Hans Christian Andersen   
   
Introductory Note
The Ugly Duckling
The Swineherd
The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Little Sea-Maid
The Elfin Mound
The Wild Swans
The Garden of Paradise
The Constant Tin Soldier
The Daisy
The Nightingale
The Storks
The Darning-needle
The Shadow
The Red Shoes
Little Ida’s Flowers
The Angel
The Flying Trunk
The Tinder-Box
The Buckwheat
The Bell

Introductory Note   
   
   
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN was born in Odense, Denmark, April 2, 1805. He was the son of a poor cobbler who died when Hans was eleven; and after a meager schooling he went to Copenhagen at the age of fourteen in the hope of finding employment in the theater. Here after much discouragement and hardship he finally found patrons who kept him from starving, and arranged for his regular education at the government’s expense. His literary career began in 1829 with his humorous extravaganza, “A Journey on Foot from Holm Canal to the East Point of Amager,” which was followed by plays, poems, and descriptions of travel, and in 1835 by his first novel, “The Improvisatore,” which was an immediate success. In the same year he found his real forte in the first volume of his “Fairy Tales” (Eventyr), but neither he nor the general public recognized this at first. Those critics who condescended to consider them at all were troubled about their lack of clear moral teaching and their colloquial style; but children liked them from the beginning.     1   
  While the Tales, added to year by year, were gradually finding their public, Andersen continued his writing of novels in his “O. T.” and “Only a Fiddler”; of plays in his “Mulatto” and many others; of travels in his “Author’s Bazaar,” “In Sweden,” and “In Spain”; of poetry in his epic, “Ahasuerus,” and many lyrics. His reputation spread far beyond Denmark and in the many countries he visited he was enthusiastically received. He died full of honors in August, 1875.     2   
  As a man Andersen was vain and sentimental, and he suffered more from his mortified vanity than from his actual hardships. The stories which have made his name a household word he underestimated, and strove after a dramatic success for which he was temperamentally unfitted.     3   
  Oddly enough, he was not particularly fond of children, though he had an extraordinary capacity for amusing them; and it was this gift that led a friend to suggest his writing down the stories which he invented for their entertainment. Many of the tales are based on folk-lore, many are purely his own imagining, but all are told with a quaintness, humor, and fancy that have given the author a place by himself in letters.

The Ugly Duckling   
   
   
IT was so glorious out in the country; it was summer; the cornfields were yellow, the oats were green, the hay had been put up in stacks in the green meadows, and the stork went about on his long red legs, and chattered Egyptian, for this was the language he had learned from his good mother. All around the fields and meadows were great forests, and in the midst of these forests lay deep lakes. Yes, it was right glorious out in the country. In the midst of the sunshine there lay an old farm, with deep canals about it, and from the wall down to the water grew great burdocks, so high that little children could stand upright under the loftiest of them. It was just as wild there as in the deepest wood, and here sat a Duck upon her nest; she had to hatch her ducklings; but she was almost tired out before the little ones came; and then she so seldom had visitors. The other ducks liked better to swim about in the canals than to run up to sit down under a burdock, and cackle with her.     1   
  At last one egg-shell after another burst open. “Piep! Piep!” it cried, and in all the eggs there were little creatures that stuck out their heads.     2   
  “Quack! quack!” they said; and they all came quacking out as fast as they could, looking all around them under the green leaves; and the mother let them look as much as they chose, for green is good for the eye.     3   
  “How wide the world is!” said all the young ones, for they certainly had much more room now than when they were in the eggs.     4   
  “D’ye think this is all the world?” said the mother. “That stretches far across the other side of the garden, quite into the parson’s field; but I have never been there yet. I hope you are all together,” and she stood up. “No, I have not all. The largest egg still lies there. How long is that to last? I am really tired of it.” And she sat down again.     5   
  “Well, how goes it?” asked an old Duck who had come to pay her a visit.     6   
  “It lasts a long time with that one egg,” said the Duck who sat there. “It will not burst. Now, only look at the others; are they not the prettiest little ducks one could possibly see? They are all like their father: the rogue, he never comes to see me.”     7   
  “Let me see the egg which will not burst,” said the old visitor. “You may be sure it is a turkey’s egg. I was once cheated in that way, and had much anxiety and trouble with the young ones, for they are afraid of the water. Must I say it to you, I could not get them to venture in. I quacked and I clacked, but it was no use. Let me see the egg. Yes, that’s a turkey’s egg. Let it lie there, and teach the other children to swim.”     8   
  “I think I will sit on it a little longer,” said the Duck. “I’ve sat so long now that I can sit a few days more.”     9   
  “Just as you please,” said the old Duck; and she went away.     10   
  At last the great egg burst. “Piep! piep!” said the little one, and crept forth. It was very large and very ugly. The Duck looked at it.     11   
  “It’s a very large duckling,” said she; “none of the others look like that: can it really be a turkey chick? Well, we shall soon find out. It must go into the water, even if I have to thrust it in myself.”     12   
  The next day, it was bright, beautiful weather; the sun shone on all the green trees. The Mother-Duck went down to the canal with all her family. Splash! she jumped into the water. “Quack! quack!” she said, and one duckling after another plunged in. The water closed over their heads, but they came up in an instant, and swam capitally; their legs went of themselves, and they were all in the water. The ugly gray Duckling swam with them.     13   
  “No, it’s not a turkey,” said she; “look how well it can use its legs, and how straight it holds itself. It is my own child! On the whole it’s quite pretty, if one looks at it rightly. Quack! quack! come with me, and I’ll lead you out into the great world, and present you in the duck-yard; but keep close to me, so that no one may tread on you, and take care of the cats!”     14   
  And so they came into the duck-yard. There was a terrible riot going on in there, for two families were quarreling about an eel’s head, and the cat got it after all.     15   
  “See, that’s how it goes in the world!” said the Mother-Duck; and she whetted her beak, for she too wanted the eel’s head. “Only use your legs,” she said. “See that you can bustle about, and bow your heads before the old Duck yonder. She’s the grandest of all here; she’s of Spanish blood—that’s why she’s so fat; and d’ye see? she has a red rag round her leg; that’s something particularly fine, and the greatest distinction a duck can enjoy: it signifies that one does not want to lose her, and that she’s to be known by the animals and by men too. Shake yourselves—don’t turn in your toes; a well-brought-up duck turns its toes quite out, just like father and mother,—so! Now bend your necks and say ‘Quack!’”     16   
  And they did so: but the other ducks round about looked at them, and said quite boldly,—     17   
  “Look there! now we’re to have these hanging on, as if there were not enough of us already! And—fie!—how that Duckling yonder looks; we won’t stand that!” And one duck flew up at it, and bit it in the neck.     18   
  “Let it alone,” said the mother; “it does no harm to any one.”     19   
  “Yes, but it’s too large and peculiar,” said the Duck who had bitten it; “and therefore it must be put down.”     20   
  “Those are pretty children that the mother has there,” said the old Duck with the rag round her leg. “They’re all pretty but that one; that was rather unlucky. I wish she could bear it over again.”     21   
  “That cannot be done, my lady,” replied the Mother-Duck. “It is not pretty, but it has a really good disposition, and swims as well as any other; yes, I may even say it, swims better. I think it will grow up pretty, and become smaller in time; it has lain too long in the egg, and therefore is not properly shaped.” And then she pinched it in the neck, and smoothed its feathers. “Moreover it is a drake,” she said, “and therefore it is not of so much consequence. I think he will be very strong: he makes his way already.”     22   
  “The other ducklings are graceful enough,” said the old Duck. “Make yourself at home; and if you find an eel’s head, you may bring it to me.”     23   
  And now they were at home. But the poor Duckling which had crept last out of the egg, and looked so ugly, was bitten and pushed and jeered, as much by the ducks as by the chickens.     24   
  “It is too big!” they all said. And the turkey-cock, who had been born with the spurs, and therefore thought himself an emperor, blew himself up like a ship in full sail, and bore straight down upon it; then he gobbled and grew quite red in the face. The poor Duckling did not know where it should stand or walk; it was quite melancholy because it looked ugly, and was the butt of the whole duck-yard.     25   
  So it went on the first day; and afterwards it became worse and worse. The poor Duckling was hunted about by every one; even its brothers and sisters were quite angry with it, and said, “If the cat would only catch you, you ugly creature!” And the mother said, “If you were only far away!” And the ducks bit it, and the chickens beat it, and the girl who had to feed the poultry kicked at it with her foot.     26   
  Then it ran and flew over the fence, and the little birds in the bushes flew up in fear.     27   
  “That is because I am so ugly!” thought the Duckling; and it shut its eyes, but flew on further; and so it came out into the great moor, where the wild ducks lived. Here it lay the whole night long; and it was weary and downcast.     28   
  Towards morning the wild ducks flew up, and looked at their new companion.     29   
  “What sort of a one are you?” they asked; and the Duckling turned in every direction, and bowed as well as it could. “You are remarkably ugly!” said the Wild Ducks. “But that is nothing to us, so long as you do not marry into our family.”     30   
  Poor thing! it certainly did not think of marrying, and only hoped to obtain leave to lie among the reeds and drink some of the swamp water.     31   
  Thus it lay two whole days; then came thither two wild geese, or, properly speaking, two wild ganders. It was not long since each had crept out of an egg, and that’s why they were so saucy.     32   
  “Listen, comrade,” said one of them. “You’re so ugly that I like you. Will you go with us, and become a bird of passage? Near here, in another moor, there are a few sweet lovely wild geese, all unmarried, and all able to say ‘Rap?’ You’ve a chance of making your fortune, ugly as you are.”     33   
  “Piff! Paff!” resounded through the air; and the two ganders fell down dead in the swamp, and the water became blood red. “Piff! Paff!” is sounded again, and the whole flock of wild geese rose up from the reeds. And then there was another report. A great hunt was going on. The sportsmen were lying in wait all round the moor, and some were even sitting up in the branches of the trees, which spread far over the reeds. The blue smoke rose up like clouds among the dark trees, and was wafted far away across the water; and the hunting dogs came—splash, splash!—into the swamp, and the rushes and the reeds bent down on every side. That was a fright for the poor Duckling! It turned its head, and put it under its wing; but at that moment a frightful great dog stood close by the Duckling. His tongue hung far out of his mouth, and his eyes gleamed horrible and ugly; he thrust out his nose close against the Duckling, showed his sharp teeth, and—splash, splash!—on he went, without seizing it.     34   
  “O, Heaven be thanked!” sighed the Duckling. “I am so ugly, that even the dog does not like to bite me!”     35   
  And so it lay quite quiet, while the shots rattled through the reeds and gun after gun was fired. At last, late in the day, all was still; but the poor Duckling did not dare to rise up; it waited several hours before it looked round, and then hastened away out of the moor as fast as it could. It ran on over field and meadow; there was such a storm raging that it was difficult to get from one place to another.     36   
  Towards evening the Duck came to a little miserable peasant’s hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not itself know on which side it should fall; and that’s why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against it; and the wind blew worse and worse. Then the Duckling noticed that one of the hinges of the door had given way, and the door hung so slanting that the Duckling could slip through the crack into the room; and that is what it did.     37   
  Here lived a woman, with her Cat and her Hen. And the Cat, whom she called Sonnie, could arch his back and purr, he could even give out sparks; but for that one had to stroke his fur the wrong way. The Hen had quite little short legs, and therefore she was called Chickabiddy Shortshanks; she laid good eggs, and the woman loved her as her own child.     38   
  In the morning the strange Duckling was at once noticed, and the Cat began to purr and the Hen to cluck.     39   
  “What’s this?” said the woman, and looked all round; but she could not see well, and therefore she thought the Duckling was a fat duck that had strayed. “This is a rare prize!” she said. “Now I shall have duck’s eggs. I hope it is not a drake. We must try that.”     40   
  And so the Duckling was admitted on trial for three weeks; but no eggs came. And the Cat was master of the house, and the Hen was the lady, and always said “We and the world!” for she thought they were half the world, and by far the better half. The Duckling thought one might have a different opinion, but the Hen would not allow it.     41   
  “Can you lay eggs?” she asked,     42   
  “No.”     43   
  “Then will you hold your tongue!”     44   
  And the Cat said, “Can you curve your back, and purr, and give out sparks?”     45   
  “No.”     46   
  “Then you will please have no opinion of your own when sensible folks are speaking.”     47   
  And the Duckling sat in a corner and was melancholy; then the fresh air and the sunshine streamed in; and it was seized with such a strange longing to swim on the water, that it could not help telling the Hen of it.     48   
  “What are you thinking of?” cried the Hen. “You have nothing to do, that’s why you have these fancies. Lay eggs, or purr, and they will pass over.”     49   
  “But it is so charming to swim on the water!” said the Duckling, “so refreshing to let it close above one’s head, and to dive down to the bottom.”     50   
  “Yes, that must be a mighty pleasure, truly,” quoth the Hen. “I fancy you must have gone crazy. Ask the Cat about it,—he’s the cleverest animal I know,—ask him if he likes to swim on the water, or to dive down: I won’t speak about myself. Ask our mistress, the old woman; no one in the world is cleverer than she. Do you think she has any desire to swim, and to let the water close above her head?”     51   
  “You don’t understand me,” said the Duckling.     52   
  “We don’t understand you? Then pray who is to understand you? You surely don’t pretend to be cleverer than the Cat and the woman—I won’t say anything of myself. Don’t be conceited, child, and thank your Maker for all the kindness you have received. Did you not get into a warm room, and have you not fallen into company from which you may learn something? But you are a chatterer, and it is not pleasant to associate with you. You may believe me, I speak for your good. I tell you disagreeable things, and by that one may always know one’s true friends! Only take care that you learn to lay eggs, or to purr, and give out sparks!”     53   
  “I think I will go out into the wide world,” said the Duckling.     54   
  “Yes, do go,” replied the Hen.     55   
  And so the Duckling went away. It swam on the water, and dived, but it was slighted by every creature because of its ugliness.     56   
  Now came the autumn. The leaves in the forest turned yellow and brown; the wind caught them so that they danced about, and up in the air it was very cold. The clouds hung low, heavy with hail and snow-flakes, and on the fence stood the raven, crying, “Croak! croak!” for mere cold; yes, it was enough to make one feel cold to think of this. The poor little Duckling certainly had not a good time. One evening—the sun was just setting in his beauty—there came a whole flock of great, handsome birds out of the bushes; they were dazzlingly white, with long, flexible necks; they were swans. They uttered a very peculiar cry, spread forth their glorious great wings, and flew away from that cold region to warmer lands, to fair open lakes. They mounted so high, so high! and the ugly Duckling felt quite strangely as it watched them. It turned round and round in the water like a wheel, stretched out its neck towards them, and uttered such a strange, loud cry as frightened itself. O! it could not forget those beautiful, happy birds; and so soon as it could see them no longer, it dived down to the very bottom, and when it came up again, it was quite beside itself. It knew not the name of those birds, and knew not whither they were flying; but it loved them more than it had ever loved any one. It was not at all envious of them. How could it think of wishing to possess such loveliness as they had? It would have been glad if only the ducks would have endured its company—the poor, ugly creature!     57   
  And the winter grew cold, very cold! The Duckling was forced to swim about in the water, to prevent the surface from freezing entirely; but every night the hole in which it swam about became smaller and smaller. It froze so hard that the icy covering crackled again; and the Duckling was obliged to use its legs continually to prevent the hole from freezing up. At last it became exhausted, and lay quite still, and thus froze fast into the ice.     58   
  Early in the morning a peasant came by, and when he saw what had happened, he took his wooden shoe, broke the ice-crust to pieces, and carried the Duckling home to his wife. Then it came to itself again. The children wanted to play with it; but the Duckling thought they wanted to hurt it, and in its terror fluttered up into the milk-pan, so that the milk spurted down into the room. The woman clasped her hands, at which the Duckling flew down into the butter-tub, and then into the meal barrel and out again. How it looked then! The woman screamed, and struck at it with the fire-tongs; the children tumbled over one another in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed and they screamed!—well it was that the door stood open, and the poor creature was able to slip out between the shrubs into the newly-fallen snow—there it lay quite exhausted.     59   
  But it would be too melancholy if I were to tell all the misery and care which the Duckling had to endure in the hard winter. It lay out on the moor among the reeds, when the sun began to shine again and the larks to sing: it was a beautiful spring.     60   
  Then all at once the Duckling could flap its wings: they beat the air more strongly than before, and bore it strongly away; and before it well knew how all this happened, it found itself in a great garden, where the elder—trees smelt sweet, and bent their long green branches down to the canal that wound through the region. O, here it was so beautiful, such a gladness of spring! and from the thicket came three glorious white swans; they rustled their wings, and swam lightly on the water. The Duckling knew the splendid creatures, and felt oppressed by a peculiar sadness.     61   
  “I will fly away to them, to the royal birds; and they will beat me, because I, that am so ugly, dare to come near them. But it is all the same. Better be killed by them than to be pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the girl who takes care of the poultry yard, and to suffer hunger in winter!” And it flew out into the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans: these looked at it, and came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. “Kill me!” said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer clumsy dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, but a—swan!     62   
  It matters nothing if one is born in a duck-yard, if one has only lain in a swan’s egg.     63   
  It felt quite glad at all the need and misfortune it had suffered, now it realized its happiness in all the splendor that surrounded it. And the great swans swam round it, and stroked it with their beaks.     64   
  Into the garden came little children, who threw bread and corn into the water; and the youngest cried, “There is a new one!” and the other children shouted joyously, “Yes, a new one has arrived!” And they clapped their hands and danced about, and ran to their father and mother; and bread and cake were thrown into the water; and they all said, “The new one is the most beautiful of all! so young and handsome!” and the old swans bowed their heads before him.     65   
  Then he felt quite ashamed, and hid his head under his wings, for he did not know what to do; he was so happy, and yet not at all proud. He thought how he had been persecuted and despised; and now he heard them saying that he was the most beautiful of all birds. Even the elder-tree bent its branches straight down into the water before him, and the sun shone warm and mild. Then his wings rustled, he lifted his slender neck, and cried rejoicingly from the depths of his heart,—     66   
  “I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling!”

