The Golden Touch

In a mythical ancient world where supernatural beings occasionally involve themselves in mortal affairs, a wealthy king named Midas lives with his young daughter, Marygold. Midas loves gold above all else, valuing even his royal crown chiefly because it is made of precious metal. Though he adores Marygold, his love for her only deepens his hunger for riches, since he believes the greatest gift he can leave her is an immense fortune. He dismisses the natural beauty around him, wishing that sunset clouds and Marygold's bouquets of buttercups and dandelions were real gold. He once cultivated a magnificent rose garden and enjoyed music, but now he cares only for calculating the gold value of rose petals and listening to the clink of coins. He spends much of each day in a dark, dungeon-like vault beneath his palace, handling bags of coins, golden cups, and gold dust, whispering to himself about his happiness even as he dreams that the entire world might become his treasure room.

One day in his vault, a shadow falls across Midas's gold. He looks up and sees a stranger standing in the sunbeam, a young man with a cheerful, ruddy face whose smile seems to cast a golden radiance throughout the room. Because Midas had locked the door, he concludes the visitor must be a supernatural being, though the stranger's kind demeanor suggests he has come to do Midas a favor. The stranger remarks on Midas's extraordinary wealth, but Midas replies with discontent, calling his lifetime's accumulation a mere trifle. Sensing that the stranger has both the power and the will to grant any wish, Midas deliberates and arrives at his idea: He wishes that everything he touches will turn to gold. The stranger names the wish "The Golden Touch" (8), complimenting Midas's ingenuity but asking whether the gift will truly satisfy him and whether he will ever regret it. Midas insists it will make him perfectly happy. The stranger grants the wish, telling Midas he will find himself gifted with the Golden Touch at sunrise the next day, then grows exceedingly bright and vanishes.

Midas wakes before dawn and eagerly touches objects near his bed, but nothing changes, and he fears the stranger was only a dream. He waits in a disconsolate mood until the first sunbeam shines through the window and discovers that his white bed linen has transmuted into a woven texture of the purest gold. In joyful frenzy, he runs about the room grasping everything: A bedpost becomes a fluted golden pillar, a window-curtain tassel becomes a heavy mass of gold, and a book transforms into thin golden plates in which the text grows illegible. He dresses and finds himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth. When he draws out a handkerchief that Marygold had hemmed for him, he finds her neat stitches rendered in gold thread, which unsettles him slightly, though he dismisses the feeling. He puts on his spectacles only to discover that the lenses have become plates of yellow metal, rendering them useless, but he accepts this philosophically, reasoning that Marygold will soon be old enough to read to him.

Midas descends the staircase, turning the balustrade to burnished gold. In the garden, he goes meticulously from bush to bush, exercising his Golden Touch until every rose, bud, and even the worms within some blossoms are changed to gold. Summoned to breakfast, he returns to the palace with an excellent appetite.

Marygold has not yet appeared. While waiting, Midas hears her crying bitterly, which surprises him because she is normally cheerful. Marygold enters sobbing, holding out one of the golden roses. She had gone to the garden to gather roses for her father but found them all blighted, turned yellow, hard, and scentless. Ashamed to confess he caused the transformation, Midas dismisses her tears. She tosses the rose away, saying it has no smell and its hard petals prick her nose. When Midas begins to eat, every item he touches turns to gold: A spoonful of coffee becomes molten gold the instant it reaches his lips, a piece of trout transforms into an elaborate metallic fish, and a hot cake and a boiled egg harden into inedible gold. Growing desperate, he snatches a hot potato and crams it into his mouth, but the Golden Touch is too quick: His mouth fills with burning metal, and he leaps from the table roaring in pain. Despite this distress, he remains so fascinated by the glitter of gold that he refuses to give up the Golden Touch merely for a breakfast.

Marygold gazes at her father, trying to understand what troubles him, then rises in a sweet impulse to comfort him. She runs to Midas and throws her arms around his knees. He bends down and kisses her forehead, feeling in that moment that his daughter's love is worth a thousand times more than anything the Golden Touch has given him. But the instant his lips touch Marygold's forehead, she transforms. Her rosy face turns glittering yellow with congealed golden teardrops on her cheeks, her brown ringlets turn gold, and her soft body grows hard and inflexible. She becomes a golden statue, retaining every feature, including the beloved dimple in her chin and an expression of love, grief, and pity frozen on her face. Midas realizes that his habit of saying Marygold was "worth her weight in gold" (21-22) has become literally true, and he now understands that a warm, loving heart exceeds in value all the wealth between earth and sky. He wrings his hands, wishing he were the poorest man in the world if losing his wealth could restore even the faintest rose color to his child's face.

In his despair, Midas sees the same stranger standing near the door. The stranger asks how Midas is succeeding with the Golden Touch, and Midas replies that he is very miserable. The stranger tests Midas with a series of comparisons: the Golden Touch versus one cup of clear cold water, versus a crust of bread, versus his own little Marygold, warm, soft, and loving. To each, Midas chooses the simple, human thing over gold, declaring he would not have traded the dimple in Marygold's chin for the power to turn the whole earth to gold. The stranger pronounces Midas wiser than before, observing that the commonest things within everyone's grasp are more valuable than riches. He instructs Midas to plunge into the river at the bottom of his garden and to bring back a vase of that water to sprinkle over any object he wishes to restore, adding that if done with earnestness and sincerity, it may repair the mischief caused by his greed.

Midas snatches up an earthen pitcher, which turns to gold at his touch, and races to the riverside, leaving a trail of yellowed foliage behind him. He plunges headlong into the river without even removing his shoes, and when his head emerges, he feels the Golden Touch has been washed away. He dips the pitcher into the water and watches it revert from gold to its original earthen material. He also senses a change within himself: His heart, which had been gradually turning to insensible metal, softens back to flesh. He touches a violet on the riverbank and is overjoyed when it retains its purple hue, confirming the curse is removed. Hurrying back to the palace, he sprinkles the water over Marygold's golden statue. Rosy color returns to her cheeks, she sneezes and sputters, and she protests that he is wetting the nice frock she put on that morning. She has no memory of being a golden statue. Midas does not tell her about his foolishness but leads her into the garden and sprinkles the remaining water over the rose bushes, restoring more than 5,000 roses to their beautiful bloom. Two lasting reminders of the Golden Touch remain: The sands of the river forever sparkle like gold, and Marygold's hair retains a golden tinge it never had before.

When Midas grows old, he trots Marygold's children on his knee and tells them this story. He declares that ever since that fateful morning, he has hated the very sight of all gold except the golden tinge in his family's hair.