may succeed this time--perhaps next.

And at last they do succeed--the fairy walls are breached, the fairy
palace stormed--and the Trolls are crouching at their feet, and now
all will be theirs, gold, jewels, dresses, arms, all that the Troll
possesses--except his cunning.

For as each struggles into the charmed ground, the spell of the place
falls on him. He drinks the wine, and it maddens him. He fills his
arms with precious trumpery, and another snatches it from his grasp.
Each envies the youth before him, each cries--Why had I not the luck
to enter first? And the Trolls set them against each other, and
split them into parties, each mad with excitement, and jealousy, and
wine, till, they scarce know how, each falls upon his fellow, and all
upon those who are crowding in from the forest, and they fight and
fight, up and down the palace halls, till their triumph has become a
very feast of the Lapithae, and the Trolls look on, and laugh a
wicked laugh, as they tar them on to the unnatural fight, till the
gardens are all trampled, the finery torn, the halls dismantled, and
each pavement slippery with brothers' blood. And then, when the wine
is gone out of them, the survivors come to their senses, and stare
shamefully and sadly round. What an ugly, desolate, tottering ruin
the fairy palace has become! Have they spoilt it themselves? or have
the Trolls bewitched it? And all the fairy treasure--what has become
of it? no man knows. Have they thrown it away in their quarrel? have
the cunningest hidden it? have the Trolls flown away with it, to the
fairy land beyond the Eastern mountains? who can tell? Nothing is
left but recrimination and remorse. And they wander back again into
the forest, away from the doleful ruin, carrion-strewn, to sulk each
apart over some petty spoil which he has saved from the general