The Swineherd   
   
   
THERE was once a poor Prince; he had a kingdom that was very small; still it was quite large enough to marry upon; and he wished to marry.     1   
  It was certainly rather cool of him to say to the Emperor’s daughter, “Will you have me?” But so he did; for his name was renowned far and wide; and there were a hundred Princesses who would have answered, “Thank you.” But see what she said. Now we will hear.     2   
  By the grave of the Prince’s father there grew a rose-tree,—a most beautiful rose-tree; it blossomed only once in every five years, and even then bore only one flower, but that was a rose that smelt so sweet as to make one forget all cares and sorrows.     3   
  And furthermore, the Prince had a nightingale, who could sing in such a manner that it seemed as though all sweet melodies dwelt in her little throat. So the Princess was to have the rose and the nightingale; and they were accordingly put into large silver caskets, and sent to her.     4   
  The Emperor had them brought into a large hall, where the Princess was playing at “making calls,” with the ladies of the court; they never did anything else, and when she saw the caskets with the presents, she clapped her hands for joy.     5   
  “Ah, if it were but a little pussy-cat!” exclaimed she; then out came the beautiful rose.     6   
  “O, how prettily it is made!” said all the court-ladies.     7   
  “It is more than pretty,” said the Emperor; “it is charming!”     8   
  But the Princess touched it and was almost ready to cry.     9   
  “Fie, papa!” said she, “it is not made at all; it is natural!”     10   
  “Fie!” cried all the court-ladies; “it is natural!”     11   
  “Let us see what is in the other casket, before we get into a bad humor,” proposed the Emperor. So the Nightingale came forth, and sang so delightfully that at first no one could say anything ill-humored of it.     12   
  ”Superbe! charmant!” exclaimed the ladies; for they all used to chatter French, each one worse than her neighbor.     13   
  “How much the bird reminds me of the musical box that belonged to our blessed Empress!” remarked an old Knight. “Ah yes! it is the very same tone, the same execution.”     14   
  “Yes! yes!” said the Emperor, and he wept like a little child.     15   
  “I will still hope that it is not a real bird,” said the Princess.     16   
  “Yet it is a real bird,” said those who had brought it.     17   
  “Well, then let the bird fly,” returned the Princess; and she positively refused to see the Prince.     18   
  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.     19   
  “Good day, Emperor!” said he. “Can I have employment at the palace?”     20   
  “O there are so many that want a place!” said the Emperor; “well, let me see, I want some one to take care of the pigs, for we have a great many of them.”     21   
  So the Prince was appointed “Imperial Swineherd.” He had a dirty little room close by the pig-sty; and there he sat the whole day, and worked. By the evening, he had made a pretty little saucepan. Little bells were hung all around it; and when the pot was boiling, these bells tinkled in the most charming manner, and played the old melody:—
           “Ah! thou dearest Augustine!   
All is gone, gone, gone!”   
  22   
  But what was still more curious, whoever held his finger in the smoke of this saucepan, immediately smelt all the dishes that were cooking on every hearth in the city: this, you see, was something quite different from the rose.     23   
  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 “Dearest Augustine;” it was the only piece she knew, and she played it with one finger.     24   
  “Why, there is my piece! “said the Princess; “that Swineherd must certainly have been well educated! Here! Go in and ask him the price of the instrument.”     25   
  And so one of the court-ladies must run in; however, she drew on wooden slippers first.     26   
  “What will you take for the saucepan?” inquired the lady.     27   
  “I will have ten kisses from the Princess,” said the Swineherd.     28   
  “Mercy on us!” said the lady.     29   
  “Yes, I cannot sell it for less,” said the swineherd.     30   
  “Well, what does he say?” asked the Princess.     31   
  “I cannot tell you really,” replied the lady; “it is too bad!”     32   
  “Then you can whisper it!” So the lady whispered it.     33   
  “He is an impudent fellow!” said the Princess, and she walked on; but when she had gone a little way, the bells tinkled so prettily,—
           “Ah! thou dearest Augustine!   
All is gone, gone, gone!”   
  34   
  “Stay,” said the Princess. “Ask him if he will have ten kisses from the ladies of my court.”     35   
  “No, thank you!” answered the swineherd: “ten kisses from the Princess, or I keep the saucepan myself.”     36   
  “That must not be, either!” said the Princess; “but do you all stand before me, that no one may see us.”     37   
  And the court-ladies placed themselves in front of her, and spread out their dresses, and so the Swineherd got ten kisses, and she got the saucepan.     38   
  It was delightful! the saucepan was kept boiling all the evening, and the whole of the following 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.     39   
  “We know who has soup and who has pancakes for dinner to-day, who has cutlets, and who has eggs. How interesting!”     40   
  And “How interesting!” said the Lord Steward’s wife.     41   
  “Yes, but keep my secret, for I am an Emperor’s daughter.”     42   
  “Mercy on us,” said they all.     43   
  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 without working at something; he at last constructed a rattle, which, when it was swung round, played all the waltzes and jig-tunes which have ever been heard since the creation of the world.     44   
  “Ah, 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 instrument; but I won’t kiss him!”     45   
  “He will have a hundred kisses from the Princess!” said the court-lady who had been in to ask.     46   
  “I think he is crazy!” 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 him, he shall, as on yesterday, have ten kisses from me, and may take the rest from the ladies of the court.”     47   
  “O! but we should not like that at all!” said the court-ladies.     48   
  “What are you muttering?” asked the Princess; “if I can kiss him, surely you can! Remember, I give you your food and wages.” So the court-ladies were obliged to go to him again.     49   
  “A hundred kisses from the Princess!” said he, “or else let every one keep his own.”     50   
  “Stand round!” said she; and all the ladies stood round her whilst the kissing was going on.     51   
  “What 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 balcony. He rubbed his eyes and put on his spectacles. “They are ladies of the court; there is some play going on. I must go down and see what they are about!” So he pulled up his slippers at the heel, for he had trodden them down.     52   
  Heh there! what a hurry he is in.     53   
  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 tiptoes.     54   
  “What is all this?” said he, when he saw what was going on, and he boxed the Princess’ ears with his slipper, just as the Swineherd was taking the eighty-sixth kiss.     55   
  “Off with you!” cried the Emperor, for he was very angry; and both Princess and Swineherd were thrust out of the city.     56   
  The Princess now stood and wept, the Swineherd scolded, and the rain poured down.     57   
  “O how miserable I am!” said the Princess. “If I had but married the handsome young Prince! Ah! how unfortunate I am!”     58   
  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 noble that the Princess could not help bowing before him.     59   
  “I am come to despise thee,” said he. “Thou wouldst not have an honourable prince! thou couldst not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the Swineherd for the sake of a trumpery plaything. Now thou hast thy deserts!”     60   
  He then went back to his own little kingdom, and shut the door of his palace in her face. Now she might well sing,
           “Ah! thou dearest Augustine!   
All is gone, gone, gone!”   
  61   

