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FRANCIS & CO. 'S 
 FOR YOUNG PERSONS OF VARIOUS AGES. 
 
 A PICTURE BOOK WITHOUT PICTURES, 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 
 
FRANCIS & CO/s LITTLE LIBRARY. 
 
 A Uniform Series of Choice Books for Young People. 
 
 Flowers for Children : by L. Maria Child. No. 1, 
 
 for Children eight or nine yeara old. 
 
 — — No. 2, tor Children three or four years old. 
 
 No. 3, for Children elevenor twelve years old. 
 
 The Favorite Scholar, Little Chatterbox, Perse- 
 
 VBRANCB, and Other Tales, by Mary Hewitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, 
 
 and others. 
 The Robins ; or Domestic Life among the Birds : 
 
 by Mrs. Trimmer. Designed for the Instruction of Children 
 
 respecting their treatment of Animals. 
 Kate and Lizzie; or Six Months out or School; 
 
 by Anne W Abbot. 
 Facts to Correct Fancies ; or Shoi-t Narratives com- 
 piled from the Memoirs of Remarkable Women. By a Mother. 
 Turns of Fortune; All is not Gold that Glitters. 
 
 &c. : by Mrs. 8. C. Hall. 
 The J'rivate Purse; Cleverness, and other Tales: 
 
 by Mrs. S. U. Hall. 
 EussEL and Sidney and Chase Loring : Tales of the 
 
 American Revolution : by Eliza Leslie. 
 Claudine; or Humility the Basis oe all the Vir- 
 
 TDKS. A Swiss Tale. By a Mother: author of "Always Hap- 
 py," " True Stories from History," &c. 
 Stories and Poems for Children: by Mrs. C. Gilmau 
 Classic Tales: designed for the Instruction and 
 
 Amusement of Young Persons. By the author of " American 
 
 Popular Lessons," &c. &c. 
 Holiday Stories : containing five Moral Tales. 
 The Little Wreath of Stories and Poems for 
 
 Children : by Caroline Oilman. 
 A Christmas Greeting ; Thirteen New Stories from 
 
 the Danish of Hans Christian Andersen. 
 A Picture Book Without Pictures ; and other Stories; 
 
 by Hans Christian Andersen. Translated by Mary Howitf 
 
 with a Memoir of the Author. ' 
 
 IN preparation. 
 The History of an Officer's Widow and heh 
 
 Voung Family : by Mrs. Hofland. 
 The Clergyman's Widow and her Young Family: 
 
 by the same. 
 The Merchant's Widow and her Young Family: 
 
 by the same. 
 The Affectionate Brothers : by the same. 
 Always Happy ! or Anecdotes of Felix and his sister 
 
 Serena. By a Mother. 
 
 And other Interesting and Useful Books. 
 
EAl^TS CHRISTIAN AKDSRSEK, 
 
 FruM] a P.iiiKiiis; by C.iil ll;inniiun.. 
 
PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 WITHOUT PICTURES! 
 S[na ©tger Stories, 
 
 FP.OM THE DAiNlSH 
 Of 
 
 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 
 
 TRANSLATEn BY 
 
 MARY HOWITT.- 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 C. 8. FRANCIS & CO., 252 BROADWAY. 
 
 boston: 
 
 J. H. FRANCIS, 128 VVASHISQTON STREET. 
 
 1848. 
 
Digitized by tiie Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 University of Nortii Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/picturebookwithoOOande 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 FAOB 
 
 Memoir op Hans Christian Andersen * - 7 
 
 a picture-book without pictures - •* • 33 
 
 My Boots - - 125 
 
 Scenes on the Danube .... - 133 
 
 Pegasus and the Post-Hqrses - . - - 143 
 
 The Emperor's New Clothes .... 153 
 
 The Swineherd - 164 
 
 The Real Princess ...... 173 
 
 50118i5 
 
M E M O I R OF 
 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 
 
 BY MARY HOWITT, 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
 Whether regarded as the human being as- 
 serting in his own person the true nobihty of 
 mind and moral worth, or the man of genius, 
 whose works alone have raised him from the 
 lowest poverty and obscurity, to be an honor- 
 ed guest with kings and queens, Hans Chris- 
 tian Andersen is one of the most remarkable 
 men of his day. 
 
 Like most men of great original talent, he 
 is emphatically one of the people ; and writ- 
 ing as he has done, principally of popular 
 life, he describes what he himself has suffered 
 and seen. Poverty or hardship, however, 
 never soured his mind ; on the contrary, 
 whatever he has written is singularly genial, 
 and abounds with the most kindly and uni- 
 versal sympathy. Human life, with all its 
 9 
 
10 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 trials, privations, and its tears, is to him a holy- 
 thing- ; he lays bare the heart, not to bring 
 forth hidden and revolting- passions or crimes, 
 but to show how lovely it is in its simplicity 
 and truth : how touching in its weaknesses 
 and its short-comings ; how much it is to be 
 loved and pitied, and borne and striven with. 
 In short, this great writer, with all the ardor 
 of a strong poetical nature, and with great 
 power in delineating passion, is eminently 
 Christian in spirit. 
 
 It is a great pleasure to me that I have 
 been the means of making the principal 
 works of Hans Christian Andersen known 
 through my translations, to English readers ; 
 they have been well received by them, and I 
 now give a slight memoir of their author, 
 drawn from the True Story of his own Life, 
 sent by him to me for translation, and which 
 has lately been published. 
 
 The father of Hans Christian Andersen 
 was a shoemaker of Odense. When scarcely 
 twenty, he married a young girl about as 
 poor as himself The poverty of this couple 
 may be imagined from the circumstance that 
 the house afforded no better bedstead than a 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDKRSEN, 
 
 11 
 
 wooden frame, made to support the coffin of 
 some count in the neighborhood, whose body- 
 lay in state before his interment. This frame, 
 covered with black cloth, and which the 
 young shoemaker purchased at a very low 
 price, served as the family bedstead many- 
 years. Upon this humble bed was born, on 
 the second of April, 1805, Hans Christian 
 Andersen. 
 
 The father of Andersen was not without 
 education; his mother was the kindest of 
 human beings ; they lived on the best terms 
 with each other, but still the husband was 
 not happy. He read comedies and the Ara- 
 bian Tales, and made a puppet theatre for 
 his little son, and often on Sundays took him 
 out with him into the woods round Odense, 
 where the solitude was congenial to his mind. 
 
 Andersen's grandmother had also great 
 influence over him, and to her he was greatly 
 attached. She was employed in taking care 
 of a garden belonging to a lunatic asylum, 
 and here he spent most of the summer after- 
 noons of his early childhood. 
 
 Among his earliest recollections is the resi- 
 dence of the Spaniards in Funen, in the years 
 
12 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 1808 and 1809. A soldier of an Asturian 
 regiment look him one day in his arms, 
 danced with him amid tears of joy, which no 
 doubt were called forth by the remembrance 
 of a child he had left at home, and pressed 
 the Madonna to his lips, which occasioned 
 great trouble to his pious mother, who was a 
 Lutheran. 
 
 In Odense at that time many old festivities 
 w^ere still in use, which made a deep impres- 
 sion on the boy, and were as so much mate- 
 rial laid up in his richly poetical mind for 
 after use, as all who are familiar with his 
 works must be well aware. His father, 
 among other works, industriously read in his 
 Bible. One day he closed it with these words : 
 "Christ became a man like unto us, but a 
 very uncommon man ! " at which his wife 
 burst into tears, greatly distressed and shock- 
 ed at what she called " blasphemy." This 
 made a deep impression on the boy, and he 
 prayed in secret for the soul of his father. 
 Another day his father said, " There is no 
 other devil but what a man bears in his ov^n 
 lireast ! " After which, finding his arm 
 scratched one morning when he awoke, his 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 13 
 
 wife said it was a punishment, of the devil, to 
 teach him his real existence. 
 
 The unhappy temper of the father increas- 
 ed from day to day ; he longed to go forth 
 into the world. At that time war was raging 
 in Germany. Napoleon was his hero, and 
 as Denmark had now allied itself to France, 
 he enlisted as a private soldier in a recruiting 
 regiment, hoping that some time or other he 
 might return as a lieutenant. The neighbors, 
 however, thought it was all a folly to let him- 
 self be shot for no purpose at all. The corps 
 in which he served went no farther than Hol- 
 stein ; the peace succeeded, and the poor shoe- 
 maker returned to his trade, only chagrined 
 to have seen no service, nor even been in for- 
 eign lands. But though he had seen no ser- 
 vice, his health had suffered ; he awoke one 
 morning delirious, and talked about cam- 
 paigns and Napoleon. Young Andersen, 
 then nine years old, was sent to the next vil- 
 lage to ask counsel from a wise woman. 
 
 " Will my poor father die ?" inquired he, 
 anxiously. 
 
 " If thy father will die," replied she, " thou 
 wilt meet his ghost on thy way hoine." 
 
IA MEMOIR OF 
 
 Terrified almost out of his senses lest he 
 should meet the ghost, he set out on his 
 homeward way, and reached his own door 
 without any such apparition presenting itself, 
 but for all that, his father died on the third 
 day. 
 
 From this time young Andersen was left 
 to himself The whole instruction that he 
 ever received was in a charity-school, and 
 consisted of reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 but of the two last he knew scarcely any- 
 thing. 
 
 About this time he was engaged by the 
 widow of a clergyman in Odense, to read 
 aloud to herself and her sister-in-law. She 
 was the widow of a clergyman who had writ- 
 ten poems. In this house Andersen first heard 
 the appellation of poet ; and saw with what 
 love the poetical talent of the deceased pastor 
 was regarded. This sunk deeply into his 
 mind ; he read tragedies, and resolved to be- 
 come a poet, as this good man had been be- 
 fore him. 
 
 He wrote a tragedy, therefore, which the 
 two ladies praised highly ; it was handed 
 about in manuscript, and people laughed at 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 15 
 
 it and ridiculed him as the "play-writer." 
 This wounded him so deeply, that he passed 
 one whole night weeping, and was only pa- 
 cified, or rather, silenced, by his mother threat- 
 ening to give him a good beating for his folly. 
 Spite, however, of his ill success, he wrote 
 again and again, studying, among other de- 
 vices, German and French words, to give 
 dignity to his dialogue. Again the whole 
 town read his productions, and the boys 
 shouted after him as he went, " Look ! look : 
 there goes the play-writer." 
 
 One day he took to his schoolmaster, as a 
 birthday present, a garland, with which he 
 had twisted up a little poem. The school- 
 master was angry with him ; he saw nothing 
 but folly and false quantities in the verses, 
 and thus the poor lad had nothing but trouble 
 and tears. 
 
 The worldly affairs of the mother grew 
 worse and worse, and as boys of his age 
 earned money in a manufactory near, it was 
 resolved that there also Hans Christian 
 should be sent. His old grandmother took 
 him to the manufactory, and shed bitter tears 
 because the lot of the boy was so early toil 
 
16 MEMOIR OF 
 
 and sorrow. The workmen io the factory 
 were principally German, and discovering 
 that Andersen had a fine voice, and knew 
 many popular songs, they made him sing to 
 them while the other boys did his work. He 
 knew himself that he had a good voice, be- 
 cause the neighbors always listened when he 
 sang at home, and once a whole party of rich 
 people had stopped to hear him, and had 
 praised his beautiful voice. Everybody in 
 the manufactory heard him with equal de- 
 hght. 
 
 " I can act comedy as well !" said the poor 
 boy one day, encouraged by their applause, 
 and began to recite whole scenes from the 
 comedies which his father had been in the 
 habit of reading. The workmen were de- 
 lighted, and the other boys were made to do 
 his tasks while he amused them all. This 
 smooth life of comedy acting and singing 
 lasted but for a short time, and he returned 
 home. 
 
 " The boy must go and act at the theatre !" 
 many of the neighbors said to his mother ; 
 but as she knew of no other theatre than that 
 of the strolling players, she shook her head, 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 17 
 
 and resolved rather to put her son apprentice 
 to a tailor. 
 
 He was now twelve, and had nothing to 
 do ; he devoured, therefore, the contents of 
 every book which came in his way. His 
 favorite reading was an old prose translation 
 of Shakspere. From this, with little figures 
 which he made of pasteboard, he performed 
 the whole of King Lear, and the Merchant 
 of Venice. 
 
 Andersen's passion for reading, and his 
 beautiful voice, had in the meantime drawn 
 upon him the attention of several of the 
 higher families of the city, who introduced 
 him to their houses. His simple, child-like 
 behavior, his wonderful memory, and his 
 sweet voice, gave to him a peculiar charm ; 
 people talked of him, and he soon had many 
 friends ; among others, a Colonel Guldborg^ 
 brother to the well-known poet of that name, 
 and who afterwards introduced him to Prince 
 Christian of Denmark. 
 
 About this time his mother married a 
 
 second time, and as the step-father would not 
 
 spend a penny, or do any thing for her son's 
 
 education, he had still more leisure. He had 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 no playfelloAvs, and often wandered by him- 
 self to the neighboring forest, or seated himself 
 at home, in a corner of the house, and dressed 
 up little dolls for his theatre, his mother in 
 the meantime thinking that, as he was des- 
 tined for a tailor, this was all good practice. 
 
 At length the time came when he was to 
 be confirmed. On this occasion he had his 
 first pair of boots ; he was veiy vain of them, 
 and that all the world might see them, he 
 pulled them up over his trousers. An old 
 sempstress was employed to make him a con- 
 firmation-suit out of his deceased fathers 
 great coat. Never before had he been possess- 
 ed of such excellent clothes ; the very thoughts 
 of them disturbed his devotions on the day of 
 consecration. 
 
 It had been determined that Andersen Avas 
 to be apprenticed to a tailor after his confir- 
 mation, but he earnestly besouglit his mother 
 to give up this idea, and consent to his going 
 to Copenhagen, that he might get employ- 
 ment at the theatre there. He read to her 
 the lives of celebrated men who had been 
 quite as poor as himself, and assured her that 
 he also would one day be a celebrated man. 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN i* .>fDERSEN. 19 
 
 For several years he had been hoarding up 
 his money ; he had now about thirty shiUings, 
 Enghsh, which seemed to him an inexhausti- 
 ble sum. As soon as his mother heard of 
 this fund, her heart inchned towards his 
 wishes, and she promised to consent on con- 
 dition that they should consult a wise woman, 
 and that his going or staying should be de- 
 cided by her augury. The sibyl was fetched 
 to the house, and after she had read the cards, 
 and studied the coffee-grounds, she pronounc- 
 ed these words. 
 
 " Your son will become a great man. The 
 city of Odense will one day be illuminated 
 in his honor." 
 
 A prophecy like this removed all doubts. 
 
 " Go, in God's name !" said his mother, and 
 he lost no time in preparing for his great 
 journey. 
 
 Some one had mentioned to him a certain 
 female dancer at the Royal Theatre as a 
 person of great influence ; he obtained, there- 
 fore, from a gentleman universally esteemed 
 in Odense, a letter of introduction to this lady ; 
 and with this, and his thirteen rix-dollars, he 
 commenced the journey on which depended 
 
20 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 his whole fate. His mother accompanied 
 him to the city gate, and there his good old 
 grandmother met him ; she kissed him with 
 many tears, blessed him, and he never saw 
 her more. 
 
 It was not until he had crossed the Great 
 Belt that he felt how forlorn he was in the 
 world; he stepped aside from the road, fell 
 on his knees, and besought Clod to be his 
 friend. He rose up comforted, and walked 
 on through towns and villages, until, on Mon- 
 day morning, the 5th of September, 1819, he 
 saw the towers of Copenhagen ; and with his 
 httle bundle under his arm he entered that 
 great city. 
 
 On the day after his arrival, dressed in his 
 confirmation-suit, he betook himself, with his 
 letter of introduction in his hand, to the 
 house of the all-potential dancer. The lady 
 allowed him to wait a long time on the steps 
 of her house, and when at length he entered, 
 his awkward, simple behavior and appear- 
 ance displeased her ; she fancied him insane, 
 more particularly as the gentleman from 
 whom he brought the letter was unknown to 
 her. 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 21 
 
 He next went to the director of the the- 
 atre, requesting some appointment. 
 
 "You are too thin for the theatre," was 
 the answer he obtained. 
 
 "Oh," repHed poor Andersen, "only ensure 
 me one hundred rix-doUars, and I will soon 
 get fat !" 
 
 But the director would make no agreement 
 of this kind, and then informed him that 
 they engaged none at the theatre but people 
 of education. This settled the question ; he 
 had nothing to say on his own behalf, and, 
 dejected in spirit, went out into the street. 
 He knew no human creature ; he thought of 
 death, and this thought turned his mind to 
 God. 
 
 "When everything goes adversely," said 
 he, " then God will help me ; it is written so 
 in every book that I ever read, and in God I 
 will put my trust ! " 
 
 Days and weeks went on, bringing with 
 them nothing but disappointment and des- 
 pair ; his money was all gone, and for some 
 time he worked with a joiner. At length, 
 as, with a heavy heart, he was walking one 
 day along the crowded streets of the city, it 
 
22 
 
 MKMOIR OF 
 
 occurred to him that as yet noljody had 
 heard his fine voice. Full of this thought, 
 he hastened at once to the house of Professor 
 Siboni, where a large party happened to be 
 at dinner, and among the guests Baggesen 
 the poet, and the celebrated composer, Pio- 
 fessor Weyse. He knocked at the door, 
 which was opened by a female servant, and 
 to her he related, quite open-heartcdly, how 
 forlorn and friendless he was, and how great 
 a desire he had to be engaged at the theatre ; 
 the young Avoman went in and related this 
 to the company. All were interested in the 
 little adventurer ; he was ordered in, and de- 
 sired to sing, and to give some scenes from 
 Holberg. One of these scenes bore a resem- 
 blance to his own melancholy circumstances 
 and he burst into tears. The company ap- 
 plauded him. 
 
 "I prophecy," said Baggesen, "that thou 
 wilt turn out something remarkable; only 
 don't become vain when the pubhc admires 
 thee." 
 
 Professor Siboni promised immediately that 
 he would cultivate Andersen's voice, and that 
 he should make his debut at the Theatre 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 
 
 23 
 
 Royal. He had a good friend too in Profes- 
 sor Weyse, and a year and a half were spent 
 in elementary instruction. But a new mis- 
 fortune now befell him ; he lost his beautiful 
 voice, and Siboni counselled him to put him- 
 self to soii-ie handicraft trade. He once more 
 seemed abandoned to a hopeless fate. Cast- 
 ing about in his mind who might possibly 
 befriend him, he bethought himself of the poet 
 Guldborg, whose brother the colonel had 
 been so kind to him in Odense. To him he 
 went, and in him he happily found a friend ; 
 although poverty still pursued him, and his 
 sufferings, which no one knew, almost over- 
 came him. 
 
