'Oh, love, how beautiful you are!' cried the King.
'Oh, my King, your face is the face of all my dreams!' cried the Princess.
And they put their arms round each other and cried for joy, because now they were both young and beautiful again.
'And now we shall live happy ever after,' said the Princess, putting her other arm round the Cat. 'Dear pussy-nurse, do tell me, now it's all over, who you really are.'
'I give it up. Ask another,' said the Cat.
But as she spoke she went herself through the fire, and on the other side came out--not one person, but eleven. She was, in fact, the Professor, the nurse, the palace butler, footman, housemaid, parlourmaid, between-maid, boots, scullion, boy in buttons, as well as the rescued cat--all rolled into one!
'But we only used one part of ourselves at a time,' they all said with one voice, 'and I hope we were useful.'
'You were a darling,' said the Princess--'darlings, I mean. But who turned you all into exactly the pussy-nurse I wanted?'
'Oh, that was the Magician,' said all the voices in unison; 'he was your fairy-godfather, you know.'
'What has become of him?' asked the Princess, clinging to her lover's arm.
'He's been asleep all this time. It was the condition, the only way he got leave to work the good magic for all of us,' said the many voices that were one.
So they all went. And when they woke the Magician, who was sleeping quietly in his own private room in the palace where the Princess had once lived, he sneezed seven times for pure joy, and then called for Welsh rabbit and baked Spanish onions for supper.
'For after all these years of starvation,' he said, 'I do really think I may for once take a liberty with my digestion.'
So he had the supper he wanted; but the King and the Princess had roses and lilies and wedding-cake, because they were married that very evening.
And when you have passed through exactly the sort of fire those two had passed through, you can never be old, or ugly, or unhappy again, so those two are happy, and beautiful, and young to this very hour.
'Please, father,' Diggory said, 'I want to go out and seek my fortune.'
'Seek your grandmother,' said his father, but not unkindly. He was smoking a pipe outside his cottage door, and he had a red-spotted handkerchief over his head because of the flies. There were flies then, just the same as there are now, though it was a hundred years ago by the church clock.