The Emperor’s New Clothes   
   
   
MANY years ago there lived an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of grand new clothes that he spent all his money upon them, that he might be very fine. He did not care about his soldiers, nor about the theatre, and only liked to drive out and show his new clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day; and just as they say of a king, “He is in council,” so they always said of him, “The Emperor is in the wardrobe.”     1   
  In the great city in which he lived it was always very merry; every day came many strangers; one day two rogues came: they gave themselves out as weavers, and declared they could weave the finest stuff any one could imagine. Not only were their colors and patterns, they said, uncommonly beautiful, but the clothes made of the stuff possessed the wonderful quality that they became invisible to any one who was unfit for the office he held, or was incorrigibly stupid.     2   
  “Those would be capital clothes!” thought the Emperor. “If I wore those, I should be able to find out what men in my empire are not fit for the places they have; I could tell the clever from the dunces. Yes, the stuff must be woven for me directly!”     3   
  And he gave the two rogues a great deal of cash in hand, that they might begin their work at once.     4   
  As for them, they put up two looms, and pretended to be working; but they had nothing at all on their looms. They at once demanded the finest silk and the costliest gold; this they put into their own pockets, and worked at the empty looms till late into the night.     5   
  “I should like to know how far they have got on with the stuff,” thought the Emperor. But he felt quite uncomfortable when he thought that those who were not fit for their offices could not see it. He believed, indeed, that he had nothing to fear for himself, but yet he preferred first to send some one else to see how matters stood. All the people in the city knew what peculiar power the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or how stupid their neighbors were.     6   
  “I will send my honest old Minister to the weavers,” thought the Emperor. “He can judge best how the stuff looks, for he has sense, and no one understands his office better than he.”     7   
  Now the good old Minister went out into the hall where the two rogues sat working at the empty looms.     8   
  “Mercy on us!” thought the old Minister, and he opened his eyes wide. “I cannot see anything at all!” But he did not say this.     9   
  Both the rogues begged him to be so good as to come nearer, and asked if he did not approve of the colors and the pattern. Then they pointed to the empty loom, and the poor old Minister went on opening his eyes; but he could see nothing, for there was nothing to see.     10   
  “Mercy!” thought he, “can I indeed be so stupid? I never thought that, and not a soul must know it. Am I not fit for my office? No, it will never do for me to tell that I could not see the stuff.”     11   
  “Don’t you say anything to it?” asked one, as he went on weaving.     12   
  “O, it is charming—quite enchanting!” answered the old Minister, as he peered through his spectacles. “What a fine pattern, and what colors! Yes, I shall tell the Emperor that I am very much pleased with it.”     13   
  “Well, we are glad of that,” said both the weavers; and then they named the colors, and explained the strange pattern. The old Minister listened attentively, that he might be able to repeat it when the Emperor came. And he did so.     14   
  Now the rogues asked for more money, and silk and gold, which they declared they wanted for weaving. They put all into their own pockets, and not a thread was put upon the loom; they continued to work at the empty frames as before.     15   
  The Emperor soon sent again, dispatching another honest officer of the court, to see how the weaving was going on, and if the stuff would soon be ready. He fared just like the first: he looked and looked, but, as there was nothing to be seen but the empty looms, he could see nothing.     16   
  “Is not that a pretty piece of stuff?” asked the two rogues; and they displayed and explained the handsome pattern which was not there at all.     17   
  “I am not stupid!” thought the man: “it must be my good office, for which I am not fit. It is funny enough, but I must not let it be noticed.” And so he praised the stuff which he did not see, and expressed his pleasure at the beautiful colors and charming pattern. “Yes, it is enchanting,” he told the Emperor.     18   
  All the people in the town were talking of the gorgeous stuff. The Emperor wished to see it himself while it was still upon the loom. With a whole crowd of chosen men, among whom were also the two honest statesmen who had already been there, he went to the two cunning rogues, who were now weaving with might and main without fibre or thread.     19   
  “Is not that splendid?” said the two statesmen, who had already been there once. “Does not your Majesty remark the pattern and the colors?” And they pointed to the empty loom, for they thought that the others could see the stuff.     20   
  “What’s this?” thought the Emperor. “I can see nothing at all! That is terrible. Am I stupid? Am I not fit to be Emperor? That would be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me. O, it is very pretty!” he said aloud. “It has our highest approbation.” And he nodded in a contented way, and gazed at the empty loom, for he would not say that he saw nothing. The whole suite whom he had with him looked and looked, and saw nothing, any more than the rest; but, like the Emperor, they said, “That is pretty!” and counseled him to wear the splendid new clothes for the first time at the great procession that was presently to take place. “It is splendid, excellent!” went from mouth to mouth. On all sides there seemed to be general rejoicing, and the Emperor gave the rogues the title of Imperial Court Weavers.     21   
  The whole night before the morning on which the procession was to take place, the rogues were up, and kept more than sixteen candles burning. The people could see that they were hard at work, completing the Emperor’s new clothes. They pretended to take the stuff down from the loom; they made cuts in the air with great scissors; they sewed with needles without thread; and at last they said, “Now the clothes are ready!”     22   
  The Emperor came himself with his noblest cavaliers; and the two rogues lifted up one arm as if they were holding something, and said, “See, here are the trousers! here is the coat! here is the cloak!” and so on. “It is as light as a spider’s web: one would thin one had nothing on; but that is just the beauty of it.”     23   
  “Yes,” said all the cavaliers; but they could not see anything, for nothing was there.     24   
  “Will your Imperial Majesty please to condescend to take off your clothes?” said the rogues; “then we will put on you the new clothes here in front of the great mirror.”     25   
  The Emperor took off his clothes, and the rogues pretended to put on him each new garment as it was ready; and the Emperor turned round and round before the mirror.     26   
  “O, how well they look! how capitally they fit!” said all. “What a pattern! what colors! That is a splendid dress!”     27   
  “They are standing outside with the canopy, which is to be borne above your Majesty in the procession!” announced the head Master of the Ceremonies.     28   
  “Well, I am ready,” replied the Emperor. “Does it not suit me well?” And then he turned again to the mirror, for he wanted it to appear as if he contemplated his adornment with great interest.     29   
  The two chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stooped down with their hands toward the floor, just as if they were picking up the mantle; then they pretended to be holding something in the air. They did not dare to let it be noticed that they saw nothing.     30   
  So the Emperor went in procession under the rich canopy, and every one in the streets said, “How incomparable are the Emperor’s new clothes! what a train he has to his mantle! how it fits him!” No one would let it be perceived that he could see nothing, for that would have shown that he was not fit for his office, or was very stupid. No clothes of the Emperor’s had ever had such a success as these.     31   
  “But he has nothing on!” a little child cried out at last.     32   
  “Just hear what that innocent says!” said the father: and one whispered to another what the child had said.     33   
  “But he has nothing on!” said the whole people at length. That touched the Emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but the thought within himself, “I must go through with the procession.” And so he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all.     34   

