Acaire was old and it had been a forest since there was a forest anywhere: and all its denizens came now to do honor to the champion who had released them from their long sleeping. The elves came in their blue low-crowned hats; the gnomes, in red woolen clothes; and the kobolds, in brown coats that were covered with chips and sawdust. The dryads and other tree spirits of course went verdantly appareled: and after these came fauns with pointed furry ears, and the nixies with green teeth and very beautiful waxen hair, and the duergar, whose loosely swinging arms touched the ground when they walked, and the queer little rakhna, who were white and semi-transparent like jelly, and the Bush Gods that were in Acaire the oldest living creatures and had quite outlived their divinity. From all times and all mythologies they came, and they made a tremendous to-do over Florian and the might which had rescued them from their centuries of sleeping under Melusine’s enchantment. From the top of the “high place” Florian can see all the country around him: He saw the forests lying like dark flung-by scarves upon the paler green of cleared fields; he saw the rivers as narrow shinings. In one place, very far beneath them, a thunderstorm was passing like--of all things of this blissful day,--a drifting bride’s veil. Florian saw it twinkle with a yellow glow, then it was again a floating small white veil. And everywhere the lands beneath in graduations of vaporous indistinction. Poictesme seemed woven of blue smokes and of green mists. It afforded no sharp outline anywhere as his gazing passed outward toward the horizon. And there all melted bafflingly into a pearl-colored sky: the eye might not judge where, earth ending, heaven began in that bright and placid radiancy. We shall leave it to Doctor Freud to translate these Cabellian symbols literally. They are both erotic and poetic: First Melior and Florian were given an egg and a quince pear: he handed her the fruit, which she ate, and the seeds of which she spat out; he took from her the egg and broke it. Holy Hoprig, who had tendered his resignation as the high-priest of Llaw Gyffes, but whose successor had not yet been appointed, then asked the bridegroom a whispered question. Florian was astonished, and showed it. But he answered, without comment, “Well, let us say nine times.” Hoprig divided a cake into nine slices, and placed these upon the altar. Afterward Hoprig cut the throat of a white hen, and put a little of its blood upon the feet of Melior and Florian. The trumpets sounded then, as King Helmas came forward, and gave Florian a small key.