Andersen's Fairy Tales
“Come, let us be men!” said he, involuntarily imitating the chatter of
the Parrot, and at the same moment he was again a copying-clerk; but he
was sitting in the middle of the table.
“Heaven help me!” cried he. “How did I get up here--and so buried in
sleep, too? After all, that was a very unpleasant, disagreeable dream
that haunted me! The whole story is nothing but silly, stupid nonsense!”
VI. The Best That the Galoshes Gave
The following day, early in the morning, while the Clerk was still in
bed, someone knocked at his door. It was his neighbor, a young Divine,
who lived on the same floor. He walked in.
“Lend me your Galoshes,” said he; “it is so wet in the garden, though
the sun is shining most invitingly. I should like to go out a little.”
He got the Galoshes, and he was soon below in a little duodecimo garden,
where between two immense walls a plumtree and an apple-tree were
standing. Even such a little garden as this was considered in the
metropolis of Copenhagen as a great luxury.
The young man wandered up and down the narrow paths, as well as the
prescribed limits would allow; the clock struck six; without was heard
the horn of a post-boy.
“To travel! to travel!” exclaimed he, overcome by most painful and
passionate remembrances. “That is the happiest thing in the world! That
is the highest aim of all my wishes! Then at last would the agonizing
restlessness be allayed, which destroys my existence! But it must be
far, far away! I would behold magnificent Switzerland; I would travel to
Italy, and--”
It was a good thing that the power of the Galoshes worked as
instantaneously as lightning in a powder-magazine would do, otherwise
the poor man with his overstrained wishes would have travelled about
the world too much for himself as well as for us. In short, he was
travelling. He was in the middle of Switzerland, but packed up with
eight other passengers in the inside of an eternally-creaking diligence;
his head ached till it almost split, his weary neck could hardly bear
the heavy load, and his feet, pinched by his torturing boots, were
terribly swollen. He was in an intermediate state between sleeping and
waking; at variance with himself, with his company, with the country,
and with the government. In his right pocket he had his letter of
credit, in the left, his passport, and in a small leathern purse some
double louis d'or, carefully sewn up in the bosom of his waistcoat.
Every dream proclaimed that one or the other of these valuables was
lost; wherefore he started up as in a fever; and the first movement
which his hand made, described a magic triangle from the right pocket to
the left, and then up towards the bosom, to feel if he had them all safe
or not. From the roof inside the carriage, umbrellas, walking-sticks,
hats, and sundry other articles were depending, and hindered the view,
which was particularly imposing. He now endeavored as well as he
was able to dispel his gloom, which was caused by outward chance
circumstances merely, and on the bosom of nature imbibe the milk of
purest human enjoyment.
Grand, solemn, and dark was the whole landscape around. The gigantic
pine-forests, on the pointed crags, seemed almost like little tufts of
heather, colored by the surrounding clouds. It began to snow, a cold
wind blew and roared as though it were seeking a bride.
“Augh!” sighed he, “were we only on the other side the Alps, then we
should have summer, and I could get my letters of credit cashed. The
anxiety I feel about them prevents me enjoying Switzerland. Were I but
on the other side!”
And so saying he was on the other side in Italy, between Florence and
Rome. Lake Thracymene, illumined by the evening sun, lay like flaming
gold between the dark-blue mountain-ridges; here, where Hannibal
defeated Flaminius, the rivers now held each other in their green
embraces; lovely, half-naked children tended a herd of black swine,
beneath a group of fragrant laurel-trees, hard by the road-side.
Could we render this inimitable picture properly, then would everybody
exclaim, “Beautiful, unparalleled Italy!” But neither the young Divine
said so, nor anyone of his grumbling companions in the coach of the
vetturino.
The poisonous flies and gnats swarmed around by thousands; in vain one
waved myrtle-branches about like mad; the audacious insect population
did not cease to sting; nor was there a single person in the
well-crammed carriage whose face was not swollen and sore from their
ravenous bites. The poor horses, tortured almost to death, suffered most
from this truly Egyptian plague; the flies alighted upon them in large
disgusting swarms; and if the coachman got down and scraped them off,
hardly a minute elapsed before they were there again. The sun now set: a
freezing cold, though of short duration pervaded the whole creation;
it was like a horrid gust coming from a burial-vault on a warm summer's
day--but all around the mountains retained that wonderful green tone
which we see in some old pictures, and which, should we not have seen a
similar play of color in the South, we declare at once to be unnatural.
It was a glorious prospect; but the stomach was empty, the body tired;
all that the heart cared and longed for was good night-quarters; yet
how would they be? For these one looked much more anxiously than for the
charms of nature, which every where were so profusely displayed.