   
The Little Sea-Maid   
   
   
FAR out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the most beautiful corn-flower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep, deeper than any cable will sound; many steeples must be placed one above the other to reach from the ground to the surface of the water. And down there live the sea-people.     1   
  Now, you must not believe there is nothing down there but the naked sand; no,—the strangest trees and plants grow there, so pliable in their stalks and leaves that at the least motion of the water they move just as if they had life. All fishes, great and small, glide among the twigs, just as here the birds do in the trees. In the deepest spot of all lies the Sea-king’s castle: the walls are of coral, and the tall, Gothic windows of the clearest amber; shells form the roof, and they open and shut according as the water flows. It looks lovely, for in each shell lie gleaming pearls, a single one of which would have great value in a queen’s diadem.     2   
  The Sea-king below there had been a widower for many years, while his old mother kept house for him. She was a clever woman, but proud of her rank, so she wore twelve oysters on her tail, while the other great people were only allowed to wear six. Beyond this she was deserving of great praise, especially because she was very fond of her grand-daughters, the little Sea-princesses. These were six pretty children; but the youngest was the most beautiful of all. Her skin was as clear and as fine as a rose leaf; her eyes were as blue as the deepest sea; but, like all the rest, she had no feet, for her body ended in a fish-tail.     3   
  All day long they could play in the castle, down in the halls, where living flowers grew out of the walls. The great amber windows were opened, and then the fishes swam in to them, just as the swallows fly in to us when we open our windows; but the fishes swam straight up to the Princesses, ate out of their hands, and let themselves be stroked.     4   
  Outside the castle was a great garden with bright red and dark blue flowers; the fruit glowed like gold, and the flowers like flames of fire; and they continually kept moving their stalks and leaves. The earth itself was the finest sand, but blue as the flame of brimstone. A peculiar blue radiance lay upon everything down there: one would have thought oneself high in the air, with the canopy of heaven above and around, rather than at the bottom of the deep sea. During a calm the sun could be seen; it appeared like a purple flower, from which all light streamed out.     5   
  Each of the little Princesses had her own little place in the garden, where she might dig and plant at her good pleasure. One gave her flower-bed the form of a whale; another thought it better to make hers like a little sea-woman: but the youngest made hers quite round, like the sun and had flowers which gleamed red as the sun itself. She was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful, and when the other sisters made a display of the beautiful things they had received out of wrecked ships, she would have nothing beyond the red flowers which resembled the sun, except a pretty marble statue. This was a figure of a charming boy, hewn out of white clear stone, which had sunk down to the bottom of the sea from a wreck. She planted a pink weeping willow beside this statue; the tree grew famously, and hung its fresh branches over the statue towards the blue sandy ground, where the shadow showed violet, and moved like the branches themselves; it seemed as if the ends of the branches and the roots were playing together and wished to kiss each other.     6   
  There was no greater pleasure for her than to hear of the world of men above them. The old grandmother had to tell all she knew of ships and towns, of men and animals. It seemed particularly beautiful to her that up on the earth the flowers shed fragrance, for they had none down at the bottom of the sea, and that the trees were green, and that the fishes which one saw there among the trees could sing so loud and clear that it was a pleasure to hear them. What the grandmother called fishes were the little birds; the Princess could not understand them in any other way, for she had never seen a bird.     7   
  “When you have reached your fifteenth year,” said the grandmother, “you shall have leave to rise up out of the sea, to sit on the rocks in the moonlight, and to see the great ships as they sail by. Then you will see forests and towns!”     8   
  In the next year one of the sisters was fifteen years of age, but each of the others was one year younger than the next; so that the youngest had full five years to wait before she could come up from the bottom of the sea, and find how our world looked. But one promised to tell the others what she had seen and what she had thought the most beautiful on the first day of her visit; for their grandmother could not tell them enough—there was so much about which they wanted information.     9   
  No one was more anxious about these things than the youngest—just that one who had the longest time to wait, and who was always quiet and thoughtful. Many a night she stood by the open window, and looked up through the dark blue water at the fishes splashing with their fins and tails. Moon and stars she could see; they certainly shone quite faintly, but through the water they looked much larger than they appear in our eyes. When something like a black cloud passed among them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming over her head, or a ship with many people: they certainly did not think that a pretty little sea-maid was standing down below stretching up her white hands towards the keel of their ship.     10   
  Now the eldest Princess was fifteen years old, and might mount up to the surface of the sea.     11   
  When she came back, she had a hundred things to tell,—but the finest thing, she said, was to lie in the moonshine on a sand-bank in the quiet sea, and to look at the neighboring coast, with the large town, where the lights twinkled like a hundred stars, and to hear the music and the noise and clamor of carriages and men, to see the many church steeples, and to hear the sound of the bells. Just because she could not get up to these, she longed for them more than for anything.     12   
  O how the youngest sister listened! and afterwards when she stood at the open window and looked up through the dark-blue water, she thought of the great city with all its bustle and noise; and then she thought she could hear the church bells ringing, even down to the depth where she was.     13   
  In the following year, the second sister received permission to mount upward through the water and to swim whither she pleased. She rose up just as the sun was setting, and this spectacle, she said, was the most beautiful. The whole sky looked gold, and as to the clouds, she could not properly describe their beauty. They sailed away over her head, purple and violet-colored, but far quicker than the clouds there flew a flight of wild swans, like a long white veil, over the water towards where the sun stood. She swam towards them; but the sun sank, and the roseate hue faded on the sea and in the clouds.     14   
  In the following year the next sister went up. She was the boldest of them all, and therefore she swam up a broad stream that poured its waters into the sea. She saw glorious green hills clothed with vines; palaces and castles shone forth from amid splendid woods; she heard how all the birds sang; and the sun shone so warm that she was often obliged to dive under the water to cool her glowing face. In a little bay she found a whole swarm of little mortals. They were quite naked, and splashed about in the water; she wanted to play with them, but they fled in affright and a little black animal came,—it was a dog, but she had never seen a dog,—and it barked at her so terribly that she became frightened, and tried to gain the open sea. But she could never forget the glorious woods, the green hills, and the pretty children, who could swim in the water, though they had not fish-tails.     15   
  The fourth sister was not so bold: she remained out in the midst of the wild sea, and declared that just there it was most beautiful. One could see for many miles around, and the sky above looked like a bell of glass. She had seen ships, but only in the far distance—they looked like sea-gulls; and the funny dolphins had thrown somersaults, and the great whales spouted out water from their nostrils, so that it looked like hundreds of fountains all around.     16   
  Now came the turn of the fifth sister. Her birthday came in the winter, and so she saw what the others had not seen the first time. The sea looked quite green, and great icebergs were floating about; each one separated like a pearl, she said, and yet was much taller than the church steeples built by men. They showed themselves in the strangest forms, and shone like diamonds. She had seated herself upon one of the greatest of all, and let the wind play with her long hair; and all the sailing ships tacked about in a very rapid way beyond where she sat: but toward evening the sky became covered with clouds, it thundered and lightened, and the black waves lifted the great ice-blocks high up, and let them glow in the red glare. On all the ships the sails were reefed, and there was fear and anguish. But she sat quietly upon her floating iceberg, and saw the forked blue flashes dart into the sea.     17   
  Each of the sisters, as she came up for the first time to the surface of the water, was delighted with the new and beautiful sights she saw; but as they now had permission, as grown-up girls, to go whenever they liked, it became indifferent to them. They wished themselves back again, and after a month had elapsed they said it was best of all down below, for there one felt so comfortably at home.     18   
  Many an evening hour the five sisters took one another by the arm and rose up in a row over the water. They had splendid voices, more charming than any mortal could have; and when a storm was approaching, so that they could apprehend that ships would go down, they swam on before the ships and sang lovely songs, which told how beautiful it was at the bottom of the sea, and exhorted the sailors not to be afraid to come down. But these could not understand the words, and thought it was the storm sighing; and they did not see the splendors below, for if the ships sank they were drowned, and came as corpses to the Sea-king’s palace.     19   
  When the sisters thus rose up, arm in arm, in the evening time, through the water, the little sister stood all alone looking after them; and she felt as if she must weep; but the sea-maid has no tears and for this reason she suffers far more acutely.     20   
  “O if I were only fifteen years old!” said she. “I know I shall love the world up there very much, and the people who live and dwell there.”     21   
  At last she was really fifteen years old.     22   
  “Now, you see, you are grown up,” said the grandmother, the old dowager. “Come, let me adorn you like your sisters.”     23   
  And she put a wreath of white lilies in the little maid’s hair, but each flower was half a pearl; and the old lady let eight great oysters attach themselves to the Princess’ tail, in token of her high rank.     24   
  “But that hurts so!” said the little Sea-maid.     25   
  “Yes, pride must suffer pain,” replied the old lady.     26   
  O how glad she would have been to shake off all the tokens of rank and lay aside the heavy wreath! Her red flowers in the garden suited her better; but she could not help it. “Farewell!” she said, and then she rose, light and clear as a water-bubble, up through the sea.     27   
  The sun had just set when she lifted her head above the sea, but all the clouds still shone like roses and gold, and in the pale red sky the evening-stars gleamed bright and beautiful. The air was mild and fresh, and the sea quite calm. There lay a great ship with three masts; one single sail only was set, for not a breeze stirred, and around in the shrouds and on the yards sat the sailors. There was music and singing, and as the evening closed in, hundreds of colored lanterns were lighted up, and looked as if the flags of every nation were waving in the air. The little Sea-maid swam straight to the cabin window, and each time the sea lifted her up she could look through the panes, which were clear as crystal, and see many people standing within dressed in their best. But the handsomest of all was the young Prince with the great black eyes: he was certainly not much more than sixteen years old; it was his birthday, and that was the cause of all this feasting. The sailors were dancing upon deck; and when the young Prince came out, more than a hundred rockets rose into the air; they shone like day, so that the little Sea-maid was quite startled, and dived under the water; but soon she put out her head again, and then it seemed just as if all the stars of heaven were falling down upon her. She had never seen such fire-works. Great suns spurted fire all around, glorious fiery fishes flew up into the blue air, and everything was mirrored in the clear blue sea. The ship itself was so brightly lit up that every separate rope could be seen, and the people therefore appeared the more plainly. O how handsome the young Prince was! And he pressed the people’s hands and smiled, while the music rang out in the glorious night.     28   
  It became late; but the little Sea-maid could not turn her eyes from the ship and from the beautiful Prince. The colored lanterns were extinguished, rockets ceased to fly into the air, and no more cannons were fired; but there was a murmuring and a buzzing deep down in the sea; and she sat on the water, swaying up and down, so that she could look into the cabin. But as the ship got more way, one sail after another was spread. And now the waves rose higher, great clouds came up, and in the distance there was lightning. O! it was going to be fearful weather, therefore the sailors furled the sails. The great ship flew in swift career over the wild sea: the waters rose up like great black mountains, which wanted to roll over the masts; but like a swan the ship dived into the valleys between these high waves, and then let itself be lifted on high again. To the little Sea-maid this seemed merry sport, but to the sailors it appeared very differently. The ship groaned and creaked; the thick planks were bent by the heavy blows; the sea broke into the ship; the mainmast snapped in two like a thin reed, and the ship lay over on her side, while the water rushed into the hold. Now the little Sea-maid saw that the people were in peril; she herself was obliged to take care to avoid the beams and fragments of the ship which were floating about on the waters. One moment it was so pitch dark that not a single object could be described, but when it lightened it became so bright that she could distinguish every one on board. She looked particularly for the young Prince, and when the ship parted she saw him sink into the sea. Then she was very glad, for now he would come down to her. But then she remembered that people could not live in the water, and that when he got down to her father’s palace he would certainly be dead. No, he must not die: so she swam about among the beams and planks that strewed the surface, quite forgetting that one of them might have crushed her. Diving down deep under the water, she again rose high up among the waves, and in this way she at last came to the Prince, who could scarcely swim longer in that stormy sea. His arms and legs began to fail him, his beautiful eyes closed, and he would have died had the little Sea-maid not come. She held his head up over the water, and then allowed the waves to carry her and him whither they listed.     29   
  When the morning came the storm had passed by. Of the ship not a fragment was to be seen. The sun came up red and shining out of the water; it was as if its beams brought back the hue of life to the cheeks of the Prince, but his eyes remained closed. The Sea-maid kissed his high, fair forehead and put back his wet hair, and he seemed to her to be like the marble statue in her little garden: she kissed him again and hoped that he might live.     30   
  Now she saw in front of her the dry land—high blue mountains, on whose summits the white snow gleamed as if swans were lying there. Down on the coast were glorious green forests, and a building—she could not tell whether it was a church or a convent—stood there. In its garden grew orange and citron-trees, and high palms waved in front of the gate. The sea formed a little bay there; it was quite calm, but very deep. Straight toward the rock where the fine white sand had been cast up, she swam with the handsome Prince, and laid him upon the sand, taking especial care that his head was raised in the warm sunshine.     31   
  Now all the bells rang in the great white building, and many young girls came walking through the garden. Then the little Sea-maid swam farther out between some high stones that stood up out of the water, laid some sea-foam upon her hair and neck, so that no one could see her little countenance, and then she watched to see who would come to the poor Prince.     32   
  In a short time a young girl went that way. She seemed to be much startled, but only for a moment; then she brought more people, and the Sea-maid perceived that the Prince came back to life, and that he smiled at all around him. But he did not cast a smile at her: he did not know that she had saved him. And she felt very sorrowful; and when he was led away into the great building, she dived mournfully under the water and returned to her father’s palace.     33   
  She had always been gentle and melancholy, but now she became much more so. Her sisters asked her what she had seen the first time she rose up to the surface, but she would tell them nothing.     34   
  Many an evening and many a morning she went up to the place where she had left the Prince. She saw how the fruits of the garden grew ripe and were gathered; she saw how the snow melted on the high mountain; but she did not see the Prince, and so she always returned home more sorrowful still. Then her only comfort was to sit in her little garden, and to wind her arm round the beautiful marble statue that resembled the Prince; but she did not tend her flowers; they grew as if in a wilderness over the paths, and trailed their long leaves and stalks up into the branches of trees, so that it became quite dark there.     35   
  At last she could endure it no longer, and told all to one of her sisters, and then the others heard of it too; but nobody knew of it beyond these and a few other sea-maids, who told the secret to their intimate friends. One of these knew who the Prince was; she too had seen the festival on board the ship; and she announced whence he came and where his kingdom lay.     36   
  “Come, little sister,” said the other Princesses; and linking their arms together, they rose up in a long row out of the sea, at the place where they knew the Prince’s palace lay.     37   
  This palace was built of a kind of bright yellow stone, with great marble staircases, one of which led directly down into the sea. Over the roof rose splendid gilt cupolas, and between the pillars which surrounded the whole dwelling, stood marble statues which looked as if they were alive. Through the clear glass in the high windows one looked into the glorious halls, where costly silk hangings and tapestries were hung up, and all the walls were decked with splendid pictures, so that it was a perfect delight to see them. In the midst of the greatest of these halls a great fountain plashed; its jets shot high up toward the glass dome in the ceiling, through which the sun shone down upon the water and upon the lovely plants growing in the great basin.     38   
  Now she knew where he lived, and many an evening and many a night she spent there on the water. She swam far closer to the land than any of the others would have dared to venture; indeed, she went quite up the narrow channel under the splendid marble balcony, which threw a board shadow upon the water. Here she sat and watched the young Prince, who thought himself quite alone in the bright moonlight.     39   
  Many an evening she saw him sailing, amid the sounds of music, in his costly boat with the waving flags; she peeped up through the green reeds, and when the wind caught her silver-white veil and any one saw it he thought it was a white swan spreading out its wings.     40   
  Many a night when the fishermen were on the sea with their torches, she heard much good told of the young Prince; and she rejoiced that she had saved his life when he was driven about, half dead, on the wild billows: she thought how quietly his head had reclined on her bosom, and how heartily she had kissed him; but he knew nothing of it, and could not even dream of her.     41   
  More and more she began to love mankind, and more and more she wished to be able to wander about among those whose world seemed far larger than her own. For they could fly over the sea in ships, and mount up the high hills far above the clouds, and the lands they possessed stretched out in woods and fields farther than her eyes could reach. There was much she wished to know, but her sisters could not answer all her questions; therefore she applied to the old grandmother; and the old lady knew the upper world, which she rightly called “the countries above the sea,” very well.

 “If people are not drowned,” asked the little Sea-maid, “can they live forever? Do they not die as we die down here in the sea?”     43   
  “Yes,” replied the old lady. “They too must die, and their life is even shorter than ours. We can live to be three hundred years old, but when we cease to exist here, we are turned into foam on the surface of the water, and have not even a grave down here among those we love. We have not an immortal soul; we never receive another life; we are like the green sea-weed, which, when once cut through, can never bloom again. Men, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, which lives on after the body has become dust; it mounts up through the clear air, up to all the shining stars! As we rise up out of the waters and behold all the lands of the earth, so they rise up to unknown glorious places which we can never see.”     44   
  “Why did we not receive an immortal soul?” asked the little Sea-maid, sorrowfully. “I would gladly give all the hundreds of years I have to live to be a human being only for one day, and to have a hope of partaking the heavenly kingdom.”     45   
  “You must not think of that,” replied the old lady. “We feel ourselves far more happy and far better than mankind yonder.”     46   
  “Then I am to die and be cast as foam upon the sea, not hearing the music of the waves, nor seeing the pretty flowers and the red sun? Can I not do anything to win an immortal soul?     47   
  “No!” answered the grandmother. “Only if a man were to love you so that you should be more to him than father or mother; if he should cling to you with his every thought and with all his love, and let the priest lay his right hand in yours with a promise of faithfulness here and in all eternity, then his soul would be imparted to your body, and you would receive a share of the happiness of mankind. He would give a soul to you and yet retain his own. But that can never come to pass. What is considered beautiful here in the sea—the fish-tail—they would consider ugly on the earth: they don’t understand it; there one must have the clumsy supports which they call legs, to be called beautiful.”     48   
  Then the little Sea-maid sighed and looked mournfully upon her fish—tail.     49   
  “Let us be glad!” said the old lady. “Let us dance and leap in the three hundred years we have to live. That is certainly long enough; after that we can rest ourselves all the better. This evening we shall have a court ball.”     50   
  It was a splendid sight, such as is never seen on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the great dancing-saloon were of thick but transparent glass. Several hundreds of huge shells, pink and grass-green, stood on each side in rows, filled with a blue fire which lit up the whole hall and shone through the walls, so that the sea without was quite lit up; one could see all the innumerable fishes, great and small, swimming toward the glass walls; of some the scales gleamed with purple, while in others they shone like silver and gold. Through the midst of the hall flowed a broad stream, and on this the sea-men and sea-women danced to their own charming songs. Such beautiful voices the people of the earth have not. The little Sea-maid sang the most sweetly of all, and the whole court applauded with hands and tails, and for a moment she felt gay in her heart, for she knew she had the loveliest voice of all in the sea or on the earth. But soon she thought again of the world above her; she could not forget the charming Prince, or her sorrow at not having an immortal soul like his. Therefore she crept out of her father’s palace, and while everything within was joy and gladness, she sat melancholy in her little garden. Then she heard the bugle horn sounding through the waters, and thought, “Now he is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes hang, and in whose hand I should like to lay my life’s happiness. I will dare everything to win him and an immortal soul. While my sisters dance yonder in my father’s palace, I will go to the sea-witch of whom I have always been so much afraid: perhaps she can counsel and help me.”     51   
  Now the little Sea-maid went out of her garden to the foaming whirlpools behind which the sorceress dwelt. She had never travelled that way before. No flowers grew there, no sea grass; only the naked gray sand stretched out toward the whirlpools, where the water rushed round like roaring mill-wheels and tore down everything it seized into the deep. Through the midst of these rushing whirlpools she was obliged to pass to get in to the domain of the witch; and for a long way there was no other road but one over warm gushing mud: this the witch called her turf-moor. Behind it lay her house in the midst of a singular forest, in which all the trees and bushes were polyps—half animals, half plants. They looked like hundred-headed snakes growing up out of the earth. All the branches were long, slimy arms, with fingers like supple worms, and they moved limb by limb from the root to the farthest point; all that they could seize on in the water they held fast and did not let it go. The little Sea-maid stopped in front of them quite frightened; her heart beat with fear, and she was near turning back; but then she thought of the Prince and the human soul, and her courage came back again. She bound her long flying hair closely around her head, so that the polyps might not seize it. She put her hands together on her breast and then shot forward, as a fish shoots through the water, among the ugly polyps, which stretched out their supple arms and fingers after her. She saw that each of them held something it had seized with hundreds of little arms, like strong iron bands. People who had perished at sea, and had sunk deep down, looked forth as white skeletons from among the polyps’ arms; ships’ oars and chests they also held fast, and skeletons of land animals, and a little sea-woman whom they had caught and strangled; and this seemed the most terrible of all to our little Princess.     52   
  Now she came to a great marshy place in the wood, where fat water-snakes rolled about, showing their ugly cream-colored bodies. In the midst of this marsh was a house built of white bones of ship-wrecked men; there sat the Sea-witch, feeding a toad out of her mouth, just as a person might feed a little canary-bird with sugar. She called the ugly fat water-snakes her little chickens, and allowed them to crawl upward and all about her.     53   
  “I know what you want,” said the Sea-witch. “It is stupid of you, but you shall have your way, for it will bring you to grief, my pretty Princess. You want to get rid of your fish-tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like those the people of the earth walk with, so that the young Prince may fall in love with you, and you may get an immortal soul.” And with this the Witch laughed loudly and disagreeably, so that the toad and the water-snakes tumbled down to the ground, where they crawled about. “You come just in time,” said the Witch: “after tomorrow at sunrise I could not help you until another year had gone by. I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before the sun rises, and seat yourself there and drink it; then your tail will shrivel up and become what the people of the earth call legs; but it will hurt you—it will seem as if you were cut with a sharp sword. All who see you will declare you to be the prettiest human being they ever beheld. You will keep your graceful walk; no dancer will be able to move so lightly as you; but every step you take will be as if you trod upon sharp knives, and as if your blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I can help you.”     54   
  “Yes!” said the little Sea-maid, with a trembling voice; and she thought of the Prince and the immortal soul.     55   
  “But remember,” said the Witch, “when you have once received a human form, you can never be a sea-maid again; you can never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father’s palace; and if you do not win the Prince’s love, so that he forgets father and mother for your sake, is attached to you heart and soul, and tells the priest to join your hands, you will not receive an immortal soul. On the first morning after he has married another your heart will break, and you will become foam on the water.”     56   
  “I will do it,” said the little Sea-maid: but she became as pale as death.     57   
  “But you must pay me, too,” said the Witch; “and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the finest voice of all here at the bottom of the water; with that you think to enchant him; but this voice you must give to me. The best thing you possess I will have for my costly draught! I must give you my own blood in it, so that the draught may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.”     58   
  “But if you take away my voice,” said the little Sea-maid, “what will remain to me?”     59   
  “Your beautiful form,” replied the Witch, “your graceful walk, and your speaking eyes: with those you can take captive a human heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue, and then I will cut it off for my payment, and then you shall have the strong draught.”     60   
  “It shall be so,” said the little Sea-maid.     61   
  And the Witch put on her pot to brew the draught.     62   
  “Cleanliness is a good thing,” said she; and she cleaned out the pot with the snakes, which she tied up in a big knot; then she scratched herself, and let her black blood drop into it. The stream rose up in the strangest forms, enough to frighten the beholder. Every moment the Witch threw something else into the pot; and when it boiled thoroughly, there was a sound like the weeping of a crocodile. At last the draught was ready. It looked like the purest water.     63   
  “There you have it,” said the Witch.     64   
  And she cut off the little Sea-maid’s tongue, so that now the Princess was dumb, and could neither sing nor speak.     65   
  She could see her father’s palace. The torches were extinguished in the great hall, and they were certainly sleeping within, but she did not dare to go to them, now that she was dumb and was about to quit them forever. She felt as if her heart would burst with sorrow. She crept into the garden, took a flower from each bed of her sisters, blew a thousand kisses toward the palace, and rose up through the dark blue sea.     66   
  The sun had not yet risen when she beheld the Prince’s castle, and mounted the splendid marble staircase. The moon shone beautifully clear. The little Sea-maid drank the burning sharp draught, and it seemed as if a two-edged sword went through her delicate body. She fell down in a swoon, and lay as if she were dead. When the sun shone out over the sea she awoke, and felt a sharp pain; but just before her stood the handsome young Prince. He fixed his coal-black eyes upon her, so that she cast down her own, and then she perceived that her fish-tail was gone, and that she had the prettiest pair of white feet a little girl could have. But she had no clothes, so she shrouded herself in her long hair. The Prince asked how she came there! and she looked at him mildly, but very mournfully, with her dark-blue eyes, for she could not speak. Then he took her by the hand, and led her into the castle. Each step she took was, as the Witch had told her, as if she had been treading on pointed needles and knives, but she bore it gladly. At the Prince’s right hand she moved on, light as a soap-bubble, and he, like all the rest, was astonished at her graceful, swaying movements.     67   
  She now received splendid clothes of silk and muslin. In the castle she was the most beautiful creature to be seen; but she was dumb, and could neither sing nor speak. Lovely slaves, dressed in silk and gold, stepped forward, and sang before the Prince and his royal parents; one sang more charmingly than all the rest, and the Prince smiled at her and clapped his hands. Then the little Sea-maid became sad; she knew that she herself had sung far more sweetly, and thought,—     68   
  “O! that he only knew I had given away my voice forever to be with him!”     69   
  Now the slaves danced pretty waving dances to the loveliest music; then the little Sea-maid lifted her beautiful white arms, stood on the tips of her toes, and glided dancing over the floor as no one had yet danced. At each movement her beauty became more apparent, and her eyes spoke more directly to the heart than the song of the slaves.     70   
  All were delighted, and especially the Prince, who called her his little foundling; and she danced again and again, although every time she touched the earth it seemed as if she were treading upon sharp knives. The Prince said that she should always remain with him, and she received permission to sleep on a velvet cushion before his door.     71   
  He had a page’s dress made for her, that she might accompany him on horseback. They rode through the blooming woods, where the green boughs swept their shoulders, and the little birds sang in the fresh leaves. She climbed with the Prince up the high mountains, and although her delicate feet bled so that even the others could see it, she laughed at it herself, and followed him until they saw the clouds sailing beneath them, like a flock of birds travelling to distant lands.     72   
  At home in the Prince’s castle, when the others slept at night, she went out on to the broad marble steps. It cooled her burning feet to stand in the cold sea-water, and then she thought of the dear ones in the deep.     73   
  Once, in the night-time, her sisters came, arm in arm. Sadly they sang as they floated above the water; and she beckoned to them, and they recognized her, and told her how she had grieved them all. Then she visited them every night; and once she saw in the distance her old grandmother, who had not been above the surface for many years, and the Sea-king with his crown upon his head. They stretched out their hands toward her, but did not venture so near the land as her sisters.     74   
  Day by day the Prince grew more fond of her. He loved her as one loves a dear, good child, but it never came into his head to make her his wife; and yet she must become his wife, or she would not receive an immortal soul, and would have to become foam on the sea on his marriage morning.     75   
  “Do you not love me best of them all?” the eyes of the little Sea-maid seemed to say, when he took her in his arms and kissed her fair forehead.     76   
  “Yes, you are the dearest to me!” said the Prince, “for you have the best heart of them all. You are the most devoted to me, and are like a young girl whom I once saw, but whom I certainly shall not find again. I was on board a ship which was wrecked. The waves threw me ashore near a holy temple where several young girls performed the service. The youngest of them found me by the shore and saved my life. I only saw her twice: she was the only one in the world I could love, but you chase her picture out of my mind, you are so like her. She belongs to the holy temple, and therefore my good fortune has sent you to me. We will never part!”     77   
  “Ah! he does not know that I saved his life,” thought the little Sea-maid. “I carried him over the sea to the wood where the temple stands. I sat there under the foam and looked to see if any one would come. I saw the beautiful girl whom he loves better than me.” And the Sea-maid sighed deeply—she could not weep. “The maiden belongs to the holy temple,” she said, “and will never come out into the world—they will meet no more. I am with him and see him every day; I will cherish him, love him, give up my life for him.”     78   
  But now they said that the Prince was to marry, and that the beautiful daughter of a neighboring King was to be his wife, and that was why such a beautiful ship was being prepared. The story was, that the Prince travelled to visit the land of the neighboring King, but it was done that he might see the King’s daughter. A great company was to go with him. The little Sea-maid shook her head and smiled; she knew the Prince’s thoughts far better than any of the others.     79   
  “I must travel,” he had said to her’ “I must see the beautiful Princess: my parents desire it, but they do not wish to compel me to bring her home as my bride. I cannot love her. She is not like the beautiful maiden in the temple whom you resemble. If I were to choose a bride, I would rather choose you, my dear dumb foundling with the speaking eyes.”     80   
  And he kissed her red lips and played with her long hair, so that she dreamed of happiness and of an immortal soul.     81   
  “You are not afraid of the sea, my dumb child?” said he, when they stood on the superb ship which was to carry him to the country of the neighboring King; and he told her of storm and calm, of strange fishes in the deep, and of what the divers had seen there. And she smiled at his tales, for she knew better than any one what happened at the bottom of the sea.     82   
  In the moonlight night, when all were asleep, except the steersman who stood by the helm, she sat on the side of the ship gazing down through the clear water. She fancied she saw her father’s palace. High on the battlements stood her old grandmother, with the silver crown on her head, and looking through the rushing tide up to the vessel’s keel. Then her sisters came forth over the water, and looked mournfully at her and wrung their white hands. She beckoned to them and smiled, and wished to tell them that she was well and happy; but the cabin-boy approached her and her sisters dived down, so that he thought the white objects he had seen were foam on the surface of the water.     83   
  The next morning the ship sailed into the harbor of the neighboring King’s splendid city. All the church bells sounded, and from the high towers the trumpets were blown, while the soldiers stood there with flying colors and flashing bayonets. Each day brought some festivity with it; balls and entertainments followed one another; but the Princess was not yet there. People said she was being educated in a holy temple far away, where she was learning every royal virtue. At last she arrived.     84   
  The little Sea-maid was anxious to see the beauty of the Princess, and was obliged to acknowledge it. A more lovely apparition she had never beheld. The Princess’ skin was pure and clear, and behind the long dark eyelashes there smiled a pair of faithful, dark-blue eyes.     85   
  “You are the lady who saved me when I lay like a corpse upon the shore!” said the Prince; and he folded his blushing bride to his heart. “O, I am too, too happy!” he cried to the little Sea-maid. “The best hope I could have is fulfilled. You will rejoice at my happiness, for you are the most devoted to me of them all!”     86   
  And the little Sea-maid kissed his hand; and it seemed already to her as if her heart was broken, for his wedding morning was to bring death to her, and change her into foam on the sea.     87   
  All the church bells were ringing, and heralds rode about the streets announcing the betrothal. On every altar fragrant oil was burning in gorgeous lamps of silver. The priests swung their censers, and bride and bridegroom laid hand in hand, and received the bishop’s blessing. The little Sea-maid was dressed in cloth of gold, and held up the bride’s train; but her ears heard nothing of the festive music, her eye marked not the holy ceremony; she thought of the night of her death, and of all that she had lost in this world.     88   
  On the same evening the bride and bridegroom went on board the ship. The cannon roared, all the flags waved; in the midst of the ship a costly tent of gold and purple, with the most beautiful cushions, had been set up, and there the married pair were to sleep in the cool, still night.     89   
  The sails swelled in the wind, and the ship glided smoothly and lightly over the clear sea. When it grew dark, colored lamps were lighted and the sailors danced merry dances on deck. The little Sea-maid thought of the first time when she had risen up out of the sea, and beheld a similar scene of splendor and joy; and she joined in the whirling dance, and flitted on as the swallow flits away when he is pursued; and all shouted and admired her, for she had danced so prettily. Her delicate feet were cut as if with knives, but she did not feel it, for her heart was wounded far more painfully. She knew this was the last evening on which she should see him for whom she had left her friends and her home, and had given up her beautiful voice, and had suffered unheard-of pains every day, while he was utterly unconscious of all. It was the last evening she should breathe the same air with him, and behold the starry sky and the deep sea; and everlasting night without thought or dream awaited her, for she had no soul, and could win none. And everything was merriment and gladness on the ship till past midnight, and she laughed and danced with thoughts of death in her heart. The Prince kissed his beautiful bride, and she played with his raven hair, and hand in hand they went to rest in the splendid tent. It became quiet on the ship; only the helmsman stood by the helm, and the little Sea-maid leaned her white arms upon the bulwark and gazed out toward the east for the morning dawn—the first ray, she knew, would kill her. Then she saw her sisters rising out of the flood; they were pale, like herself; their long, beautiful hair no longer waved in the wind; it had been cut off.     90   
  “We have given it to the witch, that we might bring you help, so that you may not die to-night. She has given us a knife; here it is—look! how sharp! Before the sun rises you must thrust it into the heart of the Prince, and when the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again into a fish-tail, and you will become a sea-maid again, and come back to us, and live your three hundred years before you become dead salt sea-foam. Make haste! He or you must die before the sun rises! Our old grandmother mourns so that her white hair has fallen off, as ours did under the witch’s scissors. Kill the Prince and come back! Make haste! Do you see that red streak in the sky? In a few minutes the sun will rise, and you must die!”     91   
  And they gave a very mournful sigh, and vanished beneath the waves. The little Sea-maid drew back the curtain from the tent, and saw the beautiful bride lying with her head on the Prince’s breast; and she bent down and kissed his brow, and gazed up at the sky where the morning red was gleaming brighter and brighter; then she looked at the sharp knife, and again fixed her eyes upon the Prince, who in his sleep murmured his bride’s name. She only was in his thoughts, and the knife trembled in the Sea-maid’s hand. But then she flung it far away into the waves—they gleamed red where it fell, and it seemed as if drops of blood spurted up out of the water. Once more she looked with half-extinguished eyes upon the Prince; then she threw herself from the ship into the sea, and felt her frame dissolving into foam.     92   
  Now the sun rose up out of the sea. The rays fell mild and warm upon the cold sea-foam, and the little Sea-maid felt nothing of death. She saw the bright sun, and over her head sailed hundreds of glorious ethereal beings—she could see them through the white sails of the ship and the red clouds of the sky; their speech was melody, but of such a spiritual kind that no human ear could hear it, just as no human eye could see them; without wings they floated through the air. The little Sea-maid found that she had a frame like these, and was rising more and more out of the foam.     93   
  “Whither am I going?” she asked; and her voice sounded like that of other beings, so spiritual, that no earthly music could be compared to it.     94   
  “To the daughters of the air!” replied the others. “A sea-maid has no immortal soul, and can never gain one, except she win the love of a mortal. Her eternal existence depends upon the power of another. The daughters of the air have likewise no immortal soul, but they can make themselves one through good deeds. We fly to the hot countries, where the close, pestilent air kills men, and there we bring coolness. We disperse the fragrance of the flowers through the air, and spread refreshment and health. After we have striven for three hundred years to accomplish all the good we can bring about, we receive an immortal soul, and take part in the eternal happiness of men. You, poor little Sea-maid, have striven with your whole heart after the goal we pursue; you have suffered and endured; you have by good works raised yourself to the world of spirits, and can gain an immortal soul after three hundred years.”     95   
  And the little Sea-maid lifted her glorified eyes toward God’s sun, and for the first time she felt them fill with tears. On the ship there was again life and noise. She saw the Prince and his bride searching for her; then they looked mournfully at the pearly foam, as if they knew that she had thrown herself into the waves. Invisible, she kissed the forehead of the bride, fanned the Prince, and mounted with the other children of the air on the rosy cloud which floated through the ether. After three hundred years we shall thus float into Paradise!     96   
  “And we may even get there sooner,” whispered a daughter of the air. “Invisibly we float into the houses of men where children are, and for every day on which we find a good child that brings joy to its parents and deserves their love, our time of probation is shortened. The child does not know when we fly through the room; and when we smile with joy at the child’s conduct, a year is counted off from the three hundred; but when we see a naughty or a wicked child, we shed tears of grief, and for every tear a day is added to our time of trial.”

The Elfin Mound   
   
   
SEVERAL large lizards were running quickly into the cleft of an old tree; they could understand each other perfectly, for they all spoke the lizard language.     1   
  “What a noise there is in the old Elfin mound!” said one of the Lizards. “What a rumbling and uproar! For two nights I have not been able to close my eyes, and might just as well have had a toothache, for then I certainly should not have slept.”     2   
  “There is a something going on there,” said the other Lizard. “They let the mound stand on four red poles till the crowing of the cock, to have it thoroughly aired; and the Elfin damsels have learnt new dances, in which there is some stamping. A something is going on, I’m sure.”     3   
  “Yes; I have spoken to an earth-worm of my acquaintance,” said the third Lizard. “The Earth-worm came direct from the mound, where day and night he had been rummaging about in the ground. He had heard a good deal; for he can see nothing, poor wretch, but eavesdropping and listening he understands to perfection. Visitors are expected at the Elfin mound; visitors of rank, but who they were, the Earth-worm either would not or could not say. All the Jacks-o’-the-lantern have been ordered to prepare a procession by torch-light; and all the silver and gold, of which there is plenty in the Elfin mound, will be polished and laid in the moonshine.”     4   
  “But who can the strangers be?” said all the Lizards. “What can be going on? Listen! what a humming and buzzing!”     5   
  At the same instant the Elfin mound opened, and an elderly Elfin damsel, without a back, but for the rest very respectably dressed, came tripping forth. It was the old Elfin King’s housekeeper; she was distantly related to him, and wore an amber heart on her forehead. Her feet were so nimble—trip—trap—trip—trap!—how she skipped along, right away to the moor to the Night-raven.     6   
  “You will be invited to the Elfin mound, and that tonight,” said she. “But would you not do us a great favor, and take charge of the invitations? As you do not give parties yourself, you must do us this service. Strangers of high rank are coming to us; magicians of no small importance, let me tell you; and so the old Elfin King wants to show himself off to advantage.”     7   
  “Who is to be invited?” asked the Night-raven.     8   
  “Why, to the grand ball everybody may come; men even, if they do but speak in their sleep, or are able to do something in our way. But the principal banquet is to be very select; those of the first rank only are to be invited. I have had a long discussion with the Elfin King; for, according to my notions, we cannot even ask ghosts. The Sea-god and his daughters must be invited first; ’tis true, they don’t much like coming on dry land, but they will have probably a wet stone to sit upon, or maybe something better still; and then, I think, they will not refuse for this once. We must have the old Mountain Dwarfs of the first class, with tails; the Elf of the Brook, and the Brownie, and then, I think, we must not omit the Swart Elf, and the Skeleton Horse: they belong, it is true, to the clergy, who are not of our sort; however, ’tis their office, and they are, moreover, nearly related to us, and are continually paying us visits.”     9   
  “Caw!” said the Night-raven, and flew away to invite the company.     10   
  The Elfin maidens were already dancing on the Elfin mound: they danced with long shawls, woven of haze and moonshine; and to all who like this sort of dancing, it seems pretty. In the centre of the Elfin mound was the great hall, splendidly ornamented; the floor was washed with moonshine, and the walls were rubbed with witches’ fat, so that they shone in the light like tulip-leaves. In the kitchen there was a great quantity of frogs among the dishes; adders’ skins, with little children’s fingers inside; salad of mushroom-seed; wet mice’s snouts and hemlock; beer, from the brewery of the old Witch of the Moor; sparkling saltpetre wine from a grave-cellar,—all very substantial eating: rusty nails and church-window glass were among the delicacies and kickshaws.     11   
  The old Elfin King had his golden crown polished with powdered slate-pencil. It was the pencil of the head-scholar; and to obtain this one is very difficult for the Elfin King.     12   
  They hung up the curtains in the bed-chamber, and fastened them with adder spittle. There was, indeed, a humming and a buzzing in the Elfin mound!     13   
  “Now we must perfume the place with singed hair and pigs’ bristles; and then I think I shall have done my share of the business,” said the little Elfin damsel.     14   
  “Dear papa,” said the least of the daughters, “shall I now know who the high visitors are?”     15   
  “Well then,” said he, “I suppose I must tell you. Two of my daughters are to show themselves off, in order to get married. Two will certainly be married. The aged Mountain Elf of Norway, who lives in the old Dovre-field, and possesses many craggy castles, and a gold-mine too,—which is a better thing than one imagines,—is coming here with his two sons; and they are to choose themselves wives. The hoary Elf is an honest old Norwegian, merry and straightforward. I have known him since many a long day, when we drank together to better acquaintance and good fellowship. He came here to fetch his wife,—she is dead now,—who was the daughter of the Rock-king. O, how I long to see the old northern Elf! His sons, people say, are coarse, blustering fellows; but maybe one wrongs them, and when older, they will improve.”     16   
  “And when will they come?” asked his daughter.     17   
  “That depends on wind and weather,” said the Elfin King. “They travel economically; they will come here by water. I wish they would go through Sweden; but the old gentleman has no inclination that way. He does not keep pace with the time, and that I can’t bear.”     18   
  At the same moment two Jacks-o’-the-lantern came hoping in, one faster than the other, and for that reason one was first.     19   
  “They’re coming! they’re coming!” cried they.     20   
  “Give me my crown; and let me stand in the moonshine,” said the Elfin King.     21   
  The daughters held up their long shawls and bowed to the earth.     22   
  There stood the hoary Mountain Elf, with a crown of hardened icicles and polished fir-cones on his head, and wrapped up in a mantle of fur and boots of the same. His sons, on the contrary, went with open throats, for they disdained the cold.     23   
  “Is that a mound?” asked the lesser of the youths, pointing to Elfin-home. “In Norway we call such a thing a hole.”     24   
  “Boy,” said the father, “a mound rises upward, and a hole goes inward. Have you no eyes in your head?”     25   
  Now they went into the Elfin mound, where there was very choice company, certainly; and had come together with such speed, one might have thought they had been borne thither on the breeze; however, the arrangements for every one were neat and pretty. The sea folk sat at table in large water-butts; and they said they felt just as if they were at home. All observed good manners at the table, except the two little Norwegian Mountain Elves, who put their feet on the board, for they thought that all they did was becoming.     26   
  “Take your feet away from the plates,” said the old Elf; and then they obeyed, although not immediately. They tickled the ladies next them with fir-cones; then they pulled off their boots, to be more at ease, and gave them to the ladies to hold for them; but their father was very different. He told about the proud Norwegian rocks, and of the water-falls, which, covered with foam, dashed downwards, raging and roaring like thunder; he told about the salmon, that leaps up against the falling waters, when the Spirit of the flood plays on her golden harp. He related about the clear winter nights, when the bells on the sledges jingle, and the youths run with flaming torches over the smooth ice, which is so transparent that they could see how affrighted the fishes were beneath their feet. He, indeed, could recount so that one saw and heard the things he described; when, huzza! all of a sudden, the old Elf gave one of the Elfin damsels a smacking kiss; and yet they were not even distantly related.     27   
  The Elfin maidens were now to dance, simple as well as stamping dances; and then came the most difficult one of all, the so-called “Dance out of the dance.” Confound it! their legs grew so long, one did not know which was the beginning nor which was the end: one could not distinguish legs from arms; all was twirling about in the air like sawdust; and they went whizzing round to such a degree that the Skeleton Horse grew quite sick, and was obliged to leave the table.     28   
  “Brrrrr!” said the gray-headed Elf; “that’s a regular Highland fling, as it’s called. But what can they do besides spinning about like a whirlwind?”     29   
  “That you shall see,” said the King, calling the youngest of his daughters. She was as delicate and fair as moonlight, and was the daintiest of all the sisters. She put a white wand in her mouth, and vanished. That was her art.     30   
  But the old Mountain Elf said, “This was an art he should not at all like in his wife, nor did he think his sons would either.”     31   
  The other could walk beside her own self, as though she had a shadow, which is a thing Elves never have.     32   
  The third one’s talent was of a very different kind; she had learned in the brewery of the Witch of the Moor, and she knew how to lard alder-wood with glow-worms.     33   
  “She would make a good housewife,” said the Mountain Elf, blinking, for he did not at all like drinking so much.     34   
  Then came the fourth Elfin maiden; she had a large golden harp, and when she touched the first string, everybody lifted up the left foot, for the Elves are all left-sided; and when she touched the next, everybody was forced to do whatever she pleased.     35   
  “That is a dangerous damsel,” said the Mountain Elf; but both his sons went out of the Elfin mound, for they were tired of it.     36   
  “What can the next daughter do?” asked the old Elf.     37   
  “I have learned to love the Norwegians,” said she; “and I will not marry unless I can go to Norway.”     38   
  But the youngest of the sisters whispered into the old Elf’s ear, “She only says that, because she has heard in an old Norwegian rhyme, that when even the world is at an end, the rocks of Norway will stand firm; and that’s the reason she wants to go there, for she is greatly afraid of death.”     39   
  “Ho, ho!” said the old Elf; “that’s the way the wind blows, is it? But what can the seventh and last do?”     40   
  “The sixth comes before the seventh,” said the Elfin King, for he knew how to count; but the sixth at first would not come forward.     41   
  “I can do nothing except tell people the truth,” said she. “No one troubles about me, and I have enough to do to get my shroud ready.”     42   
  Now came the seventh and last. And what could she do? She could tell as many fairy-tales as she chose.     43   
  “Here are my five fingers,” said the old Mountain Elf. “For each one tell me a story.”     44   
  And the Elfin maiden took hold of him by the wrist, and he laughed till he was almost choked; and when she came to the finger that wore a golden ring, just as if it knew that matrimony was going on, the old Elf said, “Hold fast what you have! The hand is yours! I will take you myself to wife!”     45   
  And the Elfin maiden said that the fairy-tale to the ring-finger and to the little finger were wanting.     46   
  “O, we’ll hear them in winter,” said the old Elf; “and about the fir-tree too, and about the birch, and the gifts of the wood-nymphs, and about the crackling frost. You shall have opportunities enough of telling stories, for no one understands that yonder. And there we will sit in our rocky dwelling, where the pine-torch is burning, and where we drink mead out of the golden horns of the old Norwegian kings; I got some as a present from the Water-spirit. And when we are sitting so together, Garbo will come to pay us a visit, and he will sing to you all the songs of the mountain maidens. How merry we shall be! The salmon will leap in the waterfall, and dash against the walls of rock; but he will not be able to come in to us, after all! Yes, yes; one leads a happy, comfortable life in dear old Norway! But where are the boys?”     47   
  Where were they? Why, they were running about the fields, blowing out the wills-o’-the-wisp that were coming quite orderly to have a procession with torches.     48   
  “What’s all this harum-scarum about?” said the old Elf. “I have taken a step-mother for you; methinks now you may choose a wife too.”     49   
  But they said they liked speechifying and boon companionship better, and had no taste for matrimony; and so they made speeches, tossed off their glasses, and turned them topsy-turvy, to show that they were quite empty. They then pulled off their coats, and lay down on the table to sleep. But the old Elf danced round the room with his young bride, and exchanged boots with her; for that is much more genteel than exchanging rings.     50   
  “The cock is crowing!” said the elderly damsel who attended to the housekeeping. “We must now bolt the shutters, lest the sun should spoil our complexions.”     51   
  And then the mound closed. The Lizards ran about and up and down the cleft tree and one said to the other, “How much I like the old Mountain Elf!”     52   
  “I like the merry boys better,” said the Earth-worm; but then he could not see, poor wretch!     5

The Wild Swans   
   
   
FAR away, where the swallows fly when our winter comes on, lived a King who had eleven sons, and one daughter named Eliza. The eleven brothers were Princes, and each went to school with a star on his breast and his sword by his side. They wrote with pencils of diamond upon slates of gold, and learned by heart just as well as they read; one could see directly that they were Princes. Their sister Eliza sat upon a little stool of plate-glass, and had a picture-book which had been bought for the value of half a kingdom.     1   
  O, the children were particularly well off; but it was not always to remain so.     2   
  Their father, who was king of the whole country, married a bad Queen who did not love the poor children at all. On the very first day they could notice this. In the whole palace there was great feasting, and the children were playing there. Then guests came; but instead of the children receiving, as they had been accustomed to do, all the spare cake and all the roasted apples, they only had some sand given them in a tea-cup, and were told that they might make believe that was something good.     3   
  The next week the Queen took the little sister Eliza into the country, to a peasant and his wife; and but a short time had elapsed before she told the King so many falsehoods about the poor Princes, that he did not trouble himself any more about them.     4   
  “Fly out into the world and get your own living,” said the wicked Queen. “Fly like great birds without a voice.”     5   
  But she could not make it so bad for them as she had intended, for they became eleven magnificent wild swans. With a strange cry they flew out of the palace windows, far over the park and into the wood.     6   
  It was yet quite early morning when they came by the place where their sister Eliza lay asleep in the peasant’s room. Here they hovered over the roof, turned their long necks, and flapped their wings; but no one heard or saw it. They were obliged to fly on, high up toward the clouds, far away into the wide world; there they flew into a great dark wood, which stretched away to the sea-shore.     7   
  Poor little Eliza stood in the peasant’s room and played with a green leaf, for she had no other playthings. And she pricked a hole in the leaf, and looked through it up at the sun, and it seemed to her that she saw her brothers’ clear eyes; each time the warm sun shone upon her cheeks she thought of all the kisses they had given her.     8   
  Each day passed just like the rest. When the wind swept through the great rose-hedges outside the house, it seemed to whisper to them, “What can be more beautiful than you?” But the roses shook their heads, and answered, “Eliza!” And when the old woman sat in front of her door on Sunday and read in her hymn-book, the wind turned the leaves and said to the book, “Who can be more pious than you?” and the hymn-book said, “Eliza!” And what the rose—bushes and the hymn-book said was the simple truth.     9   
  When she was fifteen years old, she was to go home. And when the Queen saw how beautiful she was, she became spiteful, and filled with hatred toward her. She would have been glad to change her into a wild swan, like her brothers, but she did not dare to do so at once, because the King wished to see his daughter.     10   
  Early in the morning the Queen went into the bath, which was built of white marble, and decked with soft cushions and the most splendid tapestry; and she took three toads and kissed them, and said to the first,—     11   
  “Sit upon Eliza’s head when she comes into the bath, that she may become as stupid as you. Seat yourself upon her forehead,” she said to the second, “that she may become as ugly as you, and her father may not know her. Rest on her heart,” she whispered to the third, “that she may receive an evil mind and suffer pain from it.”     12   
  Then she put the toads into the clear water, which at once assumed a green color; and calling Eliza, caused her to undress and step into the water. And while Eliza dived, one of the toads sat upon her hair, and the second on her forehead, and the third on her heart; but she did not seem to notice it; and as soon as she rose, three red poppies were floating on the water. If the creatures had not been poisonous, and if the witch had not kissed them, they would have been changed into red roses. But at any rate they became flowers, because they had rested on the girl’s head, and forehead, and heart. She was too good and innocent for sorcery to have power over her.     13   
  When the wicked Queen saw that, she rubbed Eliza with walnut juice, so that the girl became dark brown, and smeared a hurtful ointment on her face, and let her beautiful hair hang in confusion. It was quite impossible to recognize the pretty Eliza.     14   
  When her father saw her he was much shocked, and declared this was not his daughter. No one but the yard dog and the swallows would recognize her; but they were poor animals who had nothing to say in the matter.     15   
  Then poor Eliza wept, and thought of her eleven brothers who were all away. Sorrowfully she crept out of the castle, and walked all day over field and moor till she came into the great wood. She did not know whither she wished to go, only she felt very downcast, and longed for her brothers: they had certainly been, like herself, thrust forth into the world, and she would seek for them and find them.     16   
  She had been only a short time in the wood when the night fell; she quite lost the path, therefore she lay down upon the soft moss, prayed her evening prayer, and leaned her head against the stump of a tree. Deep silence reigned around, the air was mild, and in the grass and in the moss gleamed like a green fire hundreds of glow-worms; when she lightly touched one of the twigs with her hand, the shining insects fell down upon her like shooting stars.     17   
  The whole night long she dreamed of her brothers. They were children again playing together, writing with their diamond pencils upon their golden slates, and looking at the beautiful picture-book which had cost half a kingdom. But on the slates they were not writing, as they had been accustomed to do, lines and letters, but the brave deeds they had done, and all they had seen and experienced; and in the picture-book everything was alive—the birds sang, and the people went out of the book and spoke with Eliza and her brothers. But when the leaf was turned, they jumped back again directly, so that there should be no confusion.     18   
  When she awoke the sun was already standing high. She could certainly not see it, for the lofty trees spread their branches far and wide above her. But the rays played there above like a gauzy veil, there was a fragrance from the fresh verdure, and the birds almost perched upon her shoulders. She heard the plashing of water: it was from a number of springs all flowing into a lake which had the most delightful sandy bottom. It was surrounded by thick growing bushes, but at one part the stags had made a large opening, and here Eliza went down to the water. The lake was so clear, that if the wind had not stirred the branches and the bushes, so that they moved, one would have thought they were painted upon the depths of the lake, so clearly was every leaf mirrored, whether the sun shone upon it or whether it lay in shadow.     19   
  When Eliza saw her own face she was terrified—so brown and ugly was she; but when she wetted her little hand and rubbed her eyes and her forehead, the white skin gleamed forth again. Then she undressed and went down into the fresh water: a more beautiful king’s daughter than she was could not be found in the world. And when she had dressed herself again and plaited her long hair, she went to the bubbling spring, drank out of the hollow of her hand, and then wandered into the wood, not knowing whither she went. She thought of her dear brothers, and knew that Heaven would certainly not forsake her. It is God who lets the wild apples grow, to satisfy the hungry. He showed her a wild apple-tree, with the boughs bending under the weight of the fruit. Here she took her midday meal, placing props under the boughs, and then went into the darkest part of the forest. There it was so still that she could hear her own footsteps, as well as the rustling of every dry leaf which bent under her feet. Not one bird was to be seen, not one ray of sunlight could find its way through the great dark boughs of the trees; the lofty trunks stood so close together that when she looked before her it appeared as though she were surrounded by sets of palings one behind the other. O, here was solitude such as she had never before known!     20   
  The night came on quite dark. Not a single glow-worm now gleamed in the grass. Sorrowfully she lay down to sleep. Then it seemed to her as if the branches of the trees parted above her head, and mild eyes of angels looked down upon her from on high.     21   
  When the morning came, she did not know if it had really been so or if she had dreamed it.     22   
  She went a few steps forward, and then she met an old woman with berries in her basket, and the old woman gave her a few of them. Eliza asked the dame if she had not seen eleven Princes riding through the wood.     23   
  “No,” replied the old woman, “but yesterday I saw eleven swans swimming in the river close by, with golden crowns on their heads.”     24   
  And she led Eliza a short distance farther, to a declivity, and at the foot of the slope a little river wound its way. The trees on its margin stretched their long leafy branches across toward each other, and where their natural growth would not allow them to come together the roots had been torn out of the ground, and hung, intermingled with the branches, over the water.     25   
  Eliza said farewell to the old woman, and went beside the river to the place where the stream flowed out to the great open ocean.     26   
  The whole glorious sea lay before the young girl’s eyes, but not one sail appeared upon its surface, and not a boat was to be seen. How was she to proceed? She looked at the innumerable little pebbles on the shore; the water had worn them all around. Glass, iron-stones, everything that was there, had received its shape from the water, which was much softer than even her delicate hand.     27   
  “It rolls on unweariedly, and thus what is hard becomes smooth. I will be just as unwearied. Thanks for your lesson, you clear rolling waves; my heart tells me that one day you will lead me to my dear brothers.”     28   
  On the foam-covered sea-grass lay eleven white swan feathers, which she collected into a bunch. Drops of water were upon them—whether they were dew-drops or tears nobody could tell. Solitary it was there on the strand, but she did not feel it, for the sea showed continual changes— more in a few hours than the lovely lakes can produce in a whole year. Then a great black cloud came. It seemed as if the sea would say, “I can look angry too;” and then the wind blew and the waves turned their white side outward. But when the clouds gleamed red and the winds slept, the sea looked like a rose leaf; sometimes it became green, sometimes white. But however quietly it might rest, there was still a slight motion on the shore; the water rose gently like the breast of a sleeping child.     29   
  When the sun was just about to set, Eliza saw eleven wild swans, with crowns on their heads, flying toward the land: they swept along one after the other, so that they looked like a long white band. Then Eliza descended the slope and hid herself behind a bush. The swans alighted near her and flapped their great white wings.     30   
  As soon as the sun had disappeared beneath the water, the swans’ feathers fell off, and eleven handsome Princes, Eliza’s brothers, stood there. She uttered a loud cry, for although they were greatly altered, she knew and felt that it must be they. And she sprang into their arms and called them by their names; and the Princes felt supremely happy when they saw their little sister again; and they knew her, though she was now tall and beautiful. They smiled and wept; and soon they understood how cruel their step-mother had been to them all.     31   
  “We brothers,” said the eldest, “fly about as wild swans as long as the sun is in the sky, but directly it sinks down we receive our human form again. Therefore we must always take care that we have a resting-place for our feet when the sun sets, for if at that moment we were flying up toward the clouds, we should sink down into the deep as men. We do not dwell here; there lies a land just as fair as this beyond the sea. But the way thither is long; we must cross the great sea, and on our path there is no island where we could pass the night, only a little rock stands forth in the midst of the waves; it is but just large enough for us to rest upon it close to each other. If the sea is rough, the foam spurts far over us, but we thank God for the rock. There we pass the night in our human form; but for this rock we could never visit our beloved native land, for we require two of the longest days in the year for our journey. Only once in each year is it granted to us to visit our home. For eleven days we may stay here and fly over the great wood, from whence we can see the palace in which we were born, and in which our father lives, and the high church tower, beneath whose shade our mother lies buried. Here it seems to us as though the bushes and trees were our relatives; here the wild horses career across the steppe, as we have seen them do in our childhood; here the charcoal-burner sings the old songs to which we danced as children; here is our father-land; hither we feel ourselves drawn, and here we have found you, our dear little sister. Two days more we may stay here; then we must away across the sea to a glorious land, but which is not our native land. How can we bear you away? for we have neither ship nor boat.”     32   
  “In what way can I release you?” asked the sister; and they conversed nearly the whole night, only slumbering for a few hours.     33   
  She was awakened by the rustling of the swans’ wings above her head. Her brothers were again enchanted, and they flew in wide circles and at last far away; but one of them, the youngest, remained behind, and the swan laid his head in her lap, and she stroked his wings; and the whole day they remained together. Towards evening the others came back, and, when the sun had gone down, they stood there in their own shapes.     34   
  “To-morrow we fly away from here, and cannot come back until a whole year has gone by. But we cannot leave you thus! Have you courage to come with us? My arm is strong enough to carry you in the wood; and should not all our wings be strong enough to fly with you over the sea?”     35   
  “Yes, take me with you,” said Eliza.     36   
  The whole night they were occupied in weaving a net of the pliable willow bark and tough reeds; and it was great and strong. On this net Eliza lay down; and when the sun rose, and her brothers were changed into wild swans, they seized the net with their beaks, and flew with their beloved sister, who was still asleep, high up towards the clouds. The sunbeams fell exactly upon her face, so one of the swans flew over her head, that his broad wings might over-shadow her.

