"'Sweet friend, dear preserver of my brother, would you mind just pounding a little of this sugar-candy?'
"Now as Marie went on pounding in the mortar with good will and the utmost enjoyment--and the sound of it was like a lovely song--Nutcracker began to relate, with much minuteness and prolixity, all that had happened on the occasion of the terrible engagement between his forces and the army of the king of the mice; how he had had the worst of it on account of the bad behaviour of his troops; how the horrible mouse king had all but bitten him to death, so that Marie had had to sacrifice a number of his subjects who were in her service, etc., etc.
"During all this it seemed to Marie as if what Nutcracker was saying--and even the sound of her own mortar--kept growing more and more indistinct, and going farther and farther away. Presently she saw a silver mistiness rising up all about, like clouds, in which the princesses, the pages, Nutcracker, and she herself were floating. And a curious singing and a buzzing and humming began, which seemed to die away in the distance; and then she seemed to be going up--up--up, as if on waves constantly rising and swelling higher and higher, higher and higher, higher and higher.
"And then came a 'prr-poof,' and Marie fell down from some inconceivable height.
"However, she opened her eyes, and, lo and behold, there she was in her own bed! It was broad daylight, and her mother was standing at her bedside, saying:
"'Well, what a sleep you have had! Breakfast has been ready for ever so long.'
"Of course, dear audience, you see how it was. Marie, confounded and amazed by all the wonderful things she had seen, had fallen asleep at last in Marchpane Castle, and the negroes or the pages, or perhaps the princesses themselves, had carried her home and put her to bed.
"'Oh, mother darling,' said Marie, what a number of places young Mr. Drosselmeier has taken me to in the night, and what beautiful things I have seen!' And she gave very much the same faithful account of it all as I have done to you.
"Her mother listened, looking at her with much astonishment, and, when she had finished, said:
"'You have had a long, beautiful dream, Marie; but now you must put it all out of your head.'