“Good,” said Topaz, “since it is a miniature His Majesty requires, I am certain he will be delighted with the result” (Topaz recalled his early experience with the Boar).
He placed the king as far as possible from the camera so as to diminish his image and fill the plate, after which he conducted his operations with the nicest care. All the courtiers awaited the result with anxiety as profound as if it were the casting of a statue. The sun was scorching. After a few minutes the artist took up the plate lightly, and triumphantly presented it to the gaze of His Majesty; hardly had the king cast his eyes upon it, when he burst into a loud laugh, and without knowing why, all the courtiers joined in the royal hilarity. It was like an Olympian scene.
“What is this?” roared the Elephant as soon as he could speak. “That is the portrait of a rat, and you presume to say it is me? You are joking, my friend” (the laughter still continued), “why,” continued the king after silence had been restored, his tone getting gradually more and more severe, “it is owing to my great size and strength that I have been chosen king. Were I to exhibit this miserable portrait to my subjects they would imagine I was an insect, a weak, hardly { 173} perceptible, creature, only fit to be dethroned and crushed. The interest of the State, sir, forbids my taking this course,” saying which, he hurled the plate at the artist, who bowed down to the ground, not so much from humility as to escape a shock that would have been fatal to { 174} him. “I should have tested the truth of the stories so freely circulated about you.”
The king and his ministers were becoming furious.
“Ugh! you are one of the hawkers of inventions and secrets, one of those innovators we have heard so much of, who prowl about seeking what good old institution they can devour; fellows who would bring down our constitution, and heaven itself about our ears, with their infernal machines. Bah!”
Here the mighty king stepped over the still prostrate body of the artist, and approaching the innocent machine—in his eyes big with the darkest plots ever brewed in the heart of a State—full of a no less legitimate wrath than Don Quixote, when breaking the marionettes of Master Peter, he raised his formidable foot, and crushed the camera to atoms.