 He wrote a rhymed tragedy, which obtain- 
 ed some httle praise from Oehlenschlager and 
 Ino-emann — ^but no dehut was permitted him 
 on the theatre. He wrote a second and third, 
 but the theatre would not accept them. 
 These youthful efforts fell, however, into the 
 hand of a powerful and good man. Confer- 
 ence Counsellor Collin, who, perceiving the 
 genius that slumbered in the young poet, 
 went immediately to the king, and obtained 
 permission from him that he should be sent, 
 
24 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 at Government charg-es, to one of the learned 
 schools in the provinces, in which, however, 
 he suffered immensely, till his heart was 
 almost broken by unkindness. From this 
 school he went to colleg-e, and became very 
 soon favorably known lo the public by true 
 poetical works. Ingemann, Oehlenschlager, 
 and others then obtained for him a royal 
 stipend, to enable him to travel; and he 
 visited Germany, France, Switzerland, and 
 Italy. Italy, and the poetical character of 
 life in that beautiful country, inspired him • 
 and he wrote the " Improvisatore,'" one of the 
 most exquisite works, A\hether for truthful 
 delineation of character, or pure and noble 
 sentiment, that ever was penned. This 
 work most harmoniously combines the warm 
 coloring and intensity of Italian life with 
 the freshest and strong simplicity of the 
 north. His romance of " O. T." followed ; 
 this is a true picture of the secluded, sober 
 life of the north, and is a great favorite 
 there. His third work, "Only a Fiddler," 
 is remarkable for its strongly drawn personal 
 and national characteristics, founded upon 
 his own experience in early Hfe. Perhaps 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 
 
 25 
 
 there never was a more affecting picture of 
 the hopeless attempts of a genius of second- 
 rate order to combat against and rise above 
 poverty and adverse circumstances, than is 
 given in the hfe of poor Christian, who dies 
 at last '-only a fiddler." 
 
 In all these works Andersen has draw^n 
 from his ow^n experience, and in this lies their 
 extraordinary power. There is a child-like 
 tenderness and simplicity in his writings ; a 
 sympathy with the poor and the struggling, 
 and an elevation and purity of tone, which 
 have something absolutely holy about them ; 
 it is the inspiration of true genius, combined 
 with great experience of life, and a spirit 
 baptized with the tenderness of Christianity. 
 This is it which is the secret of the extreme 
 charm his celebrated stories have for children. 
 They are as simple and as touching as the old 
 Bible narratives of Joseph and his brethren, 
 and the httle lad who died in the corn field. 
 We wonder not at their being the most pop- 
 ular books of their kind in Europe. 
 
 It has been my happiness, as I said before, 
 to translate his three principal works, his 
 Picture Book without Pictures, and several of 
 
26 MEMOIR OF 
 
 lus stories for children. They have been 
 likewise translated into German, and soine 
 of them into Dutch, and even Russian. He 
 speaks nohl}" of this circumstance in his life. 
 " My works," says he, " seem to come forth 
 under a lucky star, they fl}^ over all lands. 
 There is something elevating, but at the sam.e 
 time something terrific in seeing one's thoughts 
 spread so far, and among so many people ; 
 it is indeed almost a fearful thing to belong 
 to so many. The noble and good in us be- 
 comes a blessing, but the bad, one's errors, 
 shoot forth also ; and involuntarily the prayer 
 forces itself from us — ' God ! let me never 
 write down a word of which I shall not be 
 able to give an account to thee !' a peculiar 
 feeling, a mixture of joy and anxiety, fills my 
 heart every time my good genius conveys 
 my fictions to a foieign people." 
 
 Of Andersen's present life w^e need only say 
 that he spends a great deal of his time in 
 traveling ; he goes from land to land, and 
 from court to court, everywhere an honored 
 guest, and enjoying the glorious reward of 
 a manly struggle against adversity, and the 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDKRSKN. 27 
 
 triumph of a lofty and pure genius in seeing 
 its claims generously acknowledged. 
 
 Let us now see the son of the poor shoe- 
 maker of Odense— the friendless, ill-clad, al- 
 most heart-broken boy of Copenhagen — on 
 one of those occasions, which would make an 
 era in the life of any other literary man, but 
 which are of every day occurrence in his. I 
 will quote from his own words. 
 
 " I received a letter from the ministry. Count 
 Rantzau Breitenburg, containing an invita- 
 tion from their majesties of Denmark to join 
 them at the watering-place of Fohr ; this 
 island lies in the North Sea, on the coast of 
 Sleswick. It was just now five and-twenty 
 years since I, a poor lad, traveled alone and 
 helpless to Copenhagen. Exactly the five-and 
 twentieth anniversary would be celebrated by 
 my being with my king and qvieen. Every- 
 thing which surrounded me, man and nature, 
 reflected themselves imperishably in my soul ; 
 I felt myself, as it were, conducted to a point 
 from which I could look forth more distinctly 
 over the past, with all the good fortune and 
 happiness which it had evolved for me. 
 
 " Wyck, the largest town of Fohr, in which 
 
28 MEMOIR OF 
 
 are the baths, is built like a Dutch towTi, 
 with houses one story high, sloping roofs, 
 and gables turned to the street. The number 
 of strangers there, and the presence of the 
 Court, gave a peculiar animation to it. The 
 Danish flag was seen waving, and music was 
 heard on all hands. I was soon established 
 in my cjuarters, and was invited every day to 
 dine with their majesties as well as to pass 
 the evening in their circle. On several eve- 
 nings I read aloud my little stories to them, 
 and nothing could be more gracious and kind 
 than they were. It is so well when a noble 
 human nature will reveal itself, where other- 
 wise only the king's crown and the purple 
 mantle might be discovered. 
 
 " I sailed in the train of their majesties, to 
 the largest of the Halligs, those grassy runes 
 in the ocean, which bear testimony to a 
 sunken country. The violence of the sea has 
 changed the mainland into islands, has again 
 riven these, and buried men and villages. 
 Year after year are new portions rent away 
 and in half a century's time there will be no- 
 thing left but sea. The Halligs are now low 
 islets, covered with a dark turf, on which a few 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 29 
 
 flocks graze. When the sea rises, these are 
 driven to the garrets for refuge, and the waves 
 roll over this little region, which lies miles dis- 
 tant from any shore. Oland, which we visited^ 
 contains a little town ; the houses stand 
 closely side by side, as if in their sore need 
 they had huddled together ; they are all erect- 
 ed on a platform, and have little windows like 
 the cabin of a ship. There, solitary through 
 half the year, sit the wives and daughters 
 spinning. Yet I found books in all the 
 houses ; the people read and work, and the 
 sea rises round the houses, which lie like a 
 wreck on the ocean. The church-yard is 
 half washed away ; coffins and corpses are 
 frequently exposed to view. It is an appalling 
 sight, and yet the inhabitants of the Halligs 
 are attached to tJieir little home, and fre- 
 quently die of home-sickness when removed 
 from it. 
 
 "We found only one man upon the island, 
 and he had only lately arisen from a sick- 
 bed ; the others were out on long voyages. 
 We were received by women and girls ; they 
 had erected before the church a trium- 
 phal arch with flowers, which they had 
 
30 MEMOIR OP 
 
 fetched from Fohr, but it was so small and 
 low, that one was obliged to go romid it ; it 
 nevertheless showed their good will. The 
 (iueen was deeply affected by their having 
 cut down their only shrub, a rose-bush, to lay 
 over a marshy place which she had to cross. 
 
 " On our return, dinner was served on board 
 the royal steamer, and afterwards as we sail- 
 ed in a glorious sunset through this archipe- 
 lago, the deck of the vessel was changed to a 
 dancing hall : servants flew hither and thith- 
 er with refreshments ; sailors stood upon the 
 paddle-boxes and took soundings, and their 
 deep tones might be heard giving the depth 
 of the water. The moon rose round and 
 large, and the promontory of Amrom assumed 
 the appearance of a snow-covered chain of 
 Alps." 
 
 The next day he visited the wild regions 
 about the promontory, but our space will not 
 admit of our giving any portions of wild and 
 grand sea-landscape which he here describes. 
 In the evening he returned to the royal din- 
 ner-table. It was on the above mentioned 
 five-and-twentieth anniversary, on tlie 5th of 
 September ; he says, 
 
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 31 
 
 "The whole of my former life passed in 
 review before my mind. I was obliged to 
 summon all my strength to prevent myself 
 bursting into tears. There are moments of 
 gratitude, in which we feel, as it were, a de- 
 sire to press God to om' hearts ! How deeply 
 I felt at this time my own nothingness, and 
 how all, all had come from him ! After din- 
 ner the king, to whom Rantzau had told how 
 interesting the day was to me, wished me 
 happiness, and that most kindly. He wished 
 me happiness in that which I had endured 
 and won. He asked me about my early, 
 strugo:Iing life, and I related to him some 
 
 DO O 3 
 
 traits of it. 
 
 " In the course of conversation he asked 
 me of my annual income. I told him. 
 
 " ' That is not much,' said he. 
 
 " ' Cut I do not need much,' I replied ; 
 ' my writings furnish something.' 
 
 '• ' If I can in any way be serviceable to 
 you, come to me,' said the king in conclusion. 
 
 " In the evening, during the concert, some 
 of my friends reproached me for not making 
 use of my opportunity. 
 
 "•The king,' said they, 'put the word? 
 iiit.o vour mouth.' 
 
32 MEMOIR. 
 
 " ' I could not have done more,' said I ; ' if 
 the king thought I required an addition to 
 my income, he would give it of his own free 
 will.' 
 
 " And I was right ; in the following year 
 the king increased my annual stipend, so that 
 with this and my writings I can live honor- 
 ably and free from care. 
 
 " The 5th of September was to me a festi- 
 val day. Even the German visitors at the 
 baths honored me by drinking my health in 
 the pump-room. 
 
 " So many flattering circumstances, some 
 people argue, may spoil a man and make 
 him vain. But no, they do not spoil him, 
 they make him, on the contrary, better ; they 
 purify his mind, and he thereby feels an im- 
 pulse, a wish to deserve all that he enjoys." 
 
 Such are truly the feelings of a pure and 
 noble nature. Andersen has stood the test 
 through every trial, of poverty and adversity ; 
 the harder trial that of a sun-bright prosper- 
 ity, is now proving him, and so far, thank 
 God, the sterling nature of the man has re- 
 mained unspoiled. 
 
A PICTURE-BOOK WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 33 
 
It is wonderful! When my heart feels 
 the most warmly, and my emotions are the 
 noblest, it is as if my hands and my tongue 
 were tied ; I cannot describe, I cannot ex- 
 press my own inward state ; and yet I am a 
 painter ; my eye tells me so ; and every one 
 who has seen my sketches and my tablets ac- 
 knowledges it. 
 
 I am a poor youth ; I hve over there in one 
 of the narrowest streets, but I have no want 
 of light, because I live up aloft, with a view 
 over all the house-tops. The first day I 
 came into the city it seemed to me so confined 
 and lonesome ; instead of the woods and the 
 35 
 
36 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 green breezy heights, I had only the grey 
 chimneys as far as 1 could see. I did not 
 possess one friend here ; not a single face 
 which I knew saluted me. 
 
 One evening, very much depressed in mind, 
 I stood at my window ; I opened it and look- 
 ed out. Nay, how glad it made me ; I saw 
 a face which I knew ; a round, friendly face, 
 that of my dearest friend in heaven ; it was 
 the Moon— the dear old Moon, the .very same, 
 precisely the same, as when she peeped at 
 me between the willow trees on the marshes. 
 I kissed my hand to her ; she shone right 
 down into my chamber, and promised me, 
 that every night when she w^as out she would 
 take a peep at me. And she has honestly 
 kept her word— pity only that she can re- 
 main for so short a time ! 
 
 Every night she comes she tells me one 
 thing or another which she has seen either 
 that night or the night before. "Make a 
 sketch," said she, on her first visit, " of what 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 67 
 
 I tell thee, and thus thou shalt make a really- 
 beautiful picture-book !" 
 
 This I have done ; and in this way I might 
 give a new Thousand and One Nights in 
 pictures : but that would be too much ; those 
 which I have given have not been selected, 
 but are just as I heard them. A great, ge- 
 nial-hearted painter, a poet, or a musician, 
 may make more of them if he will ; that 
 which I present is only a slight outline on 
 paper, and mixed up with my own thoughts, 
 because it was not every night that the moon 
 came ; there was now and then a cloud be- 
 tween us. 
 
38 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 FIRST EVENING. 
 
 Last night, — these are the Moon's own 
 words, — I ghded through the clear ah of In- 
 dia ; I mirrored myself in the Ganges. My 
 beams sought to penetrate the thick fence 
 which the old plantains had woven, and 
 which formed itself into an arch as firm as 
 the shell of the tortoise. A Hindoo girl, light 
 as the gazelle, beautiful as Eve, came forth 
 from the thicket. There is scarcely anything 
 so airy and yet so affluent in the luxuriance 
 of beauty, as the daughter of India. I could 
 see her thoughts through her delicate skin. 
 The thorny lianas tore her sandals from her 
 feet, but she stepped rapidly forward ; the 
 wild beast which came from the river, where 
 it had quenched its thirst, sprang past her, 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 39 
 
 for the girl held in her hand a burning lamp. 
 I could see the fresh blood in her fingers as 
 she curved them into a shade for the flame. 
 She approached the river ; placed the lamp 
 on the stream ; and the lamp sailed away. 
 The flame flickered as if it would go out; 
 but still it burned, and the girl's dark, flash- 
 ing eyes followed it with her whole soul 
 beaming from under her long silken eyelashes ; 
 she knew that if the lamp burned as long 
 as she could see it, then her beloved was alive ; 
 but if it went out, then that he was dead. 
 The lamp burned and fluttered, and her heart 
 burned and fluttered also ; she sank on her 
 knee and breathed a prayer : close beside 
 her, in the grass, lay a water-snake, but she 
 thought only of Brama and her beloved. " He 
 lives !" exclaimed she, rejoicingly, and the 
 mountains repeated her words, " he lives !" 
 
40 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 SECOND EVENING. 
 
 It was last evening, — said the Moon, — 
 that I peeped down into a yard inclosed 
 by houses. A hen was there with eleven 
 chickens ; a little girl was playing around 
 them ; the hen set up a cackling cry, she 
 was frightened, and spread out her wings 
 over her eleven young ones. With that, out 
 came the father of the child and scolded her. 
 This evening (it is only a few minutes since,) 
 the moon looked down again into that yard. 
 Everything was quite still ; presently, how- 
 ever, out came the little girl, and stole very 
 softly to the hen-house, lifted the latch, and 
 crept in to the hen and the chickens. The hen 
 and chickens set up a loud cry, and flew here 
 and there, and the little girl ran after them. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 41 
 
 Again the father came out, and now he was 
 very angry indeed, and scolded her, and 
 pulled her out of the hen-house by her arm ; 
 she hung back her head, and there were large 
 tears in her blue eyes. 
 
 " What wast thou doing here ?" asked the 
 father. She wept; " I only wanted," said she, 
 " to kiss the hen, and ask her to forgive me 
 for yesterday : but I did not dare to tell 
 thee." 
 
 The father kissed the sweet innocent on 
 her forehead; the moonlight fell lovingly 
 upon her eyes and mouth. 
 
 g^2C«=^ 
 
42 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 THIRD EVENING. 
 
 In a narrow street, just by, — said the 
 Moon, — which is so very confined that only 
 just for one minute can my beams fall upon 
 the walls of the houses — and yet at this 
 moment I can look abroad and see the world 
 as it moves — into this narrow street I looked 
 and saw a woman. Sixteen years ago and 
 she was a child ; she lived away in the 
 country, and played in the old pastor's garden. 
 The hedges of roses had grown out of bounds 
 for many years ; they threw their wild un- 
 trimmed branches across the path, and sent 
 up long, green shoots into the apple-trees ; 
 there was only a rose here and there, and 
 they were not beautiful as the queen of flow- 
 ers may be, although the color and the 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 43 
 
 odor were there. The pastor's Httle daughter, 
 however, was a much more beautiful rose : she 
 sate upon her httle wooden stool under the 
 wild untrimmed hedge, and kissed her doll 
 with the broken face. 
 
 Ten years later I saw her again ; I saw 
 her in the splendid dancing-hall ; she was 
 the lovely bride of a rich tradesman, and I 
 rejoiced in her good fortune. I visited her in 
 the still evening. Alas ! my rose had put 
 forth also wild shoots like the roses in the 
 pastor's garden ! 
 
 Every-day life has its tragedy — this evening 
 I saw the last act. Sick to death, she lay in 
 that narrow street, upon her bed. The wick- 
 ed landlord, her only protector, a man rude 
 and cold-hearted, drew back the curtain. 
 " Get up !" said he, " thy cheeks are pale 
 and hollow ; paint thyself ! Get money, or I 
 will turn thee out into the streets ! Get up 
 quickly !" 
 
 " Death is at my heart !" said she, " oh ! 
 let me rest !" 
 
 He compelled her to rise ; painted her 
 cheeks, twined roses in her hair, placed her 
 at the window, with a burning light beside 
 
44 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 her, and went his way. I glanced at her ; 
 she sate immoveable ; her hands fell upon her 
 lap. The window blew open, so that one of 
 the panes of glass was broken ; but she 
 moved not; the curtains of the window were 
 blown around her like a flame. She was 
 dead. From that open window the dead 
 preached powerfully ; my rose of the pastor's 
 garden ! 
 
"WITHOUT PICTURES. 45 
 
 FOURTH EVENING. 
 
 I was last evening at a German play, — 
 said the Moon ; — it was in a little city. The 
 theatre was a stable ; that is to say, the 
 stalls were made use of and decorated for 
 boxes, the old wood-work was covered over 
 with figured paper. There hung from the 
 low roof a little iron chandelier, and in order 
 that it might rise the moment the prompter's 
 bell rang (as is the custom in large theatres), 
 it was now covered by a tub turned upside 
 down. The bell rang, and the little iron 
 chandelier made a leap of half an ell, and by 
 that token people knew that the comedy had 
 begun. A young prince and his wife, who 
 were traveling through the town, were to be 
 present at the performance, and therefore it 
 
46 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 was a very full house, excepting that under 
 the chandelier it was like a little crater. Not 
 a single soul sate there ; the chandelier kept 
 dropping its oil— drop ! drop ! It was so hot 
 in the little theatre that they were obliged to 
 open all the holes in the walls to let in fresh 
 air, and through all these peeped in lads and 
 lasses from the outside, although the police 
 sate by and drove them off with sticks. 
 
