Mabel and I. (a Philosophical Fairy Tale.) by Hjalmar Hjorth Boysen

I soon learned that the easiest way to recover my liberty was to offer no resistance, and to say nothing more about the gnome and the spectacles. Mabel came and sat by my bedside for a few hours every afternoon, and her father visited me regularly three times a day, felt my pulse and gave me a short lecture on moderation in study, on the evil effects of ambition, and on the dangerous tendencies of modern speculation.

The gnome's spectacles I kept hidden under my pillow, and many a time when Mabel was with me I felt a strong temptation to try their effect upon her. Was Mabel really as good and beautiful as she seemed to me? Often I had my hand on the dangerous glasses, but always the same dread came over me, and my courage failed me. That sweet, fair, beautiful face, -- what could it be, if it was not what it seemed? No, no, I loved Mabel too well as she seemed, to wish to know whether she was a delusion or a reality. What good would it do me if I found out that she too was a parrot, or a goose, or any other kind of bird or beast? The fairest hope would go out of my life, and I should have little or nothing left worth living for. I must confess that my curiosity often tormented me beyond endurance, but, as I said, I could never muster courage enough either to conquer it or to yield to it. Thus, when at the end of a week I was allowed to sit up, I knew no more about Mabel's real character than I had known before. I saw that she was patient, kind-hearted, sweet-tempered, -- that her comings and goings were as quiet and pleasant as those of the sunlight which now stole in unhindered and again vanished through the uncurtained windows. And, after all, had I not known that always? One thing, however, I now knew better than before, and that was that I never could love anybody as I loved Mabel, and that I hoped some time to make her my wife.