
Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the
beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby
spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed
ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their commodities. It
happened that the humming-bird belonged to Solomon; he let it out of its
cage every morning after breakfast, and it constantly came home by the
time the council broke up. Nothing could equal the surprise of his
majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with
the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill.
However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be
sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it
was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually
making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes
of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately perceived what had happened,
and taking out of the side-pocket of his breeches a diamond
toothpick-case of his own turning, with the toothpick made of the only
unicorn's horn he ever saw, he stuck it into the elephant's snout, and
began to draw it out: but all his philosophy was confounded, when jammed
between the elephant's legs he perceived the head of a beautiful girl,
and between her legs a baby-house, which with the wings extended thirty
feet, out of the windows of which rained a torrent of sugar-plumbs, that
had been placed there to make room. Then followed the bear, who had been
pressed to the bales of gingerbread and was covered all over with it,
and looked but uncouthly; and the monkey with a doll in every paw, and
his pouches so crammed with sugar-plumbs that they hung on each side of
him, and trailed on the ground behind like the duchess of ----'s
beautiful breasts. Solomon, however, gave small attention to this
procession, being caught with the charms of the lovely Pissimissi: he
immediately began the song of songs extempore; and what he had seen--I
mean, all that came out of the humming-bird's throat had made such a
jumble in his ideas, that there was nothing so unlike to which he did
not compare all Pissimissi's beauties. As he sung his canticles too
to no tune, and god knows had but a bad voice, they were far from
comforting Pissimissi: the elephant had torn her best bib and apron, and
she cried and roared, and kept such a squalling, that though Solomon
carried her in his arms, and showed her all the fine things in the
temple, there was no pacifying her. The queen of Sheba, who was playing
at backgammon with the high-priest, and who came every October to
converse with Solomon, though she did not understand a word of Hebrew,
hearing the noise, came running out of her dressing-room; and seeing the
king with a squalling child in his arms, asked him peevishly, if it
became his reputed wisdom to expose himself with his bastards to all the
court? Solomon, instead of replying, kept singing, "We have a little
sister, and she has no breasts;" which so provoked the Sheban princess,
that happening to have one of the dice-boxes in her hand, she without
any ceremony threw it at his head. The enchantress, whom I mentioned
before, and who, though invisible, had followed Pissimissi, and drawn
her into her train of misfortunes, turned the dice-box aside, and
directed it to Pissimissi's nose, which being something flat, like
madame de ----'s, it stuck there, and being of ivory, Solomon ever after
compared his beloved's nose to the tower that leads to Damascus. The
queen, though ashamed of her behaviour, was not in her heart sorry for
the accident; but when she found that it only encreased the monarch's
passion, her contempt redoubled; and calling him a thousand old fools to
herself, she ordered her post-chaise and drove away in a fury, without
leaving sixpence for the servants; and nobody knows what became of her
or her kingdom, which has never been heard of since.

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