Andersen's Fairy Tales
Among the audience was the young man of the hospital, who seemed to have
forgotten his adventure of the preceding night. He had on the Shoes; for
as yet no lawful owner had appeared to claim them; and besides it was so
very dirty out-of-doors, they were just the thing for him, he thought.
The beginning of the poem he praised with great generosity: he even
found the idea original and effective. But that the end of it, like the
Rhine, was very insignificant, proved, in his opinion, the author's
want of invention; he was without genius, etc. This was an excellent
opportunity to have said something clever.
Meanwhile he was haunted by the idea--he should like to possess such a
pair of spectacles himself; then, perhaps, by using them circumspectly,
one would be able to look into people's hearts, which, he thought, would
be far more interesting than merely to see what was to happen next year;
for that we should all know in proper time, but the other never.
“I can now,” said he to himself, “fancy the whole row of ladies and
gentlemen sitting there in the front row; if one could but see into
their hearts--yes, that would be a revelation--a sort of bazar. In that
lady yonder, so strangely dressed, I should find for certain a large
milliner's shop; in that one the shop is empty, but it wants cleaning
plain enough. But there would also be some good stately shops among
them. Alas!” sighed he, “I know one in which all is stately; but there
sits already a spruce young shopman, which is the only thing that's
amiss in the whole shop. All would be splendidly decked out, and we
should hear, 'Walk in, gentlemen, pray walk in; here you will find all
you please to want.' Ah! I wish to Heaven I could walk in and take a
trip right through the hearts of those present!”
And behold! to the Shoes of Fortune this was the cue; the whole man
shrunk together and a most uncommon journey through the hearts of the
front row of spectators, now began. The first heart through which he
came, was that of a middle-aged lady, but he instantly fancied himself
in the room of the “Institution for the cure of the crooked and
deformed,” where casts of mis-shapen limbs are displayed in naked
reality on the wall. Yet there was this difference, in the institution
the casts were taken at the entry of the patient; but here they were
retained and guarded in the heart while the sound persons went away.
They were, namely, casts of female friends, whose bodily or mental
deformities were here most faithfully preserved.
With the snake-like writhings of an idea he glided into another female
heart; but this seemed to him like a large holy fane. [*] The white dove of
innocence fluttered over the altar. How gladly would he have sunk upon
his knees; but he must away to the next heart; yet he still heard the
pealing tones of the organ, and he himself seemed to have become a newer
and a better man; he felt unworthy to tread the neighboring sanctuary
which a poor garret, with a sick bed-rid mother, revealed. But God's
warm sun streamed through the open window; lovely roses nodded from
the wooden flower-boxes on the roof, and two sky-blue birds sang
rejoicingly, while the sick mother implored God's richest blessings on
her pious daughter.
* temple
He now crept on hands and feet through a butcher's shop; at least on
every side, and above and below, there was nought but flesh. It was the
heart of a most respectable rich man, whose name is certain to be found
in the Directory.
He was now in the heart of the wife of this worthy gentleman. It was an
old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot. The husband's portrait was used as
a weather-cock, which was connected in some way or other with the doors,
and so they opened and shut of their own accord, whenever the stern old
husband turned round.
Hereupon he wandered into a boudoir formed entirely of mirrors, like
the one in Castle Rosenburg; but here the glasses magnified to an
astonishing degree. On the floor, in the middle of the room, sat, like a
Dalai-Lama, the insignificant “Self” of the person, quite confounded at
his own greatness. He then imagined he had got into a needle-case full
of pointed needles of every size.
“This is certainly the heart of an old maid,” thought he. But he was
mistaken. It was the heart of a young military man; a man, as people
said, of talent and feeling.
In the greatest perplexity, he now came out of the last heart in the
row; he was unable to put his thoughts in order, and fancied that his
too lively imagination had run away with him.
“Good Heavens!” sighed he. “I have surely a disposition to madness--'tis
dreadfully hot here; my blood boils in my veins and my head is burning
like a coal.” And he now remembered the important event of the evening
before, how his head had got jammed in between the iron railings of the
hospital. “That's what it is, no doubt,” said he. “I must do something
in time: under such circumstances a Russian bath might do me good. I
only wish I were already on the upper bank.” [*]
*In these Russian (vapor) baths the person extends himself
on a bank or form, and as he gets accustomed to the heat,
moves to another higher up towards the ceiling, where, of
course, the vapor is warmest. In this manner he ascends
gradually to the highest.