The road led through an olive-grove, and here the solitary inn was
situated. Ten or twelve crippled-beggars had encamped outside. The
healthiest of them resembled, to use an expression of Marryat's,
“Hunger's eldest son when he had come of age”; the others were either
blind, had withered legs and crept about on their hands, or withered
arms and fingerless hands. It was the most wretched misery, dragged
from among the filthiest rags. “Excellenza, miserabili!” sighed they,
thrusting forth their deformed limbs to view. Even the hostess, with
bare feet, uncombed hair, and dressed in a garment of doubtful color,
received the guests grumblingly. The doors were fastened with a loop of
string; the floor of the rooms presented a stone paving half torn
up; bats fluttered wildly about the ceiling; and as to the smell
therein--no--that was beyond description.
“You had better lay the cloth below in the stable,” said one of the
travellers; “there, at all events, one knows what one is breathing.”
The windows were quickly opened, to let in a little fresh air. Quicker,
however, than the breeze, the withered, sallow arms of the beggars were
thrust in, accompanied by the eternal whine of “Miserabili, miserabili,
excellenza!” On the walls were displayed innumerable inscriptions,
written in nearly every language of Europe, some in verse, some in
prose, most of them not very laudatory of “bella Italia.”
The meal was served. It consisted of a soup of salted water, seasoned
with pepper and rancid oil. The last ingredient played a very prominent
part in the salad; stale eggs and roasted cocks'-combs furnished the
grand dish of the repast; the wine even was not without a disgusting
taste--it was like a medicinal draught.
At night the boxes and other effects of the passengers were placed
against the rickety doors. One of the travellers kept watch while the
others slept. The sentry was our young Divine. How close it was in the
chamber! The heat oppressive to suffocation--the gnats hummed and stung
unceasingly--the “miserabili” without whined and moaned in their sleep.
“Travelling would be agreeable enough,” said he groaning, “if one only
had no body, or could send it to rest while the spirit went on its
pilgrimage unhindered, whither the voice within might call it. Wherever
I go, I am pursued by a longing that is insatiable--that I cannot
explain to myself, and that tears my very heart. I want something better
than what is but what is fled in an instant. But what is it, and where
is it to be found? Yet, I know in reality what it is I wish for. Oh!
most happy were I, could I but reach one aim--could but reach the
happiest of all!”
And as he spoke the word he was again in his home; the long white
curtains hung down from the windows, and in the middle of the floor
stood the black coffin; in it he lay in the sleep of death. His wish
was fulfilled--the body rested, while the spirit went unhindered on its
pilgrimage. “Let no one deem himself happy before his end,” were the
words of Solon; and here was a new and brilliant proof of the wisdom of
the old apothegm.
Every corpse is a sphynx of immortality; here too on the black coffin
the sphynx gave us no answer to what he who lay within had written two
days before:
“O mighty Death! thy silence teaches nought,
Thou leadest only to the near grave's brink;
Is broken now the ladder of my thoughts?
Do I instead of mounting only sink?
Our heaviest grief the world oft seeth not,
Our sorest pain we hide from stranger eyes:
And for the sufferer there is nothing left
But the green mound that o'er the coffin lies.”
Two figures were moving in the chamber. We knew them both; it was the
fairy of Care, and the emissary of Fortune. They both bent over the
corpse.
“Do you now see,” said Care, “what happiness your Galoshes have brought
to mankind?”
“To him, at least, who slumbers here, they have brought an imperishable
blessing,” answered the other.
“Ah no!” replied Care. “He took his departure himself; he was not called
away. His mental powers here below were not strong enough to reach the
treasures lying beyond this life, and which his destiny ordained he
should obtain. I will now confer a benefit on him.”
And she took the Galoshes from his feet; his sleep of death was ended;
and he who had been thus called back again to life arose from his
dread couch in all the vigor of youth. Care vanished, and with her the
Galoshes. She has no doubt taken them for herself, to keep them to all
eternity.
THE FIR TREE
Out in the woods stood a nice little Fir Tree. The place he had was a
very good one: the sun shone on him: as to fresh air, there was enough
of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as
firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.
He did not think of the warm sun and of the fresh air; he did not care
for the little cottage children that ran about and prattled when they
were in the woods looking for wild-strawberries. The children often came
with a whole pitcher full of berries, or a long row of them threaded on
a straw, and sat down near the young tree and said, “Oh, how pretty he
is! What a nice little fir!” But this was what the Tree could not bear
to hear.
At the end of a year he had shot up a good deal, and after another year
he was another long bit taller; for with fir trees one can always tell
by the shoots how many years old they are.
“Oh! Were I but such a high tree as the others are,” sighed he. “Then I
should be able to spread out my branches, and with the tops to look into
the wide world! Then would the birds build nests among my branches: and
when there was a breeze, I could bend with as much stateliness as the
others!”
Neither the sunbeams, nor the birds, nor the red clouds which morning
and evening sailed above him, gave the little Tree any pleasure.
In winter, when the snow lay glittering on the ground, a hare would
often come leaping along, and jump right over the little Tree. Oh, that
made him so angry! But two winters were past, and in the third the Tree
was so large that the hare was obliged to go round it. “To grow and
grow, to get older and be tall,” thought the Tree--“that, after all, is
the most delightful thing in the world!”
In autumn the wood-cutters always came and felled some of the largest