The Cat put on a mincing tone: "Children," said she, "I love you both as much as you deserve." There was a pause. "And now," said Light, "let me, in my turn, give you a last kiss...." As she spoke, she spread her veil round them as if she would have wrapped them for the last time in her luminous might. Then she gave them each a long and loving kiss. Tyltyl and Mytyl hung on to her beseechingly: "No, no, no, Light!" they cried. "Stay here with us!... Daddy won't mind.... We will tell Mummy how kind you have been.... Where will you go all alone?"... "Not very far, my Children," said Light. "Over there to the Land of the Silence of Things." "No, no," said Tyltyl. "I won't have you go...." But Light quieted them with a motherly gesture and said words to them which they never forgot. Long after, when they were a grandfather and grandmother in their turn, Tyltyl and Mytyl still remembered them and used to repeat them to their grandchildren. Here are Light's touching words: "Listen, Tyltyl. Do not forget, child, that everything that you see in this world has neither beginning nor end. If you keep this thought in your heart and let it grow up with you, you will always, in all circumstances, know what to say, what to do and what to hope for." And, when our two friends began to sob, she added, lovingly: "Do not cry, my dear little ones.... I have not a voice like Water; I have only my brightness, which Man does not understand.... But I watch over him to the end of his days.... Never forget that I am speaking to you in every spreading moonbeam, in every twinkling star, in every dawn that rises, in every lamp that is lit, in every good and bright thought of your soul...." At that moment, the grandfather's clock in the cottage struck eight o'clock. Light stopped for a moment and then, in a voice that grew suddenly fainter, whispered: "Good-bye!... Good-bye!... The hour is striking!... Good-bye!" Her veil faded away, her smile became paler, her eyes closed, her form vanished and, through their tears, the children saw nothing but a thin ray of light dying away at their feet. Then they turned to the others ... but these had disappeared.... CHAPTER X THE AWAKENING The grandfather's clock in Tyl the woodcutter's cottage had struck eight; and his two little Children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, were still asleep in their little beds. Mummy Tyl stood looking at them, with her arms akimbo and her apron tucked up, laughing and scolding in the same breath: "I can't let them go on sleeping till mid-day," she said. "Come, get up, you little lazybones!" But it was no use shaking them, kissing them or pulling the bed-clothes off them: they kept on falling back upon their pillows, with their noses pointing at the ceiling, their mouths wide open, their eyes shut and their cheeks all pink. At last, after receiving a gentle thump in the ribs, Tyltyl opened one eye and murmured: "What?... Light?... Where are you?... No, no, don't go away...."