 Close by the orchestra, people saw the 
 young princely couple sitting in two old arm- 
 chairs, which otherwise would have been 
 occupied by the burgomaster and his lady; 
 as it was, however, they sate upon wooden 
 benches, like other townsfolk. " One may 
 see that there are falcons above falcons !" was 
 Madame's silent observation ; and after this 
 all became more festal ; the chandelier made 
 a leap upwards, the people began counting on 
 their fingers, and I — yes, the Moon — was 
 present during the whole comedy. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 47 
 
 FIFTH EVENING. 
 
 Yesterday, — said the Moon, — I looked 
 down upon busy Paris. I gazed into the 
 chambers of the Louvre. An old grandmother, 
 wretchedly clad, and who belonged to the 
 lower class, entered the large, empty throne- 
 room, accompanied by one of the under ser- 
 vants of the palace. It had cost her many 
 small sacrifices, and very much eloquence 
 had she used before she could be admitted 
 here. She folded her thin hands, and looked 
 as reverentially around her as if she had been 
 in a church. 
 
 " It was here !" she said, " here !" and she 
 approached the throne which was covered 
 with a cloth of rich velvet, trimmed with gold. 
 " There !" said she, " there !" and she bowed 
 
48 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 her knee and kissed the crimson velvet — I 
 think she wept. 
 
 "It was not that velvet," said the at- 
 tendant, while a smile played round his 
 mouth. 
 
 " But still it was here !" said the woman, 
 "and it looked in this room just so!" 
 
 "Just so," replied he ; " and yet it was not 
 just so either : the windows were beaten out ; 
 the doors were torn off their hinges, and 
 there was blood upon the floor ! You can 
 say, however, for all that, that your son 
 died upon the throne of France !" 
 
 "Died!" repeated the old woman. 
 
 No more was said ; they left the hall ; 
 the shades of evening fell deeper, and the 
 moonlight streamed in with twofold brifrht- 
 ness on the rich velvet of the throne of 
 France. 
 
 I will tell thee a story. It Avas in the 
 revolution of July, towards evening, on the 
 most biilliant day of victory, when every 
 house was a fortress, every window a redoubt, 
 the people stormed the Tuilleries. Even 
 women and children fought among the com- 
 batants ; they thronged in through the 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 49 
 
 chambers aiid halls of the palace. A poor, 
 half-grown lad, m ragged clothing, fought 
 desperately among the elder warriors ; mor- 
 tally wounded at length by the thrusts of 
 many bayonets, he sank to the ground ; this 
 took place in the throne-room. They wrap- 
 ped the velvet about his wounds ; the blood 
 streamed over the royal purple. It was a 
 picture ! The magnificent hall ; the combat- 
 ing groups ; a rent banner on the floor ; the 
 tri-colored flag floating above the bayonets; 
 and upon the throne the poor lad, with his 
 pale, glorified countenance, his eyes turned 
 towards heaven ; his limbs stiffening in 
 death ; his uncovered breast ; his miserable 
 garments, and around these the rich folds of 
 the velvet, embroidered with silver lilies ! 
 
 As that boy lay in the cradle, it had beeu 
 foretold that he should die on the throne of 
 France ! His mother's heart had dreamed 
 of a new Napoleon. The moonbeams have 
 kissed the garland of everlasting upon his 
 grave ; her beams this night kissed the old 
 grandmother's forehead as she dreamed of 
 this picture — The poor lad upon the throne 
 of France ! 
 4 
 
50 A PICTURE-BOOK- 
 
 SIXTH EVENING. 
 
 I have been in Upsala, — said the Moon. 
 She looked down upon tlie great castle, with 
 the miserable grass of its trampled fields. She 
 mirrored herself in the river Fyris, whilst the 
 steam-boat drove the terrified fish among tlie 
 reeds. Clouds careered along the moonlit 
 sky, and cast long shadows over the graves, 
 as they are called, of Odin. Thor, and Freya. 
 Names are carved in the scanty turf upon 
 the heights. Here there is no building-stone 
 in which the visitors can hew their names ; 
 no walled fences on which they can paint 
 them ; they cut away, therefore, the turf, and 
 the naked eartli stares forth in the large 
 letters of their names, which look like a huge 
 aet spread over the hill. An immortality 
 w^hich a fresh growth of turf desiroyi=. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 51 
 
 A man stood on the hill-top; he was a 
 j)oet. He emptied a silver-rimmed mead- 
 norn, and whispered a name, which he bade 
 the wind not to reveal ; a count's coronet 
 shone above it, and therefore he breathed it 
 low — the moonbeams smiled upon him, for a 
 poet's crown shone above his ! The noble 
 name of Eleonora d'Este is united to Tasso's. 
 I know where the rose of beauty grows. A 
 cloud passed before the moon. May no 
 cloud pass between the poet and his rose ! 
 
52 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 SEVEI^TH EVENING. 
 
 Down by the seaside there extends a 
 wood of oaks and beeches, fresh and fragrant, 
 and every branch is visited by hundreds of 
 nightingales. Close beside is the sea, the 
 eternally-moving sea, and between the sea 
 and the wood runs the broad high-road. One 
 carriage after another rolled past. I follow- 
 ed them not ; my eye rested mostly on one 
 spot where was a barrow, or old warrior's 
 grave. Brambles and white thorns giew up 
 from among the stones. There is the poetry 
 of nature. Dost thou believe that this is felt 
 by every one ? Listen to what occurred there 
 only last night. 
 
 First of all, two rich countrymen drove 
 past. " There are some splendid trees there," 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 53 
 
 said one. " There are ten loads of fire- wood 
 in each," repHed the other. " If the winter be 
 severe, one should get forty rix dollars in 
 spring for the measure !" and they were gone. 
 " The road is abominable here," said an- 
 other traveller. " It is those cursed trees," re- 
 plied his neighbor ; " there is no circulation 
 of air here, excepting from the sea :" and they 
 advanced onward. 
 
 At that moment the diligence came by. 
 All were asleep at the most beautiful point : 
 the driver blew his horn, but he only thought, 
 " I blow it capitally, and here it sounds well ; 
 what will they think of it?" And with that 
 the diligence was gone. 
 
 Next came by two young country-fellows 
 on horseback. The champagne of youth cir- 
 culated through their blood ; a smile was on 
 their lips as they looked towards the moss- 
 grown height, and the dark bushes. " I went 
 there with Christine Miller," said one to the 
 other ; and they were gone. 
 
 The flowers sent forth their fragrance; 
 every breeze slept ; the sea looked hke a por- 
 tion of heaven spread out over a deep valley ; 
 a carriage drove along ; there were six per- 
 
64 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 sons in it, four of whom were asleep ; the 
 fifth was thinking of his new summer-coat 
 which was so becoming to him ; the sixth 
 leaned forward to the driver, and asked 
 whether there was anything remarkable 
 about that heap of stones : " No," said the fel- 
 low, " it's only a heap of stones, but the trees 
 are remarkable ! " " Tell me about them," 
 said the other. " Yes, they are very remark- 
 able ; you see, in winter, when the snow co- 
 vers the ground, and everything, as it were, 
 goes out in a twinkling, then those trees serve 
 me as a landmark by which I can guide my- 
 self, and not drive into the sea ; they are, 
 therefore, you see, very remarkable," — and by 
 this time the carriage had passed the trees. 
 
 A painter now came up ; his eyes flashed ; 
 he said not a word, he whistled, and the 
 nightingales sang, one louder than another; 
 '^ hold your tongues !" exclaimed he, and noted 
 down with accuracy the colors and tints of the 
 trees; "blue, black, dark-brown." It would 
 be a beautiful painting ! He made a sketch, 
 as hints for his intended picture, and all the 
 time he whistled a march of Rossini's. 
 
 The last who came by was a poor girl ; 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 55 
 
 she sate down to rest herself upon the old 
 waiiior's grave, and put her bundle beside 
 her. Her lovel)^, pale face inclined itself to- 
 wards the wood as she sate listening-; her 
 eyes flashed as she looked heaven-ward across 
 the sea; her hands folded themselves, and 
 she murmured the Lord's Prayer. She did 
 not understand the emotions which penetrated 
 her soul ; but, nevertheless, in future years, 
 this moment, in which she was surrounded 
 by nature, will return to her much more 
 beautifully, nay, will be fixed more faithfiilly 
 in her memory, than on the tablets of the 
 painter, though he noted down every shade 
 of color. She went forward, and the moon- 
 beams lighted her path, until daylight kissed 
 her forehead ! 
 
56 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 EIGHTH EVENING. 
 
 There were thick clouds over the sky ; 
 the Moon was not visible ; I stood in twofold 
 solitude in my little room, and looked out 
 into the night, which should have been illu- 
 minated by her beams. My thoughts fled 
 far away, up to the great friend who told me 
 stories so beautifully every evening, and show- 
 ed me pictures. Yes, what has not she seen ! 
 She looked down upon the waters of the 
 deluge, and smiled on the ark as she now 
 smiles upon me, and brought consolation to 
 a new world which should again bloom 
 forth. When the children of Israel stood 
 weeping by the rivers of Babylon, she look- 
 ed mournfully down upon the willows where 
 their harps hung. When Romeo ascended 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 57 
 
 to the balcony, and the kiss of love went like 
 a cherub's thought from earth, the round 
 Moon stood in the transparent atmosphere, 
 half concealed amid the dark cypresses. She 
 saw the hero on St. Helena, when from his 
 solitary rock he looked out over the ocean of 
 the world, whilst deep thoughts were at work 
 in his breast. Yes, what could not the Moon 
 relate ! The life of the world is a history for 
 her. This evening I see thee not, old friend ! 
 I can paint no picture in remembrance of thy 
 visit ! — and as I dreamingly looked up into 
 the clouds, light shone forth ; it was a moon- 
 beam, but it is gone again ; dark clouds float 
 past ; but that ray was a salutation, a friend- 
 ly evening salutation from the Moon. 
 
58 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 NINTH EVENING. 
 
 Again the air is clear ; I had again mate- 
 rial for a sketch ; listen to that which I 
 learned from the Moon. 
 
 The birds of the polar region flew on- 
 ward, and the whale swam toAvards the 
 eastern coast of Greenland. Rocks covered 
 with ice and clouds shut in a valley in which 
 the bramble and whortleberry were in full 
 bloom. The fragrant lichen difl^used its odor ; 
 the Moon shone faintly ; its crescent was pale 
 as the leaf of the water-lily, which, torn from 
 its stalk, has floated for weeks upon the water. 
 The northern-lights burned brightly ; their 
 circle was broad, and rays went upwards 
 from them like whirling pillars of fire, as- 
 cending through the whole sphere of the 
 
"WITHOUT PICTURES. 59 
 
 heavens, in colors of green and crimson. 
 The inhabitants of the valley assembled for 
 dance and mirth, but they looked not with 
 admiring eyes at the magnificent spectacle 
 which was familiar to them. " Let the dead 
 play at ball with the heads of the walrus !" 
 thought they, according to their belief, and 
 occupied themselves only with the dance and 
 the song. In the middle of the circle, wrap- 
 ped in fur, stood a Greenlander with his 
 hand-drum, and accompanied himself as he 
 sung of seal-hunting, and the people answer- 
 ed in chorus with an " Eia ! eia ! a !" and 
 skipped round and round in their white furs 
 like so many bears dancing. With this, trial 
 and judgment began. They who were ad- 
 versaries came forward ; the plaintiff impro- 
 vised in a bold and sarcastic manner the 
 crime of his opponent, and all the while 
 the dance went on to the sound of the drum ; 
 the defendant replied in the same manner ; 
 but the assembly laughed and passed sen- 
 tence upon him in the meantime. A loud 
 noise was now heard from the mountains : 
 the icy cliffs were cleft asunder, and the huge 
 tumblingr masses were dashed to atoms in 
 
60 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 their fall. That was a beautiful Greenl- id 
 summer-night. 
 
 At the distance of a hundred paces, there 
 lay a sick man within an open tent of 
 skins ; there was life still in his veins, but for 
 all that he must die, because he himself be- 
 lieved it, and the people all around him believed 
 it too. His wife, therefore, had sewn his cloak 
 of skin tightly around him, that she might 
 not be obliged to touch the dead ; and she 
 asked him — " Wilt thou be buried upon the 
 mountains in the eternal snow? I will 
 decorate the place with thy boat and thy 
 arrows. The spirits of the mist shall dance 
 away over it! Or wouldst thou rather be 
 sunk in the sea?" "In the sea!" whisper- 
 ed he, and nodded with a melancholy smile. 
 " There thou wilt have a beautiful summer- 
 tent," said the wife ; " there will gambol about 
 thee thousands of seals ; there will the walrus 
 sleep at thy feet, and the hunting will be 
 certain and merry!" The children, amid 
 loud bowlings, tore down the outstretched 
 skin from the window, that the dying man 
 might be borne out to the sea — the swelling 
 sea, which gave him food during his lifetime, 
 and now rest in death. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 61 
 
 His funeral monument is the floating 
 mountain of ice, which increases night and 
 day. The seals slumber upon the icy blocks, 
 and the birds of the tempest whirl about it. 
 
62 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 TENTH EVENING. 
 
 I knew an old maid, — said the Moon, 
 she wore every winter yellow satin trim- 
 med with fur ; it was always new ; it was 
 always her unvarying fashion ; she wore 
 every summer the same straw bonnet, and, I 
 fancy, the very same blue-grey gown. She 
 never went anywhere but to one old female 
 friend of hers who lived on the other side the 
 street ; — during the last year, however, she 
 did not even go there — because her old friend 
 was dead. All solitarily sate my old maid 
 working at her window, in which, through 
 the whole summer, there stood beautiful 
 floweis, and in the winter lovely cresses, 
 grown on a little hillock of felt. During the 
 last month, however, she no longer sate 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 63 
 
 at her window; but I knew that she was 
 still alive, because I had not seen her set 
 out on that long journey of which she and 
 her friend had so often talked. "Yes," she 
 had said, " when I shall die, I shall have to 
 take a longer journey than I ever took 
 through my whole life ; the family burial- 
 place lies above twenty miles from here ; 
 thither must I be borne, and there shall I 
 sleep with the rest of my kin." 
 
 Last night a carriage drew up at her 
 door ; they carried out a coffin, and by that I 
 knew that she was dead ; they laid straw 
 around the coffin and drove away. There 
 slept the quiet old maid, who for the last 
 j'^ear had never been oat of her house ; and 
 the carriage rattled along the streets and out 
 of the city, as if it had been on a journey of 
 pleasure. Upon the high road it went on yet 
 faster ; the fellow who drove looked over his 
 shoulder several times ; I fancy that he was 
 afraid of seeing her sitting in her yellow satin 
 upon the coffin behind him ; he therefore 
 urged on the liorses thoughtlessly, holding 
 them in so tightly that they foamed at the 
 mouth : they were young and fnll of mettle ; 
 
64 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 a hare ran across the road, and off they set 
 at full speed. The quiet old maid, who 
 from one year's end to another had moved 
 only slowly in a narrow circle, now that she 
 was dead, drove over stock and stone along 
 the open high-road. The coffin, which was 
 wrapped in matting, was shook off, and now 
 lay upon the road, whilst horses, driver, and 
 carriage, sped onward in a wild career. 
 
 The lark which flew upward singing 
 from the meadow, warbled its morning song 
 above the coffin ; it then descended and 
 alighted upon it, pecked at the matting with 
 its beak, as if it were rending to pieces some 
 strange insect. 
 
 The lark rose upward again, singing in 
 the clear ether, and I withdrew behind the 
 rosy clouds of morning. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 65 
 
 ELEVENTH EVENING. 
 
 I will give thee a picture of Pompeiij — 
 said the Moon. I have been in the 
 suburbs, the Street of Tombs, as it is called, 
 where once the rejoicing youths, with roses 
 around their brows, danced with the lovely 
 sisters of Lais. Now the silence of death 
 reigns here ; German soldiers in the pay of 
 Naples keep guard here, and play at cards 
 and dice. A crowd of foreigners, from the 
 other side of the mountains, wandered into 
 the city, accompanied by the guard. They 
 wished to see this city, arisen from the grave, 
 by the full clear light of the Moon ; and I 
 showed to them the tracks of the chariot- 
 wheels in the streets paved with broad slabs 
 of lava 5 I showed to them the names upon 
 5 
 
G6 A PICTURE-BOOiC 
 
 the doors and the signs which still remairl 
 suspended from the shop-fronts ; they looked 
 into the basin of the fountains ornamented 
 with shells and conches ; but no stream of 
 water leaped upwards ; no song resounded 
 from the richly painted ch ambers, where 
 dogs of bronze guarded the doors. It was 
 the city of the dead ; Yesuvius alone still 
 thundered his eternal hymn. 
 
 We went to the temple of Yenus, which 
 is built of dazzling white marble, with broad 
 steps ascending to its high altar, and a ver- 
 dant weeping-willow growing between its 
 columns. The air was exquisitely transpa- 
 rent and blue ; and in the back-ground 
 towered Yesuvius, black as night : fires 
 ascended from the crater of the mountain 
 like the stem of a pine-tree ; the illumined 
 cloud of smoke hung suspended in the still- 
 ness of night, like the pine-tree's crown, but 
 red as blood. Among the strangers there, 
 was a singer, a true and noble being, to whom 
 I had seen homage paid in the greatest cities 
 of Europe. When the party arrived at the 
 amphitheatre, they all seated themselves upon 
 the marble steps, and again, as in former 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 67 
 
 tenturies, human beings occupied a portion 
 of that space. The scene was now the same 
 as in those former times ; the walls of the 
 theatre, and the two arches in the back- 
 ground, through which might be seen the 
 same decoration as then— Nature itself— 
 the momitains between Sorento and Amalfi. 
 The singer, for fun, threw herself back into 
 those ancient times, and sung ; the scene 
 inspired her ; she reminded the listener of the 
 wild horse of Arabia, when it snorts and 
 careers away, with its mane lifted by the 
 wind; there was the same ease, the same 
 security ; she brought to mind the agonized 
 mother at the cross of Golgotha ; there was 
 the same heartfelt, deep sorrow. Once more 
 resounded around her, as had resounded 
 thousands of years before, the plaudits and 
 acclamations of delight. " Happy ! heavenly 
 gifted one !" exclaimed they all. Three 
 minutes after and the scene was changed ; 
 every one had departed ; no tone was heard 
 any longer ; the whole party was gone ; but 
 the ruins still stood unchanged, as they will 
 stand for centuries, and no one knows of the 
 
68 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 applause of the moment — of the beautiful 
 smger — of her tones and her smile. All is 
 past and forgotten ; even to me is this 
 hour a perished memory. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 69 
 
 TWELFTH EVENING. 
 
