But after he was crowned, it was no wonder,
considering the state of his health, that he should not be able to sit
quite upright on the throne of Fairy-land; or that, in consequence, all
the gnomes and goblins, and ugly, cruel things that live in the holes
and corners of the kingdom, should take advantage of his condition, and
run quite wild, playing him, king as he was, all sorts of tricks;
crowding about his throne, climbing up the steps, and actually
scrambling and quarrelling like mice about his ears and eyes, so that he
could see and think of nothing else. But I am not going to tell anything
more about this part of his adventures just at present. By strong and
sustained efforts, he succeeded, after much trouble and suffering, in
reducing his rebellious subjects to order. They all vanished to their
respective holes and corners; and King Ralph, coming to himself, found
himself in his bed, half propped up with pillows.
"But the room was full of dark creatures, which gambolled about in the
firelight in such a strange, huge, but noiseless fashion, that he
thought at first that some of his rebellious goblins had not been
subdued with the rest, and had followed him beyond the bounds of
Fairy-land into his own private house in London. How else could these
mad, grotesque hippopotamus-calves make their ugly appearance in Ralph
Rinkelmann's bedroom? But he soon found out, that although they were
like the under-ground goblins, they were very different as well, and
would require quite different treatment.
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