Nutcracker and the mouse king

behave like Princess Pirlipat and despise you, when you, for my sake, had ceased to be a handsome young man!”
“Eh! eh! Silly stuff!” exclaimed the Counsellor. Then at that moment came such a crack and a jerk, that Mary tumbled fainting from her chair.
When she came to herself again, her mother was petting her and saying:
“How could you tumble from your chair – such a big girl! Here is the nephew of the Counsellor come from Nuremberg, so you must be nice and well behaved.”
She looked up; the Counsellor had again put on his glass wig and his drab coat, and was smiling very agreeably, and he held by the hand a small but well-formed young man. His little face was as white and red as milk and blood; he wore a fine red coat laced with gold, white silk stockings and pumps, had stuck in his bosom a most beautiful nosegay, was most elegantly curled and powdered, and behind his back his hair hung done up in a bag. The little sword by his side seemed to be all jewels, it glittered so, and the small hat under his arm was woven out of flakes of silk.
The young man lost no time in showing what pleasant manners he had, for he gave Mary a quantity of splendid playthings, especially the most lovely toffee and the same figures as the Mouse King had bitten to pieces; but for Fred he had brought a wonderful fine sword. At table the polite visitor cracked nuts for the whole party; the hardest could not withstand him: with his right hand he stuck them in his mouth, with his left he pulled up his head – crack! – the nut fell in pieces!
Mary blushed rose red as she looked at the nice young man; and she became still redder when, after dinner, young Drosselmeier invited her to go with him to the glass cupboard in the parlour.
“Play prettily together, then, children,” said the Counsellor, “I have no objection, as all my clocks are now in order.”
As soon as young Drosselmeier found himself alone with Mary, he knelt upon one knee and spoke thus:
“Ah, my dearest Miss Stahlbaum! You see here at your feet the fortunate man whose life you saved on this very spot. You were good enough to say that you would not despise me, as that nasty Princess Pirlipat did, if I became hideous for your sake. Now I am no more a common Nutcracker, but have received again my original, not unpleasing, form. Oh, excellent young lady, bestow upon me your precious hand; share with me my crown and kingdom; reign with me in Rock Castle, for there now am I King!”
Mary raised the youth to his feet, and said softly:
“Dear Herr Drosselmeier, you are a good-natured, kind-hearted man, and you also reign over a delightful land with very pretty, amusing people, so I take you for my husband!”
So then Mary and Drosselmeier became at once betrothed. When the engagement had lasted a year, he is said to have fetched her away in a gold coach drawn by silver horses. At the wedding danced two-and-twenty thousand of the splendidest puppets decked out in pearls and diamonds; and Mary is now Queen of a country in which sparkling Christmas-tree woods, transparent Toffee Palaces – in short, the finest and most wonderful things are everywhere to be seen by those who will only have eyes to see them.
So ends the story of Nutcracker and Mouse King.