 I peeped in at a critic's window, — said the 
 Moon, — in a city of Germany. The room 
 was filled with excellent furniture, books, and 
 a chaos of papers ; several young men were 
 sitting there ; the critic himself stood at his 
 desk ; two small books, both by young 
 authors, were about to be reviewed. " One 
 of these," said he, " has been sent to me ; I 
 have not read it though — ^but it is beautifully 
 got up ; what say you of its contents ?" 
 
 " O," said one of the young men, who was 
 himself a poet, " there is a deal that is good 
 in it ; very little to expunge ; but, he is a 
 young man, and the verses might be better ! 
 There is a healthy tone in the thoughts — 
 but they are, after all, such thoughts as every- 
 
70 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 body has ! — but as to that, where does one 
 find anything new? You may very well 
 praise him, but I never believe that he will 
 turn out anything of a poet. He has read a 
 deal, however ; is an extraordinary orientalist, 
 and has sound judgment. He it was who 
 wrote that beautiful critique of my Fan- 
 cies of Do7nestic Life. One ought to be 
 gentle towards a young man." 
 
 " But he is a thorough ass !' said another 
 gentleman in the room ; " nothing worse in 
 poetry than mediocrity, and he does not get 
 above that !" 
 
 " Poor fellow," said a third, '• and his aunt 
 makes herself so happy about him. She it 
 was, Mr. Critic, who obtained so many sub- 
 scribers' names to your last translation." 
 
 " The good woman ! yes, I liave given a 
 short notice of the book. Unmistakeable ta- 
 lent ! a welcome gift ! a flower out of the 
 garden of poesy ; beautifully got out, and so 
 on. But the other book — ^he shall catch it ! I 
 had to buy it. — I hear it is praised ; he has 
 genius, don't you think?" 
 
 " That is the general opinion," said the 
 poet, " but there is something wild about it." 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 71 
 
 f' It will do him good to find fault and cut 
 him up a little, else he will be getting too good 
 an opinion of himself !" 
 
 •' But that is unreasonable," interrupted a 
 fourth ; " don't let us dwell too much on tri- 
 fling faults, but rejoice in the good— and there 
 is much here— though he thrusts in good and 
 bad altogether." 
 
 " Unmistakeable talent !" wrote down the 
 critic ; " the usual examples of caielessness. 
 That he also can write unlucky verse, may- 
 be seen at page five-and- twenty, where two 
 hiatuses occur : the study of the ancients to 
 be recommended, and so on." 
 
 I went away, said the Moon,— and peep- 
 ed through the window into the aunt's house 
 where sate our honored poet, the tame one, the 
 worshipped of all the guests, and was happy. 
 " I sought out the other poet, the wild one, 
 who also was in a great party of one of his 
 patrons, where they talked about the other 
 poet's book. " I shall also read yours !" said 
 Mecænas, " but, honestly speaking, you know 
 I never say to you what I do not mean ; I do 
 not expect great things from it. You are too 
 wild for me! too fantastic — but I apkjiiQW- 
 
72 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 ledge that as a man you are highly respecta- 
 ble!" 
 
 A young girl who sat in a comer read in 
 a book : — 
 
 To the dust goes the poet's glory, 
 And common-place to fame ! — 
 
 That is the trite old story, 
 And 'twill ever be the same I 
 
■WITHOUT PICTURES. 73 
 
 THIRTEENTH EVENING. 
 
 The Moon told me as follows : — There 
 lie tAvo peasants' cottages by the road through 
 the wood. The doors are low, and the win- 
 dows are irregular, but all around them grow 
 buckthorn and barberries ; the roof is mossy 
 and grown over with yellow-flowered stone- 
 croj) and houseleek ; nothing but cabbages 
 and potatoes grow in the little garden, but 
 there grows in the hedge an elder-tree, and 
 under this sate a little girl ; and there she 
 sate with her brown eyes riveted upon an old 
 oak tree between the houses. This tree has 
 a tall and decayed hole, the top of it is sawn 
 off, and there the stork has built his nest ; 
 there he stood and clattered with his beak. 
 
74 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 A little boy came out of the cottage and 
 placed himself by the little girl's side ; they 
 were brother and sister. 
 
 " What are you looking at ? " cried he. 
 
 " I am looking at the stork," she replied ; 
 " the neighbor told me that this evening the 
 stork will bring us either a little brother ov 
 sister ; and so now I will stand and watch 
 when they come." 
 
 " The storks do not bring anything," said 
 the boy. " The neighbor's wife told me the 
 same thing ; but she laughed while she said 
 it, and so I asked her if she durst say as sure 
 as heaven, to it, but she dared not, and there- 
 fore I know that the story about the stork is 
 only what they tell us children." 
 
 " Oh, really ! " said the little girl. 
 
 " And I'll tell thee what," said the boy ; 
 " It is our Lord himself that brings little ba- 
 bies ; he has them under his coat ; but no- 
 body can see our Lord now, and therefore we 
 do not see him when he comes." 
 
 At that same moment the twigs of the 
 elder-tree were moved ; the children folded 
 their hands and looked one at the other, for 
 they thought that it was our Lord passing 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 75 
 
 along with the Uttle ones. They stood side 
 by side, and took hold of each other's hand. 
 
 The house-door opened, and out came the 
 neighbor. 
 
 " Come in now," said she, " and see what 
 the stork has brought ; he has brought a lit- 
 tle brother !" 
 
 The children nodded their heads ; they 
 knew very well that the little brother was 
 come. 
 
76 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 FOURTEENTH EVENING. 
 
 I passed over Luneburg Heath, — said the 
 Moon, — a sohtary house stood by the road- 
 side ; some leafless trees grew beside it, and 
 among these sung a nightingale which had 
 lost its way. In the severity of the night it 
 must perish ; that was its song of death 
 which I heard. With the early twilight 
 there came along the road a company of em- 
 igrant peasants, who were on their way to 
 Bremen or Hamburgh, to take ship for Amer- 
 ica, where happiness — the so much dreamed- 
 of happiness — they expected should spring 
 up for them. The women carried their 
 youngest children upon their backs, the older 
 ones sprang along by their side ; a poor mis- 
 erable horse dragged a car, on which were a 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 77 
 
 few articles of household furniture. The cold 
 wind blew ; the little girl clung closer to her 
 mother, who looked up to my round waning 
 face and thought upon her bitter want. 
 
 Her thoughts were those of the whole 
 company, and therefore the red glimmering 
 of daylight was like the evangile of the sun 
 of prosperity which should again rise. They 
 heard the song of the dying nightingale ; it 
 was to them no false prophet, but a foreteller 
 of happiness. The wind whistled, but they 
 understood not the song; "Sail securely 
 across the sea ! thou hast paid for the long 
 voyage with all that thou art possessed of; 
 poor and helpless shalt thou set foot on 
 thy land of Canaan. Thou mayst sell thy- 
 self, thy wife, and thy child, yet you shall 
 none of you suffer long. Behind the broad 
 fragrant leaf sits the goddess of death ; her 
 kiss of welcome breathes consuming fever in- 
 to thy blood, far away, far away, over the 
 swelling waters !" 
 
 The emigrant company Ustened joyfully 
 to the song of the nightingale, which they 
 thought announced to them happiness. Day 
 beamed from behind light clouds, and the 
 
78 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 peasant people went over the heath to the 
 church ; the darkly-apparelled women, with 
 thek milk-white linen around their heads, 
 looked like figures which had stepped forth 
 from the old church paintings ; all aroimd 
 them was nothing but the vast and death- 
 like landscape, the withered brown heath — ■ 
 dark, leafless plains, in the midst of white 
 sand-banks. The women carried their hymn- 
 books in their hands, and advanced towards 
 the church. Oh, pray ! pray for them who 
 wander onward to their graves on the other 
 Bide of the heaving water ! 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 79 
 
 FIFTEENTH EVENING. 
 
 I know a theatrical Clown, — said the 
 Moon, — the pubhc applauds when it sees 
 him ; every one of his movements is com it, 
 and throws the house into convulsions of 
 laughter, and yet he is not moved thereby : 
 that is his peculiarity. When hé was yet a 
 child, and played with other boys, he was 
 already a punchinello. Nature had made 
 him one ; had given him one lump upon his 
 back, and another upon his breast. The 
 inner man, however — the spiritual — that was 
 really well-formed. No human being had 
 deeper feeling, or greater elasticity of mind 
 than he. The theatre was his ideal-world. 
 Had he been slender and well proportioned, 
 then he might have become a first-rate tragic 
 
80 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 actor, for. the great, the heroic, filled his soul ; 
 but he was obliged to be the Clown. His 
 sufferings, even, and his melancholy increased 
 the comic expression of his strongly-marked 
 countenance, and excited the laughter of the 
 crowded public who applauded their favorite. 
 The pretty little Columbine was friendly and 
 kind to him, and yet she preferred marrying 
 Harlequin. It would have been too comic in 
 reality to have married the Clown ; like the 
 union of " Beauty and the Beast." When the 
 Clown was most out of liumoj-, she was the only 
 one who could make him smile — nay, even 
 burst into peals of laughter. First of all she 
 would be melancholy with him, then rather 
 cheerful, and at last full of fun, 
 
 "I know what it is thou art in want of!" 
 said she — " yes, it is this love !" and so he was 
 obliged to laugh. 
 
 " Me and love !"' exclaimed he. " That 
 would be a merry thing ! How the public 
 would applaud." 
 
 " It is love !" continued she ; and added, 
 with comic pathos — " It is me that you love !" 
 
 " Yes ! and yet there are people who say 
 there is no such thing as love !" The poor 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 81 
 
 Clowii sprung up into the air, he was so 
 diverted : his melancholy was now gone. 
 And yet she had spoken the truth : he did 
 love her — loved her like the sublime and great 
 in art. 
 
 On her wedding-day he was more amusing 
 than ever. At night he wept : had the public 
 seen his distressed countenance then, they 
 would have applauded him ! 
 
 A few days ago Columbine died. On the 
 day of her funeral Harlequin's appearance 
 was excused on the stage, for he really was a 
 mourning husband. The manager, however, 
 was obhged to give something more merry 
 than common, in order that the public should 
 not miss too much the lovely Columbine and 
 the light-bodied Harlequin, and for this reason 
 it behoved the Clown to be doubly entertain- 
 ing. He danced and sprung aloft with de- 
 spair at his heart, and the public clapped their 
 hands and shouted — " Bravo, bravissimo !" 
 The clown was called for when the perform- 
 ance was over. Oh, he was invaluable ! 
 
 This evening, after the play, the poor 
 little man walked out from the city to the 
 solitary churchyard. The garland of flowers 
 6 
 
82 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 was withered on Columbine's grave ; he sate 
 down. It was something worth painting. 
 His hands under his chin, his eyes fixed upon 
 the moon ; it was Uke a monumental figure. 
 A clown upon a grave ! very peculiar and 
 very comic ! Had the public seen their favorite 
 then, how they Avould have shouted — " Bravo, 
 Clown ! bravo, bravissimo !" 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 SIXTEENTH EVENING 
 
 Listen to what the Moon said.— I have 
 seen the cadet, become an officer, dress him- 
 self for the first time in his splendid uniform j 
 I have seen the young girl in her beautiful 
 ball-dress ; the young princely bride happy in 
 her festival attire ; but the felicity of none of 
 these could equal that which this evening I 
 sa'w^in a child, a httle girl of four years. 
 Tl^ had just put her on a new blue frock 
 and a new pink bonnet. The beautiful things 
 were scarcely on when they called for candles, 
 because the moon-hght through the window 
 was too faint ; they must have other light. 
 There stood the little girl as stiff as a doll, 
 her arms stretched out from her frock, her 
 fingers spread out wide from each other — and 
 
84 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 oh ! how her eyes, her whole being-, beamed 
 with dehght ! 
 
 "To-morrow you shall go out into the 
 street," said the mother ; and the little one 
 looked up towards her bonnet and down to- 
 wards her frock, and smiled joyfully. 
 
 " Mother," said she, " what will the dogs 
 think, when they see me so beautifully dress- 
 ed !" 
 
 %f^ 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 85 
 
 SEVENTEENTH EVENING. 
 
 I have,— said the Moon,— told thee about 
 Pompeii, that corpse of a city amongst Hvin g 
 cities. I know another, one still more 
 strange ; not the corpse, but the ghost of a 
 city. On all sides where the fountain splashes 
 into a marble basin, I seem to hear stories of 
 the floating city. Yes, the fountain-streams 
 can tell them! The billows on the shore 
 sing of them. Over the surface of the sea 
 there often floats a mist, that is the widow's 
 weeds. The sea's bridegroom is dead ; his 
 palace and city are now a mausoleum. Dost 
 thou know this city? The rolling of the 
 chariot-wheels, or the sound of the horse's 
 hoof, were never heard in its streets. The 
 fish swims, and hke a spectre glides the black 
 gondola over the green water. 
 
86 A PidTtiRE-ÉOOK 
 
 I will, — continued the Moon, — show thee 
 the forum of the city, the city's great square, 
 and then thou wilt think it to be a city for 
 adventures. Grass grows between the broad 
 flag-stones, and thousands of tame pigeons 
 fly circling in the twilight around the lofty 
 tower. On three sides thou art surrounded 
 by colonnades. The Turk, with his long 
 pipe, sits silently beneath them ; the hand- 
 some Greek-lad leans against a pillar, and 
 looks up to the elevated trophies, the tall 
 masts, the memorial of the ancient powder. 
 The flag hangs drooping like mourning 
 crape ; a girl stands there to rest herself, she 
 has set down the heavy buckets of water, 
 whilst the yoke on which she sustained them 
 rests upon her shoulders, and she supports 
 herself on the column of victory. That is 
 not a fairy palace but a church which thou 
 seest before thee ! the gilded dome, the gilded 
 balls around it, shine in my beams ; the 
 magnificent bronze horses upon it have 
 traveled about like bronze horses in a fairy 
 tale ; they have traveled thither, away from 
 their place, and then again back! Seest 
 thou the beautiful painting on walls and wiu- 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 87 
 
 dow panes ? It is as if some genius had done 
 the will of a child and thus decorated this ex- 
 traordinary temple. Dost thou see the winged 
 lion upon the pillar? Gold yet shines upon 
 it, but the Yv'ings are bound, the Hon is dead 
 because the king of the sea is dead ; the vast 
 halls are empty, and where once hung costly 
 pictures the naked Avails are now seen. 
 Lazzaroni sleep under the arches, where at 
 one time only the high noble dared to tread. 
 Either from the deep well or from the chamber 
 of the leaden roof, near to the Bridge of 
 Sighs, sounds forth a groan, whilst tamborines 
 are heard from the painted gondola as the 
 bridal-ring is cast from the glittering Bucen- 
 taur to Adria, the queen of the sea. Adiia, 
 wrap thyself in mist ! let the widow's veil 
 cover the breast, and cast it over thy bride- 
 groom's mausoleum ; — the marble-builder, the 
 spectre-like, Venice." 
 
88 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 EIGHTEENTH EVENING. 
 
 I looked down upon a great theatre, — said 
 the Moon,— the whole house was full of spec- 
 tators, because a new actor made his debut; 
 my beams fell upon a little window in the 
 wall ; a painted face pressed its forehead 
 against the glass; it was the hero of the 
 night. The chivalric beard curled upon his 
 chin ; but there were tears in the man's eyes, 
 because he had been hissed — hissed with 
 reason. Poor fellow ! but the realm of art 
 will not endure the feeble. He deeply felt 
 and passionately loved art, but she did not 
 love him. 
 
 The prompter's bell rung ;— according to 
 the piece, the hero stepped forth with a bold 
 and determined air — thus had he to appear 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 89 
 
 before a public which burst into peals of 
 laughter. — The piece was ended ; I saw a 
 man wrapped in a cloak steal away down the 
 steps ; it was he, the spirit-crushed cavalier ; 
 the servants of the theatre whispered to each 
 other as he passed. I followed the poor 
 wretch home to his chamber. Hanging is 
 such an ignominious death, and people have 
 not always poison at hand. I know that he 
 thought of both. He looked at his pale face 
 in the glass ; half closed his eyes to see 
 whether he would look handsome as a corpse. 
 It is possible for people to be unfortunate in 
 the highest degree, and yet in the highest 
 degree vain at the same time. He thought 
 upon death, upon self-murder ; I believe he 
 wept in pity of himself — he wept bitterly, 
 and when people have had a good fit of cry- 
 ing they do not kill themselves. 
 
 A year has passed since then. A comedy 
 was acted, but this time in a little theatre, by 
 a poor vagrant company. I saw again the 
 well-known face, the painted cheeks, the 
 curled beard. He again looked up to me 
 and smiled — and yet for all that he had been 
 hissed — hissed scarcely a minute before in 
 
90 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 that miserable theatre, hissed by tliat miser- 
 able audience ! 
 
 This very evening a poor hearse has 
 driven out of the gate of the town ; not a 
 single being accompanied it. There lay upon 
 it a suicide, our painted and derided hero. 
 The driver was the only attendant ; no one 
 followed, no one except the Moon. In an 
 angle of the churchyard wall is the self- 
 murdered laid; nettles will soon spring up 
 thereon ; there will grave-diggers cast thorns 
 and weeds from other craves. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 91 
 
 NINETEENTH EVENING. 
 
 I come from Rome, — said the Moon,— 
 there, in the middle of the city, upon one of 
 the seven hills, he the ruins of the palace of 
 the Cæsars ; a wild fig-tree grows in a chink 
 of the wall, and covers its nakedness with its 
 broad, gray-green leaves; the ass wanders 
 over the heaps of rubbish among tlie laurel 
 hedges, and feasts on the golden thistle. 
 From this spot, whence the Roman eagle 
 once flew forth, went, and saw, and conquer- 
 ed, the entrance is now through a small, mis- 
 erable house, smeared with clay, between 
 two broken pillars ; tendrils of the vine hang 
 down, like a mourning garland, over the nar- 
 row window. An old woman, with her little 
 grand-daughter lived there ; they ruled now 
 
92 
 
 A PICTURK-BOOK 
 
 in the palace of the Cæsars, and showed to 
 strangers the buried treasures. There remains 
 of the rich throne-room nothing but a naked 
 wall ; the shadow of the black cypress points 
 to the place where the throne stood. The 
 earth lies to the depth of some feet above the 
 broken floor ; the little girl, now the daugh- 
 ter of the palace of the Cæsars, often sits 
 there upon her little stool, when the evening 
 bell rings. The keyhole in the door, close 
 beside her, she calls her balcony, and through 
 it she sees over half of Rome, as far as the 
 mighty dome of St. Peter's. 
 
