Ludo had been blooded to poetry at his mother’s knee. Though the manner of Mustafa’s poetry was unlike that of his mother’s favourite authors, he recognized a similarity of mood. Mustafa, expressing his desire to penetrate the ineffable, was bolder in metaphor than they; but the gist was much the same: they were alike lovesick for an au-delà. As the winter advanced, there was rioting; Mustafa would break off, not to inhale a beauty or point out a technical nicety but to listen to a volley of shooting in the streets. He listened with critical attention, and when the insurgents had been taught their lesson he returned to his poems like a dove returning to her nest. Ludo could not avoid remembering Balsamine’s tenderness for marmots. It did not alter his feelings about Balsamine, but it oddly increased his affection for Mustafa.

It is commonly supposed that fairies, or elfins, are trifling little beings, always on the wing and incapable of dying. This misapprehension has come about because they prefer to live in invisibility—though they can be visible at will, by means of an automatic mechanism, which works rather like the una corda pedal or a gearshift. In fact, they are about four-fifths of ordinary human stature, fly or don’t fly according to their station in life, and after a life span of centuries die like other people—except that as they do not believe in immortality they die unperturbed. Their life span is portioned into a brief childhood of forty years, an extended plateau of being grown up, a suave decline into old age. As longevity is the common lot, it is taken for granted. The working fairies at the Court of Brocéliande, who flew about their duties, did not find time heavy on their hands; indeed, they sometimes complained that they never had a moment to themselves. The nobility, who marked their social standing by scorning to use their wings, had not much time to call their own, either.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the eye of Elfins the qualities considered to constitute beauty are slenderness, narrow hands and feet, sharp-cut features (rather small eyes are admired), arched eyebrows, the fineness of detail one associates with moths and butterflies. These canons are conditioned by Elfin build and longevity: majestic contours are irreconcilable with flight, and a jolie-laide countenance is likelier to remain charming over centuries than a classically moulded one. Elfins are averse to any variation from the racial type. Few of them really enjoy Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. Above all, miscegenation with mortals is reprobated because of its probable results—corpulence, coarse skin, broad smiles, dimples, premature decay, and flat fingernails.