And so there he lay on the uppermost bank in the vapor-bath; but with
all his clothes on, in his boots and galoshes, while the hot drops fell
scalding from the ceiling on his face.
“Holloa!” cried he, leaping down. The bathing attendant, on his side,
uttered a loud cry of astonishment when he beheld in the bath, a man
completely dressed.
The other, however, retained sufficient presence of mind to whisper to
him, “'Tis a bet, and I have won it!” But the first thing he did as soon
as he got home, was to have a large blister put on his chest and back to
draw out his madness.
The next morning he had a sore chest and a bleeding back; and, excepting
the fright, that was all that he had gained by the Shoes of Fortune.
V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk
The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile
of the galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now
went to fetch them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in
the street, claimed them as his property, they were delivered over to
the police-office.*
*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal,
but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the
labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is
enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among
many other scribes of various denominations, of which, it seems, our
hero was one.
“Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own,” said one of the
clerks, eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he,
sharp as he was, was not able to discover. “One must have more than
the eye of a shoemaker to know one pair from the other,” said he,
soliloquizing; and putting, at the same time, the galoshes in search of
an owner, beside his own in the corner.
“Here, sir!” said one of the men, who panting brought him a tremendous
pile of papers.
The copying-clerk turned round and spoke awhile with the man about the
reports and legal documents in question; but when he had finished, and
his eye fell again on the Shoes, he was unable to say whether those to
the left or those to the right belonged to him. “At all events it must
be those which are wet,” thought he; but this time, in spite of his
cleverness, he guessed quite wrong, for it was just those of Fortune
which played as it were into his hands, or rather on his feet. And why,
I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong? So he put them
on quickly, stuck his papers in his pocket, and took besides a few under
his arm, intending to look them through at home to make the necessary
notes. It was noon; and the weather, that had threatened rain, began
to clear up, while gaily dressed holiday folks filled the streets. “A
little trip to Fredericksburg would do me no great harm,” thought he;
“for I, poor beast of burden that I am, have so much to annoy me, that I
don't know what a good appetite is. 'Tis a bitter crust, alas! at which
I am condemned to gnaw!”
Nobody could be more steady or quiet than this young man; we therefore
wish him joy of the excursion with all our heart; and it will certainly
be beneficial for a person who leads so sedentary a life. In the park
he met a friend, one of our young poets, who told him that the following
day he should set out on his long-intended tour.
“So you are going away again!” said the clerk. “You are a very free
and happy being; we others are chained by the leg and held fast to our
desk.”
“Yes; but it is a chain, friend, which ensures you the blessed bread
of existence,” answered the poet. “You need feel no care for the coming
morrow: when you are old, you receive a pension.”
“True,” said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders; “and yet you are
the better off. To sit at one's ease and poetise--that is a pleasure;
everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always your
own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one
year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial
matters.”
The poet shook his head, the copying-clerk did the same. Each one kept
to his own opinion, and so they separated.
“It's a strange race, those poets!” said the clerk, who was very fond of
soliloquizing. “I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such
nature upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make
no such miserable verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most
delicious day for a poet. Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening
into life. The air is so unusually clear, the clouds sail on so
buoyantly, and from the green herbage a fragrance is exhaled that fills
me with delight. For many a year have I not felt as at this moment.”
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to
give further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for
it is a most foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men.
Among the latter there may be far more poetical natures than many an
acknowledged poet, when examined more closely, could boast of; the
difference only is, that the poet possesses a better mental memory, on
which account he is able to retain the feeling and the thought till they
can be embodied by means of words; a faculty which the others do not
possess. But the transition from a commonplace nature to one that is
richly endowed, demands always a more or less breakneck leap over a
certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus must the sudden
change with the clerk strike the reader.
“The sweet air!” continued he of the police-office, in his dreamy
imaginings; “how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my aunt
Magdalena! Yes, then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school
very regularly. O heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on
those times. The good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She
always had a few twigs or green shoots in water--let the winter rage
without as it might. The violets exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I
pressed against the windowpanes covered with fantastic frost-work the
copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made peep-holes.
What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change--what
magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted
by their whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But
when the spring, with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival,
a new and busy life arose; with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn