Belle and the dragon. An elfin comedy

...all the profits! Despite his noble lineage and ancient family history, and despite the presence of bishops and other social nuisances, he managed to be a good fellow—a rare, easygoing yet anxious, careful yet reckless, cheerful yet worrying, light-hearted yet pessimistic, always-near-bankruptcy-but-still-insisting-on-the-best kind of guy. Just as in cycling, so in many other matters, he never found a better man on the road he traveled. He was happily welcomed at every inn and charity event, not to mention the homes of his friends.

At that stage of life when no man acts except when prompted by pure and unadulterated reason, he did what all reasonable men would do if only they had the same motivation: he married for a second time. Heavenly powers kindly guided his choice, and in this instance, he was joined to the divine enchantress Melusine—who is also Miranda, who is also Pallas Athene The Greek goddess of wisdom and war., and who is Belle. Herein lies the whole mystery of Belle and the Dragon.

The darkroom was handed over to the Gadfly so that he might tone and develop his photos there. He proceeded to tone everything in the neighborhood into a subdued and pleasing monochrome, and he seemed to develop the entire universe through his camera lens. From the actual moon in the heavens to the "moon" that was Miranda here on earth, nothing escaped him. There were agonies, anguish, bitterness, heavy affliction, gnawing grief, exhaustion, and depths of

misery, discomfort, a diet of horrors, plagues, nuisances, pests, martyrdom, and deification amidst torment in Ravendale during those days. This was all because of his photography craze—because of the water spilled on the tiled hall, the chemical acids on the Turkey carpets, and the disgusting sight of the permanent, unsightly grime on the hands of the Master of Ravendale.

But Melusine ruled in Ravendale. She reigned over the "Serpents" (who were her stepchildren), over her youngest sister (known as the Duchess), over the servants (when there actually were servants), and over the laundress (when there was a laundress to be found).

Being about sixteen or seventeen years old, the Duchess was a girl of many names, with a clever, modest face and a mass of golden highlights in her fair hair. She carefully practiced an effective, gazelle-like way of walking, posing gracefully on well-formed hips and lifting a swan-like neck above a developing chest that held a gracious promise of womanhood. She was also called the "Dormouse," for it was said there was no known limit to how much she could sleep. She was also credited with certain qualities in common with that Lily which we are told should not be "painted" A reference to Shakespeare’s King John: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess.". So far as she could conform her life to the golden rule governing that pure flower, she "did not toil, nor did she spin" A reference to the Biblical "lilies of the field" in Matthew 6:28.; and if she did not quite rival Solomon in...