“Now, my friend,” said Florian, with the appropriate stateliness, “I charge you, by all the color and ugliness of these samples of my craft, to announce to your king that the lord of Puysange is at the gate with tidings, and with proof, that the enchantment is happily lifted from this castle.” “So there has been an enchantment. I suspected something of the sort when I came to, after nodding a bit like in the night, and noticed the remarkably thick forest that had grown up everywhere around us.” Florian observed, to this degraded underling who seemed not capable of appreciating Florian’s fine exploits, “Well, certainly you take all marvels very calmly.” The sad porter replied that, with a reigning family so given to high temper and sorcery, the retainers of Brunbelois were not easily astounded. Something in the shape of an enchantment had been predicted in the kitchen last night, he continued, after the notable quarrel between Madame Mélusine and her father. “My friend,” said Florian, “that was not last night. You speak of a disastrous family jar in which the milk of human kindness curdled several centuries ago. Since then there has been an enchantment laid upon Brunbelois: and the spell was lifted only to-day.” “Do you mean, sir, that I am actually several hundred and fifty-two years old?” “Somewhere in that November neighborhood,” said Florian. And he steeled himself against the other’s outburst of horror and amazement. “To think of that now!” said the porter. “I certainly never imagined it would come to that. However, it is always a great comfort to reflect it hardly matters what happens to us, is it not, sir?” You could not but find, in this stubborn unwillingness to face the magnitude of Florian’s exploits, something horribly prosaic and callous. Yet, none the less, Florian civilly asked the man’s meaning. And the dejected porter replied: “It is just a sort of fancying, sir, that one wanders into after watching the stars, as I do in the way of business, night after night. One gets to reading them and to a sort of glancing over of the story that is written in their courses. Yes, sir, one does fall into the habit, injudiciously perhaps, but then there is nothing else much to do. And one does not find there quite, as you might put it, the excitement over the famousness of kings and the ruining of empires that one might reasonably look for. And one does not find anything at all there about porters, I can assure you, sir, because they are not important enough to figure in that story. There is no more writing in the stars about night-porters than there is about bumble-bees; and that is always a great comfort, sir, when one feels low-spirited. Because I would not care to be in that story, myself, for it is not light pleasant reading.” “A pest! so you inform me, with somewhat the gay levity of an oyster, that you can read the stars!” The porter admitted dolefully, “One does come to it, sir, in my way of business.”