With this information the Court had
to content itself; but not the duchess, for a king will give up his
throne sooner than a mother the hope of seeing her child again. She
possessed indeed one means by which she could know beyond doubt whether
her darling were alive or dead, namely the magic mirror which the fairy
had given to the first Wendelin, and in which, ever since, the Greylocks
had been able to see what they held most dear. In this glass she had
seen her husband fall from his horse and die. Once again she took it out
of the ivory casket in which it was kept; but so long as George sat
imprisoned in the cave of the evil spirit, nothing was to be seen on its
smooth surface. That was ominous, yet she ceased not to hope, and
thought: "If he were dead, I should see his corpse." She sat the whole
night staring in the mirror. In the morning a messenger from the army of
the Greylocks arrived, bringing word that the enemy was pressing upon
them and that a battle would have to be fought before the fresh troops,
which Moustache, the field-marshal, had asked for, could arrive.
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