Acaire was old, 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 flaxen 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 of 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 Mélusine’s enchantment. He bore his honors very modestly. But Florian delighted to talk with these guests, who came of such famous old families: and they told him strange tales of yesterday and of the days before yesterday, and it seemed to him that many of these stories were not quite logical. Few probabilities thrived at Brunbelois. Meanwhile the Elm Dwarfs danced for him, pouring libations from the dew pools; the Strömkarl left its waterfall in the forest, to play very sweetly for Florian upon the golden harp whose earlier music had been more dangerous to hear; and the Korrid brought him tribute in the form of a purse containing hair and a pair of scissors. And it was all profoundly delightful. “I approve of the high place,” said Florian, upon the morning of his marriage: “for here I seem to go about a more heroic and more splendid world than I had hoped ever to inhabit.” “Then, why,” asked Helmas, “do you not remain at Brunbelois, instead of carrying off my daughter to live in that low sort of place down yonder? Why do you two not stay at Brunbelois, and be the King and Queen here after I am gone?”