THE GOLDEN DREAM.

BY CHARLES NODIER.

(Translated for this work by Forrest Morgan.)

[CHARLES NODIER, romancer, scientist, and bibliophile, was born at Besançon, France, in 1780; son of a lawyer who was later mayor and president of a Jacobin Club in the Terror. Early a lover of books and natural science, he became librarian in Besançon, and wrote on entomology; went to Paris, wrote tales, and studied philology; a satiric ode on Napoleon's consular despotism making it safest to quit Paris, he wandered about his native district and the Vosges for some years, writing gloomy sentimental tales and meditations, prose "Childe Harolds." In 1811 he edited the polyglot Illyrian Telegraph at Laibach. Returning to Paris, he engaged in literature and journalism; became a Royalist; in 1823 was made librarian of the Arsenal Library, and in 1833 member of the Academy. His living work is his stories: "Smarra" (1821), "The King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles" (1830), "The Fairy of the Crumbs" (1832), "The Golden Dream," and other "Fantastic Tales," "Inez of the Sierras" (1837), "Legend of Sister Beatrix" (1838), "Franciscus Columna (posthumous), and his narrative-bibliographic "Mélanges from a Little Library" (1829 and later). He wrote also some lyrics (collected 1827); "Souvenirs of Youth" and "Souvenirs of the Revolution"; a work on the origin of language (the onomatopoetic theory); and fathered a "Universal Dictionary of the French Language." He died in 1844.]

I. THE KARDOUON.

THE Kardouon, as every one knows, is the prettiest, the wiliest, the most polished of lizards. The Kardouon is dressed in gold like a great lord; but he is timid and modest, and he lives alone and retired that is what causes him to pass for a sage. The Kardouon has never done harm to any one, and there is no one who does not love the Kardouon. The young girls are all proud when he gazes at them as they pass, with eyes of love and joy, erecting his blue neck sparkling with rubies between the chinks of an old wall, or making himself glint, under the rays of the sun, with innumerable reflections from the wonderful tissue with which he is clothed.

They say among themselves: "It is not thou, it is I whom the Kardouon gazes at to-day; it is I whom he finds the handsomest, and who will be his sweetheart."

The Kardouon has no thoughts on that subject. The Kardouon searches here and there for nice roots to feast his comrades, and to sport with them on a shining stone, in the full heat of noon.

One day the Kardouon found in the desert a treasure composed entirely of flowered pieces of coin, so pretty and so polished that one would have believed they had just been groaning and leaping under the mint-press. A fleeing monarch had disburthened himself of them in order to get on faster.

"Bounteous Heaven!" said the Kardouon, "here, unless I deceive myself, is some precious article of food which comes to me just in time for winter! At worst these must be slices of that fresh sugary carrot which always revives my spirits when solitude wearies me; only I never saw any of it so appetizing."

And the Kardouon glided toward the treasure- not directly, because that is not his fashion, but tracing out prudent circuits; now with head raised, nostrils in the air, body all in one line, tail straight and vertical like a stake; now at a standstill, undecided, inclining each of his eyes in turn toward the ground to make use of a Kardouon's fine ear, and each of his ears to lift up his gaze; examining to the right, to the left, listening all about, seeing everything, reassuring himself more and more, darting forward like a brave Kardouon, drawing back on himself palpitating with terror, like a poor Kardouon who feels himself pursued far from his hole, and then wholly happy and wholly proud, arching his back, bending his shoulders to catch every play of light, rolling the folds of his rich caparison, bristling up the gilded scales of his coat of mail, turning emerald, undulating, receding, flinging to the winds the dust under his feet, and lashing it with his tail. Beyond dispute, he was the handsomest of Kardouons.

When he had reached the treasure, he shot two piercing glances at it, stiffened himself like a rod, raised himself on his two forefeet, and fell on the first piece of gold which offered itself to his teeth.

He broke one of them.

The Kardouon scuttled ten feet backward, returned more deliberately, bit more modestly.

"They are execrably dry," he said. "Oh! but the Kardouons who thus heap up slices of carrot for their posterity are much in fault for not keeping them in a moist place, where they may preserve their nourishing quality! It must be admitted," he added to himself, "that the Kardouon race is but little advanced. As for me, who dined the other day, and who am not, thanks to Heaven, pressed for a vile repast like a common Kardouon, I am going to transport this provision

under that great tree in the desert, among the grasses moistened by the dew of heaven and the coolness of springs; I will sleep beside it on a soft fine sand which the earliest dawn begins to warm; and when a clumsy bee, who rises all dizzy from the flower where she has slept, awakens me with her humming as she whirls about like a mad thing, I will commence the finest breakfast for a prince that ever a Kardouon made."

The Kardouon of whom I speak was a Kardouon of execution. What he had said, he did;, that is a great deal. From evening on, all the treasure, transported piece by piece, was freshened vainly on a fine carpet of long silken mosses which bent under its weight. Overhead, an immense tree extended its branches luxuriant with verdure and flowers, as if to invite the passers-by to taste an agreeable slumber beneath its shade. And the Kardouon, fatigued, slept peacefully, dreaming of fresh roots.

This is the history of the Kardouon.

II. XAÏLOUN.

The following day there chanced on the same spot the poor woodcutter Xailoun, who was greatly attracted by the melodious gurgle of the running waters and the cheerful and refreshing rustle of the foliage. This place of repose immediately charmed the natural indolence of Xaïloun, who was still far from the forest, and who, after his wont, did not worry himself extremely about arriving there.

As there are few persons who have known Xaïloun in his lifetime, I will explain to you that he was one of those misbegotten children of nature whom she seems to have produced merely that they may exist. He was pretty badly made in his person, and very defective in his mind; yet after all a good, simple creature, incapable of doing evil, incapable of thinking it, and even incapable of comprehending it by reason of which his family had seen in him from infancy nothing but a subject of melancholy and embarrassment. The humiliating rebuffs to which Xailoun was unceasingly exposed had inspired him early with a taste for a solitary life, and it was on that account that he had been given the trade of a woodcutter, in default of any other, from which the weakness of his intelligence interdicted him; for he was called nothing in the village but "the fool Xailoun." Indeed, the children followed him in