 It was silent as ever, this evening, and 
 the little girl came homeward in my full, 
 bright light. She carried upon her head an 
 antiquely-formed earthen jug filled with wa- 
 ter ; her feet were bare ; the black petticoat 
 and the little chemise sleeves were in tatters ; 
 I kissed the child's beautiful round shoulder, 
 her black eyes, and her dark shining hair. 
 She mounted up the steps of the house, which 
 were steep, and were formed of broken pieces 
 of wall and a shattered capital. The bright- 
 colored lizard glided timidly past her feet, 
 but she was not frightened ; she raised her 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 93 
 
 hand to ring at the door ; there hung a hare's 
 foot in the packthread, which is now the bell- 
 pull at the palace of the Cæsars. She stood 
 stock-still for a moment ; what was she think- 
 ing about ? Perhaps of the beautiful Jesus- 
 child clothed in gold and silver, in the chapel 
 below, where the silver lamp was bm^ning, 
 and where her little-girl friends were singing 
 in chorus as she knew ; I cannot tell if it was 
 of this she thought! but again she made a 
 movement, ånd stumbled ; the earthen jug 
 fell from her head and was shivered in pieces 
 upon the broken marble pavement. She 
 burst into tears ; the beautiful daughter of 
 the palace of the Cæsars wept over the poor, 
 broken, earthen jug ; she stood with her bare 
 feet and w^ept, and dared not to pull at the 
 pack-thread string, the bell-pull at the palace 
 of the Cæsars. 
 
94 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 TWENTIETH EVENING. 
 
 For upwards of fourteen days the Moon 
 had not shone ; now I saw it again, round 
 and bright, standing above the slowly ascend- 
 ing clouds ; listen to what the Moon related 
 to me. I followed a caravan from one of the 
 cities of Fez ; it made a halt upon one of the 
 salt plains, which glittered like an ice-field, 
 and where one little stretch only was cover- 
 ed with moveable sand. The eldest of the 
 caravan, with his water-flask hanging at his 
 belt, and a bag of unleavened bread around 
 his neck, marked out a square in the sand 
 with his staff, and wrote therein some words 
 of the koran ; within this consecrated spot 
 the whole caravan drew up. A young mer- 
 chant, a child of the sun, as I could see by 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 95 
 
 his eye and by his beautiful form, rode 
 thoughtfully upon his white and spirited 
 charger. Perhaps he was thinking of his 
 young and lovely wife. It was only two 
 days since the camel, adorned with skins and 
 costly shawls, bore her, a beautiful bride, 
 around the walls of the city ; drums and bag- 
 pipes resounded, women sang, and shouts of 
 joy were sent forth from those who surround- 
 ed the camel, the bridegroom shouted the 
 gayest and the loudest of them all, and now 
 — now he rode with the caravan across the 
 desert. I accompanied them for many nights ; 
 saw them rest beside the wells, among the 
 crested palm trees ; they stabbed with a knife 
 the fallen camel and cooked the flesh with 
 fire. My beams cooled the burning sand ; 
 my beams showed them the black masses of 
 rock, islands of death in the immense ocean 
 of sand. No hostile power had éhey met 
 with upon their trackless path ; no storm 
 was abroad ; no pillars of sand carried death 
 over the caravan. 
 
 The lovely wife prayed to heaven for her 
 husband and father. "Are they dead?" in- 
 quired she from my gilded horn. " Are they 
 
96 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 dead ? " inquired she from my beaming cres- 
 cent. The desert now Ues behind them ; on 
 this very evening they rest under the tall 
 palm trees, around which circle the storks 
 with their long wings ; the pelican rushes 
 down upon them from the branches of the 
 mimosa. The luxuriant vegetation is tramp- 
 led down by the many feet of the elephants; 
 a troop of negro people come onward from a 
 distant fair ; women with copper buttons in 
 their black hair, and in indigo-colored petti- 
 coats drive on the laden oxen on which the 
 naked black children lie asleep. One negro 
 leads in a thong a lion's cub, which he had 
 purchased ; they approach the caravan ; the 
 young merchant sits immoveable, silent ; he 
 thinks upon his lovely wife, dreams in this 
 negro land of his white fragrant flower on 
 the other side the desert ; he lifts his head — 
 A cloud passed over the Moon, and again a 
 cloud. I heard no more that night. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 97 
 
 TWENTY-FIRST EVENING. 
 
 I saw a little girl weeping, — said the Moon, 
 — she wept because of the wickedness of the 
 world. She had had a present made her of 
 the most beautiful doll — Oh, it was a doll, so 
 lovely and delicate, not at all fitted to strug- 
 gle with misfortune ! But the little girl's 
 brother, a tall lad, had taken the doll and set 
 it up in a high tree in the garden, and then 
 had run away. The little girl could not 
 reach the doll, could not help it down, and 
 therefore she cried. The doll cried too, and 
 stretched out her arms from among the green 
 branches, and looked so distressed. Yes, this 
 was one of the misfortunes of life of which her 
 mamma had so often spoken. Oh, the poor 
 doll ! It already began to get dusk, and then 
 7 
 
98 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 dismal night would come ! And was she to 
 sit up there in the tree, and by herself all 
 night? No, the little girl would not endure 
 the thought of that. 
 
 " I will stay with you !" said she, although 
 she was not at all courageous. She began 
 already to see quite plainly the little elves, in 
 their tall pointed hats, peeping from between 
 the bushes, and down the dusky alleys danc- 
 ed tall spectres, which came nearer and near- 
 er. She stretched her hands up towards the 
 tree in which the doll sate, and they laughed 
 and pointed their fingers at her. Ah, how 
 terrified was the little girl ! " But if one has 
 not done anything wrong," thought she, " no- 
 thing can do one any harm ! Have I done 
 anything wrong ?" 
 
 She thought. "Ah, yes!" said she, "I 
 laughed at the poor duck with the red rag 
 tied round its leg ; it hobbled so comically, 
 and that made me laugh ; but it is wrong to 
 laugh at poor animals." 
 
 " Have you laughed at poor animals 7 " 
 inquired she, looking up to the doll, and it 
 seemed to her as if the doll shook her head. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 99 
 
 TWENTY-SECOND EVENINC*. 
 
 I looked into the Tyrol, — said the Moon, — 
 I caused the dark fir-trees to cast strong sha- 
 dows upon the rocks. I saw the holy Chris- 
 topher, with the child Jesus upon his shoul- 
 der, as he stood there against the wall of the 
 houses, colossal in size from the foundation 
 to the gable. The holy Florian carries water 
 to theburnin? house, and Christ hang's bleed- 
 ing upon the great cross by the wayside. 
 These are old pictures for the new generation : 
 I have, nevertheless, seen them depart one 
 after another. 
 
 Aloft, in the projection of the mountains, a 
 solitary nunnery hangs like a swallow's nest. 
 Two sisters stood up in the tower, and rung 
 the bell. They were both young, and there- 
 
100 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 fore they looked out beyond the mountains 
 into the world. A travehng" carriage drove 
 below along the high road, the postillion's 
 horn resounded, and the poor nuns riveted 
 with kindred thoughts their eyes upon it : 
 there were tears in the eyes of the younger of 
 the two. The horn sounded fainter and 
 fainter : the bell of the nunnery overpowered 
 its dying tones. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 101 
 
 TWENTY-THIRD EVENING. 
 
 Listen to what the Moon said. — Many- 
 years ago, in Copenhagen, I peeped in at the 
 window of a poor chamber. The father and 
 mother slept, but the Uttle son slept not. I 
 saw the flowered cotton bed-hangings move, 
 and the child peeped out. 1 fancied at first 
 that he was looking at the Bornholm time- 
 piece, it was so beautifully painted with red 
 and green, and a cuckoo sate on the top of 
 it ; there were heavy leaden weights, and the 
 pendulum with its shining brass surface, 
 went to and fro, " dik, dik !" but it was not 
 that which he was looking at — no, it was his 
 mother's spinning-wheel, which stood imder 
 the clock. That was the most precious piece 
 of furniture in the whole house to the boy, 
 but he did not dare to touch it, for if he did, 
 
102 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 he got a rap on the fingers. All the time his 
 mother was spinning he would sit beside her, 
 and watch the humming spole and the turn- 
 ing wheel, and he had the while his own pe- 
 culiar thoughts about them. Ah ! if he could 
 only dare thus to spin on the wheel ! Father 
 and mother were asleep ; he looked at them, 
 he looked at the wheel, and presently after- 
 wards one little naked foot was pushed out 
 of bed, and then another naked foot, then two 
 little legs — thump ! stood he upon the floor. 
 He turned himself once round, however, to 
 see whether father and mother slept. Yes, 
 that they did ! and so he went softly, very 
 softly — in nothing but his short little shirt — 
 to the wheel, and began to spin. The cord 
 flew off, and the wheel ran round faster than 
 ever. 1 kissed his yellow hair and his light 
 blue eyes ; it was a lovely picture. At that 
 moment the mother awoke — the curtains 
 moved — she looked out and thought about 
 elves, or some other kind of little sprite. 
 
 " In the name of Jesus !" said she ; and full 
 of alarm, awoke her husband. He opened 
 his eyes, rubbed them with his hands, and 
 looked at the busy little creature. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 103 
 
 '' Il is actually Bertel !" said lie. 
 
 I withdrew my gaze from that poor cham- 
 ber — I can see so far around me ! I looked at 
 that very moment into the hall of the Vatican 
 where the marble gods stand. I illumined 
 the group of the Laocoon ; the stone seemed 
 to sigh. I pressed my quiet kiss upon the 
 muses' breast; I fancy it heaved. But my 
 beams tarried longest upon the group of the 
 Nile, upon the colossal god. He lay full of 
 thought, supporting himself upon sphinxes : 
 dreaming there as if he were thinking of the 
 fleeting year ; little loves played around him 
 with crocodiles. In the horn of plenty sate, 
 with folded arms, and gazing upon the great 
 river-god, a very little love, a true picture of 
 the little boy with the wheel ; it was the same 
 expression. Living and charming, here stood 
 the little marble child ; and yet more than a 
 thousand times had the wheel of the year 
 gone round since it stood forth in stone. Just 
 so many times as the boy in the poor cham- 
 ber turned the wheel has the great wheel of 
 time hummed round, and still shall hum, be- 
 fore the age creates another marble-god like 
 this. 
 
104 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 See, it is now many years since then. Last 
 evening,— continued the Moon,— I looked 
 down upon a creek in the east coast of Zea- 
 land. Beautiful woods were there, lofty 
 mounds, an old mansion-house with red walls, 
 swans in the moat, and a little trading town, 
 with its church among- the apple-orchards. A 
 fleet of boats, each bearing a torch, ghded 
 over the unruffled water ; it was not to catch 
 fish that the torches were burning — no ! every- 
 thing was festal ! Music sounded, a song 
 was sung ; and in the middle of one of the 
 boats stood he whom they honored, a tall 
 strong man in a large cloak ; he had blue 
 eyes, and long white hair. I knew him, and 
 thought upon the Vatican, and the Nile-group, 
 and all the marble gods ; I thought upon the 
 poor little chamber where little Bertel sate in 
 his short shirt and spun. 
 
 The wheel of time has gone round ; new 
 gods have ascended from the marble. " Hur- 
 rah !" resounded from the boats—*« Hurrah for 
 Bertel Thorwaldsen !" 
 
■WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 TWENTY-FOURTH EVENING. 
 
 I will give thee a picture from Frankfort, 
 — said the Moon : — I took notice of one build- 
 ing in particular. It was not the birth-place 
 of Goethe, nor was it the old town-house, 
 where, through the grated windows, are still 
 exhibited the horned fronts of the oxen which 
 were roasted and given to the people at the 
 emperor's coronation, but it was the house of 
 a citizen painted green and unpretending, at 
 the corner of the narrow Jews' street. It 
 was the house of the Rothschilds. I looked 
 in at the open door ; the flight of steps was 
 strongly lighted ; servants stood there with 
 burning lights in massive silver candlesticks, 
 and bowed themselves lowly before the old 
 woman who was carried forth down the steps 
 in a sedan chair. The master of the house 
 
106 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 stood with bare head, and impressed reveren- 
 tially a kiss upon the old woman's hand. It 
 was his mother. She nodded kindly to him, 
 and to the servants ; and they carried her out 
 into the narrow, dark street, into a little 
 house, where she lived, and where her child 
 was born, from whom all her good fortune 
 had proceeded. If she were now to leave the 
 despised street and the little house, then, per- 
 haps, good fortune would leave him ! — that 
 was her belief. 
 
 The Moon told nothing more. Her visit 
 to me was too short this evening ; but I 
 thought of the old woman in the narrow, de- 
 spised street. Only one word about her — 
 and she had her splendid house near the 
 Thames ; only one word about her — and her 
 villa was situated on the Gulf of Naples. 
 
 " Were I to leave the mean little house 
 w*here my son's good fortune began, then> 
 perhaps, good fortune would leave him !" 
 
 This is a superstition, but of that kind 
 which only requires, when the history is 
 known and the picture seen, two words as 
 a superscription to make it intelligible — A 
 Mother. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 107 
 
 TWENTY-FIFTH EVENING. 
 
 It was yesterday, in the morning twilight, 
 — these were the Moon's own words, — not a 
 chimney was yet smoking in tiie whole city, 
 and it was precisely the chimneys that I was 
 looking at. From one of these chimneys at 
 that very moment came forth a little head, 
 and then a half body, the arms of which 
 rested on the coping stone of the chimney. 
 " Hurrah !" It was a little chimney-sweeper 
 lad, who, for the first time in his life, had 
 mounted a chimney, and had thus put forth 
 his head. " Hurrah !" Yes, there was some 
 difference between this and creeping upwards 
 in the narrow chimney ! The air blew so 
 fresh ; he could look out over the whole city 
 to the green wood. The sun had just risen ; 
 
108 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 round and large, it looked brightly into his 
 face, which beamed with happiness, although 
 it was famously smeared with soot. 
 
 " Now the whole city can see me, and the 
 moon can see me, and the sun also !" and 
 with that he flourished about his brush. 
 
■WITHOUT PICTURES. 109 
 
 TWENTY-SIXTH EVENING. 
 
 Last night I looked down upon a city in 
 China, — said the Moon. My beams illumin- 
 ed the long naked walls which form the 
 streets ; here and there, to be sure, is a door, 
 but it is closed, because the Chinese troubled 
 not themselves about the world outside. 
 Impenetrable Venetian shutters covered the 
 windows of the houses behind the walls ; 
 from the temple alone light shone faintly 
 through the window-glass. I looked in — 
 looked in upon the brilliant splendor ; from 
 floor to ceiling was covered with pictures in 
 strong colors and rich gilding, which rep- 
 resented the works of the gods on earth. 
 Their statues themselves stood in every 
 niche, but mostly concealed by brilliant dra- 
 
110 A PICTURE-BOOl£ 
 
 peries and suspended fans ; and before every 
 divinity^the)^ were all of tin — stood a little 
 altar with holy water, flowers, and burning 
 wax-lights. Supreme in the temple, however, 
 stood Fu, the supreme divinity, dressed in a 
 garment of silken stuff of the holy yellow 
 color. At the foot of the altar sate a living 
 figure, a young priest. He appeared to be 
 praying, but in the midst of his prayer he 
 sunk into deep thought ; and it certainly was 
 sinful, because his cheeks burned, and his 
 head bowed very low. Poor Souihoung ! 
 Perhaps he was dreaming about working in 
 one of the little flower-gardens which lie be- 
 fore every house behind the long wall of the 
 street, and which was a fai' pleasanter occu- 
 pation to him than trimming the wax-lights 
 in the temple ; or was he longing to be seated 
 at the well-covered board, and between every 
 course to be wiping his lips with silver paper? 
 or was it a sin so great that if he had dared 
 to utter it, the heavenly powers must have 
 punished him with death ? Were his thoughts 
 bold enough to take flight with the ship of 
 the barbarians to their home, the remote 
 England ? No, his thoughts did not fly so 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. Ill 
 
 /ar ; and yet they were as sinful as the warm 
 blood of youth could make them — sinful here, 
 in the temple before the statues of Fu and 
 the holy deities. I knew where his thoughts 
 were. In the most distant corner of the city, 
 upon the flat, flagged roof, the parapet of 
 which seemed to be made of porcelain, and 
 where stood the beautiful vases in which 
 grew large white campanulas, sate the youth- 
 ful Pe, with her small roguish eyes, her pout- 
 ing lips, and her least of all little feet. Her 
 shoes pinched, but there was a more severe 
 pinching at her heart ; she raised her delicate, 
 blooming arms, and the satin rustled. Be- 
 fore her stood a glass bowl, in which were four 
 gold fish : she stirred the water very softly 
 with a beautifully painted and japaned stick. 
 Oh, so slowly she stirred it because she was 
 deep in thought ! Perhaps she was thinking 
 how rich and golden was the apparel of the 
 fish, how safely they lived in the glass bowl, 
 and how luxuriously they were fed ; and yet, 
 for all that, how much more happy they 
 might be in freedom : yes, the idea distressed 
 the beautiful Pe. Her thoughts passed away 
 from her home ; her thoughts went into the 
 
112 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 church, but it was not for the sake of the gods 
 that they went there. Poor Pe ! poor Soui- 
 houng ! Their earthly thoughts met, but 
 my cold beam lay like a cherub's sword be- 
 tween them. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 113 
 
 TWENTY-SEVENTH EVENING. 
 
 There was a calm, — said the Moon — the 
 water was as tiansparent as the pure an* 
 through which I floated. I could see, far 
 below the surface of the sea, the strange 
 plants which, like giant trees in groves, 
 heaved themselves up towards me with stems 
 a fathom long, whilst the fish swam over 
 their tops. High up in the air flew a flock 
 of wild swans, one of which sank with 
 wearied wings lower and lower : its eyes 
 followed the airy caravan, w^hich every mo- 
 ment became more distant; its pinions were 
 expanded widely, and it sank, like a soap- 
 bubble in the still air ; it touched the surface 
 of the water, bowed back its head between 
 its wings, and lay still, like a white lotus 
 
114 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 upon the calm Indian Sea. The breeze blew, 
 and lifted up the bright surface of the water, 
 which was brilliant as the air ; there rolled 
 on a large, broad billow — the swan lifted its 
 head, and the shining water was poured, like 
 blue fire, over its breast and back. 
 
