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                                 PSYCHE

                                   By

                             LOUIS COUPERUS

                       Translated from the Dutch,
                     with the author's permission,

                                   By

                         B. S. Berrington, B.A.

           With Twelve Illustrations by Dion Clayton Calthrop



                      London: Alston Rivers, Ltd.
                   Brooke Street, Holborn Bars, E.C.
                                  1908







              "Cry no more now and go to sleep, and if you cannot sleep,
               I will tell you a story, a pretty story of flowers and
               gems and birds, of a young prince and a little princess.
              ... For in the world there is nothing more than a story."







PSYCHE

CHAPTER I


Gigantically massive, with three hundred towers, on the summit of a
rocky mountain, rose the king's castle high into the clouds.

But the summit was broad, and flat as a plateau, and the castle spread
far out, for miles and miles, with ramparts and walls and pinnacles.

And everywhere rose up the towers, lost in the clouds, and the castle
was like a city, built upon a lofty rock of basalt.

Round the castle and far away lay the valleys of the kingdom, receding
into the horizon, one after the other, and ever and ever.

Ever changing was the horizon: now pink, then silver; now blue, then
golden; now grey, then white and misty, and gradually fading away,
and never could the last be seen.

In clear weather there loomed behind the horizon always another
horizon. They circled one another endlessly, they were lost in the
dissolving mists, and suddenly their silhouette became more sharply
defined.

Over the lofty towers stretched