Meanwhile Tintabel cried bitterly, because his hope was lost, his praise would never be heard among the fairies, and the beauty he had hoped to create he should never see. The elf that lived in the toad-stool looked up as the tears fell upon him, and gathered them up from his fungous coat, where they sparkled like dew.
"Alas!" sighed Tintabel--"alas for my vanished hopes! Oh! how lovely should my picture have been, and now I am bound down here to uselessness;" and he could not feel the pain of his bruised and bound wings because of the pain at his heart. The elf in the toad-stool looked up and said,
"Fairy, paint me a picture, here on the smooth surface of the toad-stool, for I have never seen one."
Tintabel stopped his wailing to think how wretched was the elf who had never seen a picture.
"Ah! elf," he said, "I have neither pencil nor colors. How can I paint?"
But the elf pointed to one of the thorns which fastened Tintabel's wings. The end was long, so that the fairy could reach it.
"There is a pencil," said the elf; and the artist's longing came upon the fairy, and he seized the thorn. Poor hurt wings! how they quivered and pained as the point of their fastenings pressed hither and thither over the surface of the toad-stool, and crushed and dragged and rent them in its course! But the thorn had a magic in it, and Tintabel found it possessed more than fairy power. The sharper his pain, the more perfect the stroke he could make. As the delicate film of the wing was torn, the rainbow tints dropped off, and gave him lovelier colors than the hues of heaven; and the elf held up his tears as water for the painting. He painted his remembrance of fairy-land and his weariness of earth.
When the appointed day came, the Fairy Queen called her painters together. The great hall was filled with them, but of all the pictures none was so great as Orgolino's. He had painted "The Triumph of Strength." Then said the Queen, "Where is Tintabel?" and no one knew.
"He has not cared to obey your Majesty's command," said Orgolino.
But the Queen looked at him steadily, and said, "Tintabel must be found."
Then all the fairies went in search of him. Soon one returned and said, "Tintabel is bound in the wood among the fungus and toad-stools, and before him is a picture more beautiful than any fairy ever saw."