 The dawn of day illumined the red clouds, 
 and the swan rose up refreshed, and flew 
 towards the ascending sun, towards the blue 
 coast, whither had betaken themselves die airy 
 caravan ; but it flew alone — with longing in 
 its breast, flew alone over the blue, the foam- 
 ing water ! 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 115 
 
 TWENTY-EIGHTH EVENING. 
 
 I will now give thee a picture from Swe- 
 den, said the Moon.— In the midst of black 
 pine woods, not far from the melancholy 
 shore of Roxe, Hes the old convent-church of 
 Wreta. My beams passed through the grat- 
 ing in the walls into the spacious vault where 
 kino-s sleep in great stone coffins. On the 
 wall above them, is placed, as an image of 
 earthly magnificence, a king's crown, made 
 of wood, painted and gilded, and held firm 
 by a wooden pin, which is driven into the 
 wall. The worm has eaten through the 
 gilded wood, the spider has spun its web from 
 the crown to the coffin; it is a mourning 
 banner, perishable, as mourning for the dead ! 
 How still they sleep ! I remember them so 
 
116 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 well ! I see now the bold smile on the lips 
 which expressed joy or sorrow so strongly, 
 so decisively. When the steam-vessel, like 
 an enchanted ship, sails hither from the 
 mountains, many a stranger comes to the 
 church, visits this vault, and inquires the 
 names of the kings, and these names sound 
 forgotten and dead ; he looks upon the worm- 
 eaten crown, smiles, and if he be of a pious 
 turn of mind, there is melancholy in his 
 smile. 
 
 Slumber ye dead ! the Moon remembers 
 you. The Moon sends in the night her cold 
 beams to your quiet kingdom, over which 
 hangs the wooden crown ! 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 117 
 
 TWENTY-NINTH EVENING. 
 
 Close beside the high road. — said the Moon, 
 — Ues a httle pubUc house, and just opposite to 
 it is a great coach house. As the roof was 
 under repair, I looked down between the 
 beams and saw through the open trap-door into 
 the great desolate space ; the turkey slept up- 
 on the beam, and the saddle was laid to rest 
 in the empty manger. In the middle of the 
 place stood a travelling-carriage, within which 
 the gentlefolks were sound asleep, whilst the 
 horses were feeding, and the driver stretched 
 his limbs, although I know very well that he 
 slept soundly more than half the way. The 
 door of the fellow's chamber stood open, and 
 the bed looked as if he had tumbled neck and 
 heels into it ; the candle stood on the floor, 
 
118 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 and biiraed low in the socket. The wind 
 blew cold through the barn ; and the time 
 was nearer to daybreak than midnight. Upon 
 . the floor within the stall, slept a family of 
 wandering musicians : father and mother 
 were dreaming about the burning drop in the 
 bottle ; the pale little girl, she dreamed about 
 the burning tears in her eyes. The harp lay 
 at their head, and the dog at their feet. 
 
WITHOUT PICTURES. 
 
 119 
 
 THIRTIETH EVENING. 
 
 It was in a little trading town— said the 
 Moon— I saw it last year ; but that is no- 
 thing, for I saw it so plainl5^ This evening 
 I read about it in the newspaper, but it was 
 not nearly as plain there. 
 
 Down in the parlor of the public-house sate 
 the master of the bear, and ate his supper. 
 Bams, the bear, stood outside, tied to the fag- 
 got-stake. The poor bear! he would not 
 have done the least harm to any soul, for all 
 his grim looks. Up in the garret there lay, 
 m the bright hght of the Moon, three Httle 
 children: the eldest was six years old, the 
 youngest not more than two. " Clap, clap !" 
 came something up the stairs ! What could it 
 be ? The door sprang open — it was Bams, 
 
12a 
 
 A PICTURE-BOOK 
 
 the great rough bear ! He had grown tired 
 of standing out there in the yard, and he now 
 found his way up the steps. I saw the whole 
 thing,— said the Moon. The children were 
 very much frightened at the great grim-look- 
 ing beast, and crept each one of them into his 
 corner ; but he found them all out, rubbed 
 them with his snout, but did them no harm 
 at all ! " It is certainly a big dog !" thought 
 they ; and with that they patted him. He 
 laid himself down on the floor, and the least 
 boy tumbled upon him, and played at hiding 
 his yellow curly head among his thick black 
 hair. The eldest boy now took his drum and 
 made a tremendous noise, and the bear rose 
 up on his hind legs and began to dance. It 
 was charming ! Each boy took his weapons ; 
 the bear must have a gun, too, and he held 
 it like a regular soldier. What a glorious 
 comrade they had found ! and so they march- 
 ed — " One, two ! one, two !" 
 
 Presently the door opened ; it was the chil- 
 dren's mother. You should have seen her— - 
 seen her speechless horror; her face as 
 white as a wall, her half-opened mouth, her 
 
"WITHOUT PICTURES. 121 
 
 Staring eyes ; the least of the children, how- 
 ever, nodded so joyfully, and shouted with all 
 his might — "We are playing at soldiers!" 
 And with that, up came the bear's master ! 
 
STORIES. 
 
 123 
 
MY BOOTS. 
 
 There is a street in Rome which is called 
 Via delta Purificazione ; yet nobody can 
 say of it that it is purified. It goes up-hill 
 and down-hill ; cabbage stalks and old bro- 
 ken pots lie scattered about it ; the smoke 
 comes curling out of the door of the public- 
 house, and the lady who lives opposite to me 
 — yes, I cannot help it, but it is true — the la- 
 dy on the opposite side, she shakes her sheets 
 every morning out of the window. In this 
 street there generally live many foreigners ; 
 this year, however, fear of the fever and ma- 
 lignant sickness keeps most of them in Na- 
 ples and Florence. I lived quite alone in a 
 great big house ; neither the host nor hostess 
 ever slept there at night. 
 125 
 
126 MY BOOTS. 
 
 It was a great, hig, cold house, with a little 
 wet garden, in which there grew only one 
 row of peas, and a half-extinguished gilly- 
 flower; and yet, in the very next garden, 
 which lay higher, there were hedges of 
 monthly roses, and trees full of yellow lem- 
 ons. These last, spite of the incessant rain, 
 looked vigorous ; the roses, on the contrary, 
 looked as if they had lain for eight days in 
 the sea. 
 
 The evenings were so lonesome in the cold 
 large rooms ; the black chimney yawning be- 
 ^tween the windows, and without were rain 
 and mist. All the doors were fastened with 
 locks and iron bolts ; but what good could 
 that do ? The wind whistled in a tone sharp 
 enough to cut one in two through the cracks 
 in the doors ; the thin faggots kindled in the 
 chimney, but did not send out their warmth 
 very far ; the cold stone floor, the damp walls 
 and the lofty ceiling seemed only suited to 
 the summer season. 
 
 If I would make myself right comfortable, 
 I was obliged to put on my traveling fur- 
 boots, my great coat, my cloak, and my fur- 
 cap,— yes, and then I could do tolerably well. 
 
MY BOOTS. 127 
 
 To be sure, the side next the fire was half 
 roasted ; but then, in this world, people must 
 learn to turn and twist themselves about, and 
 I turned myself like a sunflower. 
 
 The evenings were somewhat long- ; but 
 then the teeth took it into their heads to get 
 up a nervous concert, and it was extraordi- 
 nary with what alacrity the proposal was ac- 
 cepted. A downright Danish toothache can- 
 not compare itself to an Italian one. Here 
 the pain played upon the very fangs of the 
 teeth, as if there sate a Liszt or a Thalberg 
 at them ; now it thundered in the fore- 
 ground, now in the background. There 
 was an accordance and strength in the whole 
 thing which at last drove me beside myself. 
 
 Besides the evening concerts, there were 
 also nocturnal concerts ; and during such a 
 one, while the windows rattled in the storm, 
 and rain poured down in torrents, I threw a 
 half-melancholy glance upon my night-lamp. 
 My writing implements stood just by, and I 
 saw, quite plainly, that the pen was dancing 
 along over the paper as if it were guided by 
 an invisible hand ; but it was not so ; it was 
 guided by its own hand ; it wrote from dicta- 
 
128 
 
 MY BOOTS. 
 
 tion ; and who dictated ? Yes, it may sound 
 incredible, but is the truth for all that. And 
 when I say so, people will believe me. It 
 was my boots, — my old Copenhagen boots— 
 which, being soaked through and through 
 with rain-water, now had their place in the 
 chimney, near to the red glowing fire. Whilst 
 I was suffering from toothache, they were 
 suffering from dropsy; they dictated their 
 own autobiography, which, as it seems to me, 
 may throw some light upon the Italian win- 
 ter of 1840-41. 
 The Boots said, — ■ 
 
 " We are two brothers, Right and Left Boot. 
 Our earliest recollection is of being strongly 
 rubbed over with v^ax, and after that highly 
 polished. I could see myself reflected in my 
 brother ; my brother could see himself reflect- 
 ed in me ; and we saw that Ave were ojily 
 one body,— a sort of Castor and Pollux ; a 
 pair of together-grown Siamese, which fate 
 has ordained to live and die, to exist, and 
 not to exist, together. We were, both of us, 
 native Copenhageners. 
 
 The shoemaker's apprentice carried us out 
 mto the world in his own hands, and this 
 
MY BOOTS. 
 
 129 
 
 gave rise to sweet, but alas ! false hopes of 
 our destination. The person to whom we 
 were thus brought, pulled us on by the ears, 
 until we fitted to his legs, and then he went 
 down stairs in us. We creaked for joy ! 
 When we got out of doors it rained — we kept 
 creaking on, however ; but only for the first 
 day. 
 
 "Ah ! there is a great deal of bad weather 
 to go through in this world ! We were not 
 made for water boots, and therefore did not 
 feel happy. No brushing ever gave us again 
 the polish of our youth ; the polish which 
 we possessed when the shoemaker's appren- 
 tice carried us through the streets in his hand. 
 Who can describe our joy, therefoi'e, when 
 we heard it said one morning, that we were 
 going into foreign parts ! yes, were even go- 
 ing to Italy, to' that mild, warm country, 
 where we should only tread upon marble and 
 classic ground ; drink in the sunshine, and, 
 of a certainty, recover the brightness of our 
 youth. 
 
 " We set out. Through the longest part 
 of our journey we slept in the trunk, and 
 dreamed about the warm countries. In the 
 
130 MY BOOTS. 
 
 cities or the country, we made good use of 
 our eyes ; it was, however, bad weather, and 
 wet there also as in Denmark. Our soles 
 were taken ill of palsy, and in Munich were 
 obliged to be taken off, and we had a new 
 pair ; but these were so well done, that they 
 looked like native soles. 
 
 " ' Oh, that we were but across the Alps ! ' 
 sighed we ; there the weather is mild and 
 good.' 
 
 "We came to the other side of the Alps, 
 but we found neither mild nor good weather. 
 It rained and blew ; and when we trod upon 
 marble, it was so icy-cold, that it forced the 
 cold perspiration out of our soles ^ wherever 
 we trod we left behind a wet impression- 
 In the evenings, however, it was very amus- 
 ing when the shoe-boys at the hotels collected 
 and numbered the boots and shoes ; and we 
 were set among all these foreign companions 
 and heard them tell about all the cities where 
 they had been. There was once a pair of 
 beautiful red morocco boots, with black feet, 
 I think it was in Bologna, that told us all 
 about their ascending Vesuvius, where their 
 feet were burned off with the subterranean 
 
MY BOOTS. 131 
 
 heat. Ah ! we could not help longing to die 
 such a death. 
 
 " ' If we were but across the Appenines ! 
 If we were but in Rome !' sighed we. And 
 we came thither ; but for one week after an- 
 other have been tramping about in nothing 
 but wet and mud. People must see every- 
 thing ; and wonderful sights and rainy 
 weather, never come to an end. Not a sin- 
 gle warm sunbeam has refreshed us ; the 
 cold wind is always whistling round us. Oh 
 Rome ! Rome ! For the first time this night 
 do we inhale warmth in this blessed chimney 
 corner, and we will inhale it till we burst ! 
 The upper leathers are gone already, — no- 
 thing remains but the hind quarters, and they 
 will soon give way. Before, however, we die 
 this blessed death, we wish to leave our his- 
 tory behind us ; and we wish also that our 
 corpses should be taken to Berlin, to repose 
 near to that man who had the heart and the 
 courage to describe ' Italy as it is,' — even by 
 the truth-loving Nicolai." 
 
 And with these words the boots crumbled 
 to pieces. 
 
 All was still : my night-lamp had gone 
 
 ■^^ 
 
132 MY BOOTS. 
 
 out. I myself slumbered a little ; and when 
 towards morning I awoke, I found it was all 
 a dream ; but when I glanced towards the 
 chimney-corner, I saw the boots all shrivelled 
 up, standing like mummies beside the cold 
 ashes ! I looked at the paper which lay near 
 to my lamp — it was grey paper, full of ink 
 spots — the pen unquestionably had been over 
 it, but the words had all run one into another ; 
 however the pen had written the Memoirs of 
 the Boots on grey paper. That, however, 
 which was legible I copied out ; and the peo- 
 ple will be so good as to recollect that it is 
 not I, but my boots, which make this com- 
 plaint of La bella Italia. 
 
SCENES ON THE DANUBE. 
 
 To-day is Sunday. 
 It is Sunday in the calendar ; it is Sunday 
 in God's beautiful nature ! Let us go out into 
 the hills toward Mehadia, the most delight- 
 fully situated of all the watering-places in 
 Hungary. What a mass of flowers are in 
 bloom in the tall green grass ! What gushes 
 of sunshine upon the wood-covered sides of 
 the hills ! The air is blue and transparent. 
 To-day it is Sunday, and therefore all the 
 people whom we meet are in holiday attire. 
 The smooth, black, plaited hair of the girls is 
 adorned with real flowers ; with a spray of 
 laburnum, or a dark red carnation ; the white 
 chemise sleeves are embroidered with green 
 and red ; the petticoat .resembles a deep 
 fringe of red, blue, and yellow : even the old 
 133 
 
134 TO-DAY IS SUNDAY. 
 
 grandmother is dressed in fringe, and wears 
 a flower in her white hnen head-band. 
 Young men and boys have roses in their 
 hats ; the very least is arrayed in his best, 
 and looks splendid ; his short shirt hangs 
 outside his dark-colored breeches ; a spray of 
 laburnum is wreathed round his large hat, 
 which soon half buries his eyes. Yes, it is 
 Sunday to-day ! 
 
 What a solitude there is in these hills ! 
 Life and health gush in water out of these 
 springs ; music resounds from the stately, 
 large pump-room ; the nightingale sings in 
 the clear sunshine, among the fragrant trees, 
 where the wild vines climb from branch to 
 branch. 
 
 Thou wonderful nature ! to me the best, 
 the holiest of churches ! In the midst of thee 
 my heart tells me that " this day is Sunday !" 
 
 We are again in Orsova. The brass ball 
 upon the church- tower shines in the sun : 
 the door is open. How solitary it is within. 
 The priest stands in his robes and lifts up his 
 voice ; it is Father Adam ; little Antonius 
 kneels before him, and swings to and fro the 
 censer ; the elder boy, Hieronymus, has his 
 
TO-DAY IS SUNDAY. 
 
 135 
 
 place in the middle of the church, and repre- 
 sents the whole Armenian congregation. 
 
 In front of the church, in the market-place, 
 where the lime-trees are in blossom, there is 
 a great dance of young and old. In the 
 middle of the circle stand the musicians ; one 
 blows the bag-pipe, the other scrapes the 
 fiddle. The circle twists itself first to the 
 right, then to the left. Everybody is in their 
 utmost grandeur, with fringe, flowers, and 
 bare feet. To-day it is Sunday ! 
 
 Several httle lads run about in nothing but 
 a shirt ; upon their heads, however, they wear 
 a large man's hat, and in the hat a flower. 
 Official people, gentlemen and ladies all 
 dressed in the fashion of Vienna, walk about 
 to loolc at the people, the dancing people. 
 The red evening sun illumines the white 
 church tower, the amber-colored Danube, and 
 the wood-crowned mountains of Servia : may 
 it shine also in my song when I sing of it ! 
 How beautiful and animated! How fresh 
 and peculiar ! Everything indicates a holiday. 
 Everything shows that to-day is Sunday ! 
 
136 AT DRENCOVA. 
 
 At Drencova. 
 
 About sunset I walked alone in the wood 
 near the little town, where I fell in with some 
 gipseys who had encamped round a fire for 
 the night. When I returned back throug-h 
 the Avood, I saw a handsome peasant-lad 
 standing among the bushes, who bade me 
 good evening in German. I asked him if this 
 were his native tongue ; he replied in the 
 negative, and told me that he commonly 
 spoke in the Wallacian language, but that 
 he had learned German in the school. To 
 judge by his dress he appeared very poor ; 
 but everything that he wore was so clean ; 
 his hair so smoothly combed ; his eyes beam- 
 ed with such an expression of happiness ; 
 there was something so thoughtful and so 
 good in his countenance, as I rarely have 
 seen in a child before. I asked him if he 
 Avere intended for a soldier, and he replied, 
 "Yes, we are all of us soldiers here, but I 
 wish to be an officer, and therefore I learn 
 everything that I can." There was a some- 
 thing in his whole manner so innocent, so 
 noble, that actually, if I had been rich, I 
 
AT DRENCOVA. 137 
 
 would have adopted that boy. I told him 
 that he certainly must be an officer ; and that 
 no doubt he would be one if he only zealously 
 strove after it, and put his trust in God. 
 
 In reply to my question, whether he knew 
 where Denmark was, he thought with him- 
 self for some time, and then said, " I fancy it 
 is a long way from here — near Hamburgh." 
 
 I could not give an alms to this boy ; he 
 seemed too noble to receive charity ; I asked 
 him, therefore, to gather me a few flowers ; 
 he ran away readily, and soon gathered me 
 a beautiful nosegay. I took and said I shall 
 buy these flowers. In that way he received 
 payment; he blushed deeply, and thanked, 
 me sweetly. He told me that his name was 
 Adam Marco. I took one of my cards out of 
 my pocket, and gave it to him, saying, 
 " Some day when you are an officer, and per- 
 haps may come to Denmark, then inquire 
 for me, and your happiness will give me great 
 pleasure. Be industrious, and put your trust 
 in God ! There is no knowing what may 
 happen." 
 
