The mountain, it seems, was hollow, so those who had found themselves enclosed in it were as if under a bell; they had wanted for nothing during the time of their imprisonment; all the soldiers and officers who saw the light of day again with the utmost pleasure, ran in crowds to Floridor, whose handsome countenance interested them, and looking upon him as a demi-god, they were ready to worship him. The King, moved by their obedience and the new vows of fidelity to the lawful Queen, which they took at his hands, received their respects but not their adoration, after having shown them the letter with which he was charged. He made the army pass in review, and chose from it fifty thousand of the finest men, and of those to whose devotion a general's success is mostly due. He established in his new army a very strict discipline, of which he was both the author and example; and it was with these troops that he became invincible--that he defied the countless forces of the usurper, whom he slew with his own hand in one of the last battles, and whose death restored to Minute a kingdom which she had entirely lost. Floridor marched through all the provinces of this great state, and re-established the authority of Minute, whom he then hastened to rejoin. But what a change did he find in the character and mind of this lovely Queen? The counsels of the good Ant, and, above all, Love, and the wish to please and be worthy of Floridor, had completely corrected her only fault. She was ashamed of having always done little things with great assistance, whilst her lover had done such great things with so little. They married, and lived happily ever after. FOOTNOTES: [25] A clasp or folding-knife. [26] "_Tant Cavalerie, infanterie que dragons_" "Horse, foot, and dragoons," was, within my recollection, a familiar phrase expressive of any overpowering force or number. Dragoons were first raised in France by the Marshal de Brisac in 1600, and being trained to fight both on foot and horseback, were frequently in the seventeenth century thus distinguished from the general cavalry and infantry. [27] Narrow ribbon used to embroider silk, satin, or velvet with, a favourite work of ladies in the last century; but, looking at the character of Minute, it is probable the author meant a scarf composed of nothing but the ribbon itself. THE IMPOSSIBLE ENCHANTMENT.