But I am not going to
tell anything more about this part of his adventures just at present.
By strong and sustained efforts, he succeeded, after much trouble and
suffering, in reducing his rebellious subjects to order. They all
vanished to their respective holes and corners; and King Ralph, coming
to himself, found himself in his bed, half propped up with pillows.
But the room was full of dark creatures, which gambolled about in the
firelight in such a strange, huge, though noiseless fashion, that he
thought at first that some of his rebellious goblins had not been
subdued with the rest, but had followed him beyond the bounds of
Fairyland into his own private house in London. How else could these
mad, grotesque hippopotamus-calves make their ugly appearance in Ralph
Rinkelmann's bed-room? But he soon found out that although they were
like the underground goblins, they were very different as well, and
would require quite different treatment. He felt convinced that they
were his subjects too, but that he must have overlooked them somehow at
his late coronation--if indeed they had been present; for he could not
recollect that he had seen anything just like them before. He resolved,
therefore, to pay particular attention to their habits, ways, and
characters; else he saw plainly that they would soon be too much for
him; as indeed this intrusion into his chamber, where Mrs. Rinkelmann,
who must be queen if he was king, sat taking some tea by the fireside,
evidently foreshadowed.
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