 Never did any unknoAvn child make such 
 a strong impression on me at the first meet- 
 
138 
 
 AT DRENCOVA. 
 
 ing, as did this. His noble deportment, his 
 thoughtful innocent countenance, were his 
 best patent of nobility. He must become an 
 officer; and I will do my little towards it; 
 committing it, it is true, to the hand of 
 chance. And here I make my bow to every 
 noble, rich, Hungarian lady, who, by any 
 chance, may read this book, and who, per- 
 haps, for the " Improvisatore " and "The 
 Fiddler," may have a kindly thought; the 
 poet beseeches of her— or if he have, unknown 
 to hmaself, a wealthy friend iii Hungary, or 
 m Wallacia, he beseeches also of him to 
 thmk of Adam Marco in Drencova, and to 
 help your httle countryman forward, if he 
 deserve it ! 
 
 The Swineherds. 
 Before a cottage, plastered of mud and 
 straw, sat an old swineherd, a real Hungarian, 
 and consequently a nobleman.* Very ofteii 
 
 * The number of indigent nobles in Hungary is very 
 great, and they live Uke peasants, in the most miserable 
 huts. 
 
THE SWINEHERDS. 139 
 
 had he laid his hand upon his heart, and 
 said this to himself. The sun burnt hotly, 
 and therefore he had turned the woolly side 
 of his sheepskin outwards ; his silver white 
 hair hung around his characteristic brown 
 countenance. He had got a new piece of 
 hnen, a shirt, and he was now preparing it for 
 wear, according to his own fashion, which 
 was this : he rubbed the fat of a piece of 
 bacon into it ; by this means it would keep 
 clean so much the longer, and he could turn 
 it first on one side and then on the other. 
 
 His grandson, a healthy-looking lad, whose 
 long.black hair was smoothed with the same 
 kind of pomatum which the old man used to 
 his shirt, stood just by, leaning on a staff. A 
 long leathern bag hung on his shoulder. He 
 also was a swineherd, and this very evening 
 was going on board a vessel, which, towed 
 by the steamboat Eros, was taking a freight 
 of pigs to the imperial city of Vienna. 
 
 " You will be there in five days," said the 
 old man. " When I was a young fellow, like 
 you, it used to take six weeks for the journey. 
 Step by step we went on through marshy 
 roads, through forests, and over rocks. The 
 
140 THE SWINEHERDS. 
 
 pigs, which at the beginning of the journey 
 
 were so fat that many of them died by the 
 
 way, became thin and wretched before we 
 
 came to our destination. Now, the world 
 
 strides onward : everything gets easier !" 
 
 ^ " We can smoke our pipes," said the youth ; 
 
 lie m the sun in our warm skin-cloaks. 
 
 Meadows and cities glide swiftly past us • the 
 
 pigs fly along with us, and get fat on the 
 
 journey. That is the life !'• 
 
 "Everybody has his own notions," renhed 
 the old man; "I had mine. There is a 
 pleasure even in difficulty. When in the 
 forest I saw the gypsies roasting and boiling 
 I had to look sharply about me, to mind that 
 my best pigs did not get into their clutches 
 Many a bit of fun have I had. I had to use 
 my wits. I was put to my shifts ; and some- 
 times had to use my fists as well. On the 
 plain between the rocks, where, you know 
 the wmds are shut in, I drove my herd • I 
 drove It across the field where the invisible 
 cast e of the winds is built. There was 
 neither house nor roof to be seen: the castle 
 of the wmds can only be felt. I drove the 
 herd through the invisible chambers and halls 
 
THE SWINEHERDS. 141 
 
 I could see it very well ; the wall was storm, 
 the door whklwind ! Such a thing as that 
 is worth all the trouble ; it gives a man 
 something to talk about. What do you come 
 to know, you who lie idling in the sunshine, 
 in the great floating pig-sty ?" 
 
 And all the time the old man was talking, 
 he kept rubbing the bacon-fat into his new 
 shirt. 
 
 " Go with me to the Danube," returned 
 the youth ; " there you will see a dance of 
 pigs, all so fat, till they are ready to burst. 
 They do not like to go into the vessel ; we 
 drive them with sticks ; they push one 
 against another ; set themselves across ; 
 stretch themselves out on the earth, run 
 hither and thither, however fat and heavy 
 they may be. That is a dance ! You would 
 shake your sides with laughing ! What a 
 squealing there is ! All the musicians in 
 Hungary could not make such a squealing 
 as that out of all their bagpipes, let them 
 blow as hard as they would ! How beauti- 
 fully bright you have made your shirt look • 
 you can't improve it. Go with me — now do 
 — to the Danube ! I'll give you something 
 
142 THE SWINEHERDS. 
 
 to drink, grandfather ! In four days I shall 
 be in the capital : what pomp and splendor 
 I shall see there ! I will buy you a pair of 
 red trowsers and plaited spurs !" 
 
 The old swineherd proudly lifted his head ; 
 regarded the youthful Magyar with flashing 
 eyes ; hung his shirt on the hook in the wall 
 of the low mud cottage, in which there was 
 nothing but a table, a bench, and a wooden 
 chest ; he nodded with his head, and mutter- 
 ed to himself. " Nemes -ember van, nemes- 
 ember én és vagyok." (He is a nobleman ; 
 I am also a nobleman !) 
 
PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 A Dialogue. 
 
 People have written descriptions of jour- 
 neys in many ways ; yet, I think, never in 
 dialogue. 
 
 On the 24th of February, 1841, a travel- 
 ing carriage with a deal of luggage drove 
 out of Rome, through the Porta iSan Gio- 
 vanni, drawn by two common post-horses ; 
 to these was, however, harnessed a third, 
 which ran before the others, a creature full of 
 fire and mettle — it was Pegasus himself; and 
 there was nothing extraordinary in his having 
 allowed himself to be thus harnessed, because 
 inside the carriage there sate two poets and 
 also a singer of great intellect, full of satisfac- 
 tion and youthful enjoyment, for he was just 
 come out of a monastery, and was on his way 
 143 
 
144 PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 
 to Naples to study thorough-bass. In Albano 
 he had exchanged the dress of the monk for 
 a regular handsomely cut suit of black, and 
 he might have been taken for a poet. Be- 
 sides these three, there was a lady, who was 
 an enthusiast for poets and poetry, but could 
 not sit with her back to the horses. It was, 
 as anybody may see, a very respectable party 
 for Pegasus to draw. They took the road to 
 Naples : we will now listen to the dialogue. 
 
 First Day's Journey. 
 
 Pegasus. — The road to Albano runs along 
 classic ground ; by the side of aqueducts, 
 miles long, which are decorated like the ves- 
 tibule of a castle, and by graves overgrown by 
 brushwood. A capuchin monk, with his 
 begging-sack on his back, is the only person 
 whom we have yet met. Now we are ap- 
 proachmg the tomb of Ascanius. It towers 
 upward with a gigantic colossus of masonry, 
 overgrown with grass and bushes. Sing of 
 all this, you poets inside there ! sing of the 
 Roman Campagna ! 
 
 The Post-horses. — Take care, and pull 
 
PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 145 
 
 your share, you fellow ! What is the mean- 
 ing of all those leaps ? Now we are going up 
 hill. In Albano we shall stop two whole 
 hours : they have good oats there, and a 
 roomy stable. Ah ! we have a long way to 
 go before we can rest to-night. 
 
 Pegasus. — Now we are in Albano. There 
 is a house which we shall pass close by, in 
 the street; it is low, only two stories high, 
 and very small. The door opens at this mo- 
 ment, a man in a hunter's dress comes forth ; 
 he has pale cheeks and intensely black eyes ; 
 it is Don Miguel, the ex-king of Portugal. 
 Anybody could make a poem about that. 
 Listen, you two poets there in the carriage ! 
 But no, they don't hear ! One of them is 
 making himself agreeable to the lady, and 
 the other is busying his thoughts about a 
 tragedy 
 
 The Post-horses. — Now we have been fed ; 
 let us get ready to set out. It is a long stage 
 up-hill and down. Don't stop looking at that 
 stone, it is the grave of the Horatii — but it is 
 an old story. Now, go along ! 
 
 Pegasus. — What splendid trees ! What 
 luxuriant evergreens ! The road lies deep 
 
146 PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 
 between the rocks ; the water comes splash- 
 ing down, and high up above on the moun- 
 tains, between the tops of the trees, stands 
 the magnificent dome of the church, as if in 
 heaven. The bells sound. There stands a 
 cross by the road-side ; handsome girls are 
 walking along, they bend before the cross and 
 repeat their prayers on their rosary. We are 
 approaching Genzano. The two poets alight 
 from the carriage ; they are going to see the 
 Nemi lake, which was once the crater of a 
 volcano. Yes, that is a much older story 
 even than the Horatii. Let us canter whilst 
 the poets get into an enthusiasm ! They can 
 catch us in Velletri. Let us have a gallop. 
 
 The Post-horses. — What is come to the 
 first horse ? he is like a mad thing ! He can 
 neither stand nor go ! And yet one would 
 think he was old enough to have learned 
 both. 
 
 Pegasus. — Deep below us lie the green 
 marshes overgrown with grass, and the rocky 
 island of Circe in the sea. We are now in 
 Cisterna, the little city where the Apostle 
 Paul was met by his friends at Rome, when 
 he was on his way to that city. Sing about 
 
PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 147 
 
 it, you poets ! The evening is beautiful ; the 
 stars twinkle. There is a girl lovely enough 
 for sculpture, in the public-house at Cisterna ; 
 look at her, you poets ! And sing about the 
 fire-lily of the marshes ! 
 
 Second Day's Journey. 
 
 The Post-horses. — Now do go ti little cau- 
 tiously ! not galloping in that way ! There 
 is a carriage driving before us, which we are 
 not to pass on the road. Did not you your- 
 self hear that there are German ladies in that 
 carriage, who have no gentlemen with them, 
 and they have, therefore, besought us that 
 they may travel in company with us because 
 they are afraid of banditti ! It is not safe 
 here ! A year and a day ago we heard the 
 balls hissing past us at this spot. 
 
 Pegasus. — The rain falls in torrents ! 
 Everything around us stands in water. The 
 huts of reeds seem as if they were about to 
 swim away from the green inundated island. 
 Let us tear away ! The road is even. There 
 lies a splendid monastery, but the monks are 
 all gone ; the fogs of the marshes have driven 
 
148 PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 
 them ; the walls and marble pillars of the 
 monastery are covered with green mould ; 
 the grass grows between the stones of the 
 pavement ; the bats fly round about the cu- 
 pola. We dash through the open cloister 
 gates, right into the church, and there pull 
 up ! You should see how the lady we are 
 drawing is hoii'ifled into a marble statue ! 
 You should hear our chapel-master singing 
 here ! his voice is beautiful ; he sings hymns 
 on account of his preservation, and the two 
 poets will tell the whole world of their life- 
 emperilled adventures in the Pontine Marshes. 
 
 The Post-horses. — Take care you don't 
 get a taste of the lash ! Do keep the middle 
 of the road ! We shall soon be in Terracina, 
 where we shall rest ; and on the frontiers we 
 shall rest ; and at the Custom-house we shall 
 rest. That is the best thing in the whole 
 journey. 
 
 Pegasus. — The sunlight falls on the yel- 
 low-red clifl^s ; the marshes lie behind us. 
 Three tall palm trees stand close by the road ; 
 we are in Terracina. What is become of 
 our company ? One of them ascends the 
 rocks between tall cactuses ; on each side are 
 
PEGASUi3 AND THE POST-HORSES. 149 
 
 gardens full of lemon and orange trees, every 
 branch of which bends under the load of yel-- 
 low, glittering fruit. He climbs the ruins of 
 Theodoricksburg ; from there he looks over 
 the marshes to the north, and his heart sings — 
 
 My wife, 
 My lovely, fragrant rose ! 
 And thou, my child, my joy, my life, 
 My all that makes earth dear to me, 
 — Thou bud upon my rose ! 
 
 But the other poet sits down below by the 
 sea ; yes, out there, by the sea, upon a huge 
 mass of rock. He wets his lips with salt 
 water, and says with exultation, "Thou 
 heaving, wind-lulled sea ! Thou embracest, 
 like me, the whole world ; she is thy bride ; 
 she is thy nurse. Thou singest of her in the 
 storm ! In thy repose thou dreamest of 
 heaven ! Thou bright, transparent sea !" 
 
 The Post-horses. — Of a truth those were 
 capital oats we had in Terracina. It was a 
 good road there also ; and we stopped such a 
 charming long time in Fondi. See ! now 
 again it goes up-hill. Of what good are the 
 hills ? First up and then down again ! A 
 fine pleasure that is. 
 
150 PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 
 Pegasus. — The weeping willows tremble 
 in the wind. How like a snake the road 
 winds along the hill-side, by ruinous mounds 
 and olive woods, all illumined by the red 
 evening- sunlight. A picturesque little town 
 lies below us, and the peasants, full of life, 
 are thronging the road. There is poetry in 
 these hills ! Come hither, thou who canst 
 sing of it ! Place thyself upon my back ! 
 My poets in the carriage there sit and are 
 quite lazy. We career onward in this still 
 Starlight night, past cyclopean masses of 
 brickwork, where ivy hangs like a garment 
 over caves where lurks a bandit — onwards, 
 past the confused mass of groves where Ci- 
 cero fell by the dagger of an assassin. Be- 
 tween hedges of laurel and glittering lemon 
 trees we approach his villa : to-night we shall 
 dream in Mola di Gaeta. 
 
 The Post-horses.— That has been a cursed 
 bit of a road ! How we will eat, how we will 
 drink, if the oats are but good ! We will 
 hope they may have fresh water there, and 
 that we may each find an empty stall ! 
 
pegasus and the post-horses. 151 
 
 Third Day's Journey. 
 
 Pegasus. — Beneath the foHage roof of the 
 orange trees sat the beautiful lady, and one 
 of the poets read aloud to her Italian poetry ; 
 glorious, melodious poetry ! The chapel- 
 master leaned against the tall lemon tree, 
 and listened and looked at the same time be- 
 tween the tall cypresses out upon the sea, 
 where the sunshine caught the white sails of 
 the ships. The other poet ran about in the 
 fields, gathered red anemones, wove garlands, 
 plucked first one and then another glowing 
 orange ; and they leaped, like golden apples 
 into the clear air. There was holiday in his 
 heart : there was song upon his lips ! He 
 felt, " I am once more in Italy !" 
 
 The horses stood in the stable each with 
 his head in the manger ; th^ also were well 
 off. But where I stood, I, Pegasus, there was 
 a door in the wall, and the door was open. 
 I stretched out my head, and saw above the 
 tops of the lemon trees and the dark cypress- 
 es, the white town upon the isthmus in the 
 sea ; and I neighed so, that I fancy the poets 
 recognized my voice. 
 
152 PEGASUS AND THE POST-HORSES. 
 
 The Post-horses. — Now we are going on 
 again to Sancta Agatha ! There provender 
 is excellent. Then again on to Capua, 
 where there is the strong fortress and the 
 bad water; but then the journey is soon at 
 an end. 
 
 Pegasus. — How blue the mountains are, 
 though ! How blue the sea is, and the sky, 
 also, has its beaming blue ; it is three shades 
 of one color ! It is love expressed in three 
 languages. See, how bright the stars are ! 
 See, how the city before us is spangled with 
 lights ! It is Naples, the beautiful city, the 
 gay city, Naples ! Naples ! 
 
 And Ave were in Naples. 
 
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES. 
 
 Many years ago, there was an Emperor, 
 who was so excessively fond of new clothes, 
 that he spent all his money in dress. He did 
 not trouble himself in the least about his sol- 
 diers ; nor did he care to go either to the the- 
 atre or the chase, except for the opportunities 
 then afforded him for displaying his new 
 clothes. He had a different suit for each hour 
 of the day ; and as of any other king or em- 
 peror, one is accustomed to say, " he is sittmg 
 in council," it was always said of him, "The 
 Emperor is sitting in his wardrobe." 
 
 Time passed merrily in the large town 
 which was his capital; strangers arrived 
 every day at the court. One day, two rogues, 
 calling themselves weavers, made their ap- 
 pearance. They gave out that they knew 
 153 
 
154 THE emperor's new clothes. 
 
 how to weave stuffs of the most beautiful 
 coloi-s and elaborate patterns, the clothes 
 manufactured from which should have the 
 wonderful property of remaining invisible to 
 every one who Avas unfit for the ofiice he held, 
 or who was extraordinarily simple in char- 
 acter. 
 
 " These must, indeed, be splendid clothes !" 
 thought the Emperor. " Had I such a suit, 
 I might at once find out what men in my 
 realms are unfit for their oflSce, and also be 
 able to distinguish the wise from the foolish ! 
 This stuff must be woven for me immediate- 
 ly." And he caused large sums of money to 
 be given to both the weavers in order that 
 they might begin their work directly. 
 
 So the two pretended weavers set up two 
 looms, and affected to work very busilv 
 though in reality they did nothing at all'. 
 They asked for the most delicate silk and the 
 purest gold thread ; put both into their own 
 knapsacks ; and then continued their pretend- 
 ed work at the empty looms until late at 
 night. 
 
 " I should like to know how the weavers 
 are getting on with my cloth," said the Em- 
 
THE emperor's NEW CLOTHES. 155 
 
 peror to himself, after some little time had 
 elapsed ; he was, however, rather embarrass- 
 ed, when he remembered that a simpleton, or 
 one unfit for his office, would be unable to see 
 the manufacture. " To be sure," he thought, 
 " he had nothing to risk in his own person ; 
 but yet, he would prefer sending somebody 
 else, to bring him intelligence about the 
 weavers, and their work, before he troubled 
 himself in the affair." All the people through- 
 out the city had heard of the wonderful 
 property the cloth was to possess ; and all 
 were anxious to learn how wise, or how 
 ignorant, their neighbors might prove to be. 
 
 "I will send my faithful old minister, to the 
 weavers," said the Emperor at last, after some 
 deliberation, " he will be best able to see how 
 the cloth looks ; for he is a man of sense, and 
 no one can be more suitable for his of&ce than 
 
 he is." 
 
 So the faithful old minister went into the 
 hall, where the knaves were working with 
 all their might, at their empty looms. "What 
 can be the meaning of this ?" thought the 
 old man, opening his eyes very wide. " I 
 cannot discover the least bit of thread on the 
 
156 THE emperor's new clothes. 
 
 looms." However, he did not express his 
 thoughts aloud. 
 
 The impostors requested him very court- 
 eously to be so good as to come nearer their 
 looms; and then asked him whether the 
 design pleased him, and whether the colors 
 were not very beautiful ; at the same time 
 pointing to the empty frames. The poor old 
 minister looked and looked, he could not dis- 
 cover anything on the looms, for a very good 
 reason, viz: there was nothing there. 
 "What!" thought he again, "is it possible 
 that I am a simpleton ? I have never thought 
 so myself; and no one must know it now if 
 I am so. Can it be, that I am unfit for my 
 office 1 No, that must not be said either. I 
 will never confess that I could not see the 
 stuff." 
 
 " Well, Sir Minister !" said one of the 
 knaves, still pretending to work, '• you do not 
 say whether the stuff pleases you." 
 
 " Oh, it is excellent !" rephed the old minis- 
 ter, lookmg at the loom through his specta- 
 cles. " This pattern, and the colors — yes, I 
 will tell the Emperor without delay, how 
 very beautiful I think them." 
 
THE emperor's new CLOTHES. 157 
 
 "We shall be much obliged to you," said the 
 impostors, and then they named the different 
 colors and described the pattern of the pre- 
 tended stuff. The old minister listened atten- 
 tively to their words, in order that he might 
 repeat them to the Emperor ; and then the 
 Imaves asked for more silk and gold, saying 
 that it was necessary to complete what they 
 had begun. However, they put all that was 
 given them into their knapsacks ; and con- 
 tinvied to work with as much apparent dili- 
 gence as before at their empty looms. 
 
 The Emperor now sent another officer of 
 his court to see how the men were getting on, 
 and to ascertain whether the cloth would soon 
 be ready. It was just the same with this 
 gentleman as with the minister ; he surveyed 
 the looms on all sides, bvit could see nothing 
 at all but the empty frames. 
 
 " Does not the stuff appear as beautiful to 
 you, as it did to my lord the minister ?" ask- 
 ed the impostors of the Emperor's second am- 
 bassador ; at the same time making the same 
 gestures as before, and talking of the design 
 and colors which were not there. 
 
 " I certainly am not stupid !" thought the 
 
158 THE emperor's new clothes. 
 
 messenger. " It must be, that I am not fit 
 for my good, profitable office ! That is very- 
 odd ; however, no one shall know anything 
 about it." And accordingly he praised the 
 stuff he could not see, and declared that he 
 was delighted with both colors and patterns. 
 " Indeed, please your Imperial Majesty," said 
 he to his sovereign when he returned, " the 
 cloth which the weavers are preparing is ex- 
 traordinarily magnificent." 
 
 The whole city was talking of the splendid 
 cloth which the Emperor had ordered to be 
 woven at his own expense. 
 
 And now the Emperor himself wished to 
 see the costly manufacture, while it was still 
 in the loom. Accompanied by a select num- 
 ber of officers of the court, among whom were 
 the two honest men who had already admired 
 the cloth, he went to the crafty impostors, 
 who, as soon as they were aware of the Em- 
 peror's approach, went on working more dili- 
 gently than ever ; although they still did not 
 pass a single thread through the looms. 
 
 " Is not the work absolutely magnificent ?" 
 said the two officers of the crown, already 
 mentioned. "If your majesty will only be 
 
THE emperor's NEW CLOTHES. 159 
 
 pleased to look at it ! what a splendid design ! 
 what glorious colors !" and at the same time 
 they pointed to the empty frames ; for they 
 imagined that every one else could see this 
 exquisite piece of workmanship. 
 
 "' How is this ?" said the Emperor to him- 
 self, " I can see nothing ! this is indeed a ter- 
 rible affair ! Am I a simpleton, or am I unfit 
 to be an Emperor ? that would be the worst 
 thing that could happen — Oh ! the cloth is 
 charming," said he, aloud. " It has my com- 
 plete approbation." And he smiled most 
 graciously, and looked closely at the empty 
 looms ; for on no account would he say that 
 he could not see what two of the officers of 
 his court had praised so much. All his reti- 
 nue now strained their eyes, hoping to dis- 
 cover something on the looms, but they could 
 see no more than the others ; nevertheless, 
 they all exclaimed, " Oh how beautiful !" and 
 advised his majesty to have some new clothes 
 made from this splendid material, for the ap- 
 proaching procession. " Magnificent ! charm- 
 ing ! excellent !" resounded on all sides ; and 
 every one was uncommonly gay. The Em- 
 
160 THE emperor's new clothes. 
 
 peror shared in the general satisfaction ; and 
 presented the impostors with the riband of an 
 order of knighthood, to be worn in their 
 button-holes, and the title of "Gentlemen 
 Weavers." 
 
 The rogues sat up the whole of the night 
 before the day on which the procession was to 
 take place, and had sixteen lights burning, so 
 that every one might see how anxious they 
 were to finish the Emperor's new suit. They 
 pretended to roll the cloth off the looms ; cut 
 the air with their scissors ; and sewed with 
 needles without any thread in them. " See !" 
 cried they, at last, " the Emperor's new 
 clothes are ready !" 
 
 And now the Emperor, with all the gran- 
 dees of his court, came to the Aveavers ; and 
 the rogues raised their arms, as if in the act 
 of holding something up, saying, "Here are 
 your Majesty's trowsers! here is the scarf! 
 here is the mantle ! The whole suit is as 
 light as a cobweb ; one might fancy one has 
 nothing at all on, when dressed in it ; that, 
 however, is the great virtue of this delicate 
 cloth." 
 
THE emperor's NEW CLOTHES. 161 
 
 " Yes indeed !" said all the courtiers, al- 
 though not one of them could see anything 
 of this exquisite manufacture. 
 
 " If your Imperial Majesty will be graciously 
 pleased to take off your clothes, we will fit 
 on the new suit, in front of the looking glass." 
 
 TJie Emperor was accordingly undressed, 
 and the rogues pretended to array him in his 
 new suit ; the Emperor turning round, from 
 side to side, before the looking glass. 
 
 "How splendid his majesty looks in his 
 new clothes ! and how well they fit !" every 
 one cried out. " What a design ! what colors ! 
 these are indeed royal robes !" 
 
 " The canopy which is to be borne over 
 your Majesty, in the procession, is waiting," 
 announced the chief master of the ceremo- 
 nies. 
 
 " I am quite ready," answered the Empe- 
 ror. " Do my new clothes fit well ?" asked 
 he, turning himself round again before the 
 looking glass, in order that he might appear 
 to be examining his handsome suit. 
 
 The lords of the bed-chamber, who were to 
 carry his Majesty's train felt about on the 
 ground, as if they were lifting up the ends of 
 11 
 
162 THE emperor's new clothes- 
 
 the mantle ; and pretended to be carrying 
 something ; for they would by no means be- 
 tray anything like simplicity, or unfitness 
 for their office. 
 
 So now the Emperor walked under his 
 high canopy in the midst of the procession, 
 through the streets of his capital; and all 
 the people standing by, and those at the win- 
 dows, cried out, " Oh ! how beautiful are our 
 Emperor's new clothes ! what a magnificent 
 train there is to the mantle ; and how grace- 
 fully the scarf hangs !" in short, no one would 
 allow that he could not see these much-ad- 
 mired clothes ; because, in doing so, he would 
 have declared himself either a simpleton or 
 unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the 
 Emperor's various suits, had ever made so 
 great an impression, as these invisible ones. 
 
 " But the Emperor has nothing at all on !" 
 said a little child. " Listen to the voice of 
 innocence !" exclaimed his father ; and what 
 the child had said was whispered from one to 
 another. 
 
 " But he has nothing at all on !" at last 
 cried out all the people. The Emperor was 
 vexed, for he knew that the people were 
 
THE emperor's NEW CLOTHES. 163 
 
 right ; but he thought the procession must 
 go on now ! And the lords of the bed-cham- 
 ber took greater pains than ever, to appear 
 holding up a train, although, in reality, there 
 was no train to hold. 
 
THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 There was once a poor Prince, who had 
 a kingdom ; his kingdom was very small, but 
 still quite large enough to marry upon ; and 
 he wished to marry. 
 
 It was certainly rather cool of him to say 
 to the Emperor's daughter, Will you have 
 me 7 But so he did ; for his name was re- 
 nowned far and wide ; and there were a hun- 
 dred princesses who would have answered, 
 "Yes !" and " Thank you kindly." We shall 
 see what this princess said. 
 
 Listen ! 
 
 It happened that where the Prince's father 
 lay buried, there grew a rose tree — a most 
 beautiful rose tree, which blossomed only once 
 in every five years, and even then bore only 
 one flower, but that was a rose ! It smelt so 
 164 
 
THE SWINEHERD. 165 
 
 sweet that all cares and sorrows were forgotten 
 by him who inhaled its fragrance. 
 
 And furthermore, the Prince had a night- 
 ingale, who could sing in such a manner that 
 it seemed as though all sweet melodies dwelt 
 in her Httle throat. So the Princess was to 
 have the rose, and the nightingale ; and they 
 were accordingly put into large silver cask- 
 ets, and sent to ner. 
 
 The Emperor had them brought into a 
 large hall, where the Princess was playing at 
 " Visiting," with the ladies of the court ; and 
 when she saw the caskets with the presents, 
 she clapped her hands for joy. 
 
 " Ah, if it were but a little pussy-cat !" said 
 she ; but the rose tree, with its beautiful rose 
 came to view. 
 
 " Oh, how prettily it is made ! " said all the 
 court ladies. 
 
 " It is more than pretty," said the Emperor, 
 " it is charming !" 
 
 But the Princess touched it, and was al- 
 most ready to cry. 
 
 " Fie, papa !" said she, " it is not made at 
 all, it is natural !" 
 
 " Let us see what is in the other casket, 
 
166 THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 before we get into a bad humor," said the 
 Emperor. So the nightingale came forth 
 and sang so dehghtfuUy that at first no one 
 could say anything ill-humored of her. 
 
 " Superbe ! charmant .'" exclaimed the 
 ladies ; for they all used to chatter French, 
 each one worse than her neighbor. 
 
 "How much the bird reminds me of the 
 musical box that belonged to our blessed 
 Empress," said an old knight. " Oh yes ! 
 these are the same tones, the same execu- 
 tion." 
 
 " Yes ! yes !" said the Emperor, and he 
 wept like a child at the remembrance. 
 
 " I will still hope that it is not a real bird," 
 said the Princess. 
 
 " Yes, it is a real bird," said those who had 
 brought it. " Well then let the bird fly," said 
 the Princess ; and she positively refused to 
 see the Prince. 
 
 However, he was not to be discouraged ; 
 he daubed his face over brown and black ; 
 pulled his cap over his ears, and knocked at 
 the door. 
 
 " Good day to my lord, the Emperor !" said 
 he. " Can I have employment at the palace ?" 
 
THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 167 
 
 " Why, yes," said the Emperor, " I want 
 some one to take care of the pigs, for we have 
 a great many of them." 
 
 So the Prince was appointed "Imperial 
 Swineherd." He had a dirty Uttle room close 
 by the pig-sty ; and there he sat the whole 
 day, and worked. By the evening he had 
 made a pretty Uttle kitchen-pot. Little bells 
 were hung all round it ; and when the pot 
 was boiling, these bells tinkled in the most 
 charming manner, and played the old melody, 
 
 "Ach! dulieber Augustin, 
 Allest ist weg, weg, weg !"* 
 
 But what was still more curious, whoever 
 held his finger in the smoke of the kitchen- 
 pot, immediately smelt all the dishes that 
 were cooking on every hearth in the city — 
 this, you see, was something quite different 
 from the rose. 
 
 Now the Princess happened to walk that 
 way ; and when she heard the tune, she 
 stood quite still, and seemed pleased ; for 
 she could play " Lieber Augustine ;" it was 
 
 * " Ah ! dear Augustiue ! 
 All is gone, gone, gone J" 
 
168 THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 the only piece she knew ; and she played It 
 with one fing^er. 
 
 " Why there is my piece," said the Prin- 
 cess ; " that swineherd must certainly have 
 been well educated ! g^o in and ask him the 
 price of the instrument." 
 
 So one of the court ladies must run in ; 
 however, she drew on wooden slippers first. 
 
 " What will you take for the kitchen-pot ?" 
 said the lady. 
 
 " I will have ten kisses from the Princess," 
 said the swineherd. 
 
 " Yes, indeed P said the lady. 
 
 "I cannot sell it for less," rejoined the 
 swineherd. 
 
 " He is an impudent fellow !" said the Prin- 
 cess, and she walked on ; but when she had 
 gone a little way, the bells tinkled so prettily 
 
 "Ach! du lieber Augustin, 
 Alles ist weg, weg, weg !" 
 
 " Stay," said the Princess. " Ask him if 
 he will have ten kisses from the ladies of my 
 court." 
 
 " No, thank you I" said the swineherd, 
 " ten kisses from the Princess, or I keep the 
 the kitchen-pot myself." 
 
THE SWINEHERD. 169 
 
 " That must not be, either !" said the Prin- 
 cess, " but do you all stand before me that no 
 one may see us." 
 
 And the court-ladies placed themselves in 
 front of her, and spread out their dresses — 
 the swineherd got ten kisses, and the Princess 
 — the kitchen-pot. 
 
 That was delightful ! the pot was boiling 
 the whole evening, and the whole of the fol- 
 lowing day. They knew perfectly well what 
 was cooking at every fire throughout the city, 
 from the chamberlain's to the cobbler's ; the 
 court-ladies danced and clapped their hands. 
 
 " We know who has soup, and who has 
 pancakes for dinner to-day, who has cutlets, 
 and who has eggs. How interesting !" 
 
 " Yes, but keep my secret, for I am an Em- 
 peror's daughter." 
 
 The swineherd — that is to say — the Prince, 
 for no one knew that he was other than an 
 ill-favored swineherd, let not a day pass with- 
 out working at something; he at last con- 
 structed a rattle, which, when it was swung 
 round, played all the waltzes and jig tunes, 
 which have ever been heard since the crea- 
 tion of the world. 
 
170 THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 " All, that is superbe /" said the Princess 
 when she passed by, " I have never heard 
 prettier compositions ! Go in and ask him 
 the price of the instrvmient ; but mind, he 
 shall have no more kisses !" 
 
 " He will have a hundred kisses from the 
 Princess !" said the lady who had been to ask. 
 
 " I think he is not in his right senses !" 
 said the Princess, and walked on, but when 
 she had gone a little way, she stopped again. 
 '•' One must encourage art," said she, " I am 
 the Emperor's daughter. Tell huu he shall, 
 as on yesterday, have ten kisses from me, and 
 may take the rest from the ladies of the 
 court." 
 
 '• Oh ! — but we should not like that at all !" 
 said they. " What are you muttering ?" asked 
 the Princess; "if I can kiss him, surely you 
 can. Remember that you owe everything 
 to me." So the ladies were obhged to go to 
 him again. 
 
 " A hundred kisses from the Princess !" said 
 he, '■ or else let every one keep his own." 
 
 " Stand round !" said she ; and all the la- 
 dies stood round her whilst the kissing was 
 going on. 
 
THE SWINEHERD. 171 
 
 " Wliat can be the reason for such a crowd 
 close by the pig-sty ?" said the Emperor, who 
 happened just then to step out on the balco- 
 ny ; he rubbed his eyes, and put on his spec- 
 tacles. "They are the ladies of the court ; I 
 must go down and see what they are about !" 
 So he pulled up his shppers at the heel, for 
 he had trodden them down. 
 
 As soon as he had got into the court-yard, 
 he moved very softly, and the ladies were so 
 much engrossed with counting the kisses, 
 that all might go on fairly, that they did not 
 perceive the Emperor. He rose on his tip- 
 toes. 
 
 " What is all this ?" said he, when he saw 
 what was going on, and he boxed the Prin- 
 cess's ears with his slipper, just as the swine- 
 herd was taking the eighty-sixth kiss. 
 
 " March out !" said the Emperor, for he 
 was very angry; and both Princess and 
 swineherd were thrust out of the city. 
 
 The Princess now stood and wept, the 
 swineherd scolded, and the rain poured down. 
 
 " Alas ! unhappy creature that I am !" said 
 the Princess. "If I had but married the 
 
172 THE SWINEHERD. 
 
 handsome young Prince ! ah ! how unfortu- 
 nate I am !" 
 
 And the swineherd went behind a tree, 
 washed the black and brown color from his 
 face, threw off his dirty clothes, and stepped 
 forth in his princely robes ; he looked so no- 
 ble that the Princess could not help bowing 
 before him. 
 
 "I am come to despise thee," said he. 
 "Thou would'st not have an honorable 
 Prince ! thou could'st not prize the rose and 
 the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss 
 the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery 
 plaything. Thou art rightly served." 
 
 He then went back to his own little king- - 
 dom, and shut the door of his palace in her 
 face. Now she mig-ht well sinsr 
 
 " Ach ! du lieber Augustine, 
 Alles ist weg, weg, weg!" 
 
THE REAL PRINCESS. 
 
 There was once a Prince who wished to 
 marry a Princess ; but then she must be a 
 real Princess. He travelled all over the world 
 in hopes of finding such a lady ; but there 
 was always something wrong. Princesses 
 he found in plenty ; but whether they were 
 real Princesses it was impossible for him to 
 decide, for now one thing, now another, seem- 
 ed to him not quite right about the ladies. 
 At last he returned to his palace quite cast 
 down, because he wished so much to have a 
 real Princess for his wife. 
 
 One evening a fearful tempest arose, it 
 thundered and lightened, and the rain poured 
 down from the sky in torrents: besides, it 
 was as dark as pitch. All at once there was 
 heard a violent knocking at the door, and the 
 173 
 
174 THE REAL PRINCESS. 
 
 old King, the Prince's father, went out him- 
 self to open it. 
 
 It was a Princess who was standing outside 
 the door. What with the rain and the wind, 
 she was in a sad condition ; the water trickled 
 down from her hair, and her clothes clung to 
 her body. She said she was a real Princess. 
 
 " Ah ! we shall soon see that !" thought 
 the old Queen-mother ; however, she said not 
 a word of what she was going to do; but 
 went quietly into the bed-room, took all the 
 bed-clothes off the bed, and put three little 
 peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty 
 mattrasses one upon another over the three 
 peas, and put twenty feather beds over the 
 mattrasses. 
 
 Upon this bed the Princess was to pass the 
 night. 
 
 The next moiTiing she was asked how she 
 had slept. " Oh, very badly indeed !" she re- 
 plied. " I have scarcely closed my eyes the 
 whole night through. I do not know what 
 was in my bed, but I had something hard 
 under me, and am all over black and blue. 
 It has hurt me so much !" 
 
 Now it was plain that the lady must be a 
 
THE REAL PRINCESS. 175 
 
 real Princess, since she had been able to feel 
 the three little peas through the twenty mat- 
 trasses and twenty feather beds. None but a 
 real Princess could have had such a delicate 
 sense of feeling. 
 
 The Prince accordingly made her his wife ; 
 being now convinced that he had found a real 
 Princess. The three peas were however put 
 into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are 
 still to be seen, provided they are not lost. 
 
 Was not this lady a real delicacy. 
 
 N 
 
/