  They were far away from the shore when Eliza awoke: she was still dreaming, so strange did it appear to her to be carried high through the air and over the sea. By her side lay a branch with beautiful ripe berries, and a bundle of sweet-tasting roots. The youngest of the brothers had collected them and placed them there for her. She smiled at him thankfully, for she recognized him; he it was who flew over her and shaded her with his wings.     38   
  They were so high that the greatest ship they descried beneath them seemed like a white sea-gull lying upon the waters. A great cloud stood behind them—it was a perfect mountain; and upon it Eliza saw her own shadow and those of the eleven swans; there they flew on, gigantic in size. Here was a picture, a more splendid one than she had ever yet seen. But as the sun rose higher and the cloud was left farther behind them, the floating, shadowy images vanished away.     39   
  The whole day they flew onward through the air, like a whirring arrow, but their flight was slower than it was wont to be, for they had their sister to carry. Bad weather came on; the evening drew near; Eliza looked anxiously at the setting sun, for the lonely rock in the ocean could not be seen. It seemed to her as if the swans beat the air more strongly with their wings. Alas! she was the cause that they did not advance fast enough. When the sun went down, they must become men and fall into the sea and drown. Then she prayed a prayer from the depths of her heart; but still she could descry no rock. The dark clouds came nearer in a great, black, threatening body, rolling forward like a mass of lead, and the lightning burst forth, flash upon flash.     40   
  Now the sun just touched the margin of the sea. Eliza’s heart trembled. Then the swans darted downward so swiftly that she thought they were falling, but they paused again. The sun was half hidden below the water. And now for the first time she saw the little rock beneath her, and it looked no larger than a seal might look, thrusting his head forth from the water. The sun sank very fast; at last it appeared only like a star; and then her foot touched the firm land. The sun was extinguished like the last spark in a piece of burned paper; her brothers were standing around her, arm in arm, but there was not more than just enough room for her and for them. The sea beat against the rock and went over her like small rain; the sky glowed in continual fire, and peal on peal the thunder rolled; but sister and brothers held each other by the hand and sang psalms, from which they gained comfort and courage.     41   
  In the morning twilight the air was pure and calm. As soon as the sun rose the swans flew away with Eliza from the island. The sea still ran high, and when they soared up aloft the white foam looked like millions of white swans swimming upon the water.     42   
  When the sun mounted higher, Eliza saw before her, half floating in the air, a mountainous country with shining masses of ice on its water, and in the midst of it rose a castle, apparently a mile long, with row above row of elegant columns, while beneath waved the palm woods and bright flowers as large as mill-wheels. She asked if this was the country to which they were bound, but the swans shook their heads, for what she beheld was the gorgeous, ever-changing palace of Fata Morgana, and into this they might bring no human being. As Eliza gazed at it, mountains, woods, and castle fell down, and twenty proud churches, all nearly alike, with high towers and pointed windows, stood before them. She fancied she heard the organs sounding, but it was the sea she heard. When she was quite near the churches they changed to a fleet sailing beneath her, but when she looked down it was only a sea-mist gliding over the ocean. Thus she had a continual change before her eyes, till at last she saw the real land to which they were bound. There arose the most glorious blue mountains, with cedar forests, cities, and palaces. Long before the sun went down she sat on the rock, in front of a great cave overgrown with delicate green trailing plants looking like embroidered carpets.     43   
  “Now we shall see what you will dream of here—to-night,” said the youngest brother; and he showed her to her bed-chamber.     44   
  “Heaven grant that I may dream of a way to release you,” she replied.     45   
  And this thought possessed her mightily, and she prayed ardently for help; yes, even in her sleep she continued to pray. Then it seemed to her as if she were flying high in the air to the cloudy palace of Fata Morgana; and the fairy came out to meet her, beautiful and radiant; and yet the fairy was quite like the old woman who had given her the berries in the wood, and had told her of the swans with golden crowns on their heads.     46   
  “Your brothers can be released,” said she. “But have you courage and perseverance? Certainly, water is softer than your delicate hands, and yet it changes the shape of stones; but it feels not the pain that your finger will feel; it has no heart, and cannot suffer the agony and torment you will have to endure. Do you see the stinging-nettle which I hold in my hand? Many of the same kind grow around the cave in which you sleep: those only, and those that grow upon church-yard graves, are serviceable,—remember that. Those you must pluck, though they will burn your hands into blisters. Break these nettles to pieces with your feet, and you will have flax; of this you must plait and weave eleven shirts of mail with long sleeves: throw these over the eleven swans, and the charm will be broken. But recollect well, from the moment you begin this work until it is finished, even though it should take years to accomplish, you must not speak. The first word you utter will pierce your brothers’ hearts like a deadly dagger. Their lives hang on your tongue. Remember all this!”     47   
  And she touched her hand with the nettle; it was like a burning fire, and Eliza woke with the smart. It was broad daylight; and close by the spot where she had slept lay a nettle like the one she had seen in her dream. She fell upon her knees and prayed gratefully, and went forth from the cave to begin her work.     48   
  With her delicate hands she groped among the ugly nettles. These stung like fire, burning great blisters on her arms and hands; but she thought she would bear it gladly if she could only release her dear brothers. Then she bruised every nettle with her bare feet and plaited the green flax.     49   
  When the sun had set her brothers came, and they were frightened when they found her dumb. They thought it was some new sorcery of their wicked stepmother’s; but when they saw her hands, they understood what she was doing for their sake, and the youngest brother wept. And where his tears dropped she felt no more pains, and the burning blisters vanished.     50   
  She passed the night at her work, for she could not sleep till she had delivered her dear brothers. The whole of the following day, while the swans were away, she sat in solitude, but never had time flown so quickly with her as now. One shirt of mail was already finished, and now she began the second.     51   
  Then a hunting-horn sounded among the hills, and she was struck with fear. The noise came nearer and nearer; she heard the barking dogs, and timidly she fled into the cave, bound into a bundle the nettles she had collected and prepared, and sat upon the bundle.     52   
  Immediately a great dog came bounding out of the ravine, and then another, and another; they barked loudly, ran back, and then came again. Only a few minutes had passed before all the huntsmen stood before the cave, and the handsomest of them was the King of the country. He came forward to Eliza, for he had never seen a more beautiful maiden.     53   
  “How did you come hither, you delightful child?” he asked.     54   
  Eliza shook her head, for she might not speak—it would cost her brothers their deliverance and their lives. And she hid her hands under her apron, so that the King might not see what she was suffering.     55   
  “Come with me,” said he. “You cannot stop here. If you are as good as you are beautiful, I will dress you in velvet and silk, and place the golden crown on your head, and you shall dwell in my richest castle, and rule.”     56   
  And then he lifted her on his horse. She wept and wrung her hands; but the King said:—     57   
  “I only wish for your happiness; one day you will thank me for this.”     58   
  And then he galloped away among the mountains with her on his horse, and the hunters galloped at their heels.     59   
  When the sun went down, the fair, regal city lay before them, with its churches and cupolas; and the King led her into the castle, where great fountains plashed in the lofty marble halls, and where walls and ceilings were covered with glorious pictures. But she had no eyes for all this—she only wept and mourned. Passively she let the woman put royal robes upon her, and weave pearls in her hair, and draw dainty gloves over her blistered fingers.     60   
  When she stood there in full array, she was dazzlingly beautiful, so that the court bowed deeper than ever. And the King chose her for his bride, although the Archbishop shook his head and whispered that the beauteous, fresh maid was certainly a witch, who blinded the eyes and led astray the heart of the King.     61   
  But the King gave no ear to this, but ordered that the music should sound, and the costliest dishes should be served, and the most beauteous maidens should dance before them. And she was led through fragrant gardens into gorgeous halls; but never a smile came upon her lips or shone in her eyes: there she stood, a picture of grief. Then the King opened a little chamber close by, where she was to sleep. This chamber was decked with splendid green tapestry, and completely resembled the cave in which she had been. On the floor lay the bundle of flax which she had prepared from the nettles, and under the ceiling hung the shirt of mail she had completed. All these things one of the huntsmen had brought with him as curiosities.     62   
  “Here you may dream yourself back in your former home,” said the King. “Here is the work which occupied you there, and now, in the midst of all your splendor, it will amuse you to think of that time.”     63   
  When Eliza saw this that lay so near her heart, a smile played round her mouth and the crimson blood came back into her cheeks. She thought of her brothers’ deliverance, and kissed the King’s hand; and he pressed her to his heart, and caused the marriage feast to be announced by all the church bells. The beautiful dumb girl out of the wood was to become the Queen of the country.     64   
  Then the Archbishop whispered evil words into the King’s ear, but they did not sink into the King’s heart. The marriage would take place; the Archbishop himself was obliged to place the crown on her head, and with wicked spite he pressed the narrow circlet so tightly upon her brow that it pained her. But a heavier ring lay close around her heart— sorrow for her brothers; she did not feel the bodily pain. Her mouth was dumb, for a single word would cost her brothers their lives, but her eyes glowed with love for the kind, handsome King, who did everything to rejoice her. She loved him with her whole heart, more and more every day. O that she had been able to confide in him and to tell him of her grief! But she was compelled to be dumb, and to finish her work in silence. Therefore at night she crept away from his side, and went quietly into the little chamber which was decorated like the cave, and wove one shirt of mail after another. When she began the seventh she had no flax left.     65   
  She knew that in the church-yard nettles were growing that she could use; but she must pick them herself, and how was she to go out there?     66   
  “O, what is the pain in my fingers to the torment my heart endures?” thought she. “I must venture it, and help will not be denied me!”     67   
  With a trembling heart, as though the deed she purposed doing had been evil, she crept into the garden in the moonlight night, and went through the lanes and through the deserted streets to the church-yard. There, on one of the broadest tombstones, she saw sitting a circle of lamias. These hideous wretches took off their ragged garments, as if they were going to bathe; then with their skinny fingers they clawed open the fresh graves, and with fiendish greed they snatched up the corpses and ate the flesh. Eliza was obliged to pass close by them, and they fastened their evil glances upon her; but she prayed silently, and collected the burning nettles, and carried them into the castle.     68   
  Only one person had seen her, and that was the Archbishop. He was awake while others slept. Now he felt sure his opinion was correct, that all was not as it should be with the Queen; she was a witch, and thus she had bewitched the King and the whole people.     69   
  In secret he told the King what he had seen and what he feared; and when the hard words came from this tongue, the pictures of saints in the cathedral shook their heads, as though they could have said, “It is not so! Eliza is innocent!” But the Archbishop interpreted this differently—he thought they were bearing witness against her, and shaking their heads at her sinfulness. Then two heavy tears rolled down the King’s cheeks; he went home with doubt in his heart, and at night pretended to be asleep; but no quiet sleep came upon his eyes, for her noticed Eliza got up. Every night she did this, and each time he followed her silently, and saw how she disappeared from her chamber.     70   
  From day to day his face became darker. Eliza saw it, but did not understand the reason; but if frightened her—and what did she not suffer in her heart of her brothers? Her hot tears flowed upon the royal velvet and purple; they lay there like sparkling diamonds, and all who saw the splendor wished they were queens. In the mean time she had almost finished her work. Only one shirt of mail was still to be completed, but she had no flax left, and not a single nettle. Once more, for the last time, therefore, she must go to the church-yard, only to pluck a few handfuls. She thought with terror of this solitary wandering and of the horrible lamias, but her will was firm as her trust in Providence.     71   
  Eliza went on, but the King and the Archbishop followed her. They saw her vanish into the church-yard through the wicket-gate; and when they drew near, the lamias were sitting upon the tombstone as Eliza had seen them; and the King turned aside, for he fancied her among them, whose head had rested against his breast that very evening.     72   
  “The people must condemn her,” said he.     73   
  And the people condemned her to suffer death by fire.     74   
  Out of the gorgeous regal halls she was led into a dark, damp cell, where the wind whistled through the grated window; instead of velvet and silk they gave her the bundle of nettles which she had collected; on this she could lay her head; and the hard, burning coats of mail which she had woven were to be her coverlet. But nothing could have been given her that she liked better. She resumed her work and prayed. Without, the street boys were singing jeering songs about her, and not a soul comforted her with a kind word.     75   
  But toward evening there came the whirring of a swan’s wings close by the grating—it was the youngest of her brothers. He had found his sister, and she sobbed aloud with joy, though she knew that the approaching night would probably be the last she had to live. But now the work was almost finished, and her brothers were here.     76   
  Now came the Archbishop, to stay with her in her last hour, for he had promised the King to do so. And she shook her head, and with looks and gestures she begged him to depart, for in this night she must finish her work, or else all would be in vain, all her tears, her pain, and her sleepless nights. The Archbishop withdrew, uttering evil words against her; but poor Eliza knew she was innocent, and continued her work.     77   
  It was still twilight; not till an hour afterward would the sun rise. And the eleven brothers stood at the castle gate, and demanded to be brought before the King. That could not be, they were told, for it was still almost night; the King was asleep, and might not be disturbed. They begged, they threatened, and the sentries came, yes, even the King himself came out, and asked what was the meaning of this. At that moment the sun rose, and no more were the brothers to be seen, but eleven wild swans flew away over the castle.     78   
  All the people came flocking out at the town gate, for they wanted to see the witch burned. An old horse drew the cart on which she sat. They had put upon her a garment of coarse sackcloth. Her lovely hair hung loose about her beautiful head; her cheeks were as pale as death; and her lips moved silently, while her fingers were engaged with the green flax. Even on the way to death she did not interrupt the work she had begun; the ten shirts of mail lay at her feet, and she wrought at the eleventh. The mob derided her.     79   
  “Look at the red witch, how she mutters! She has no hymn-book in her hand; no, there she sits with her ugly sorcery—tear it in a thousand pieces!”     80   
  And they all pressed upon her, and wanted to tear up the shirts of mail. Then eleven wild swans came flying up, and sat round about her on the cart, and beat with their wings; and the mob gave way before them, terrified.     81   
  “That is a sign from Heaven! She is certainly innocent!” whispered many. But they did not dare to say it aloud.     82   
  Now the executioner seized her by the hand; then she hastily threw the eleven shirts over the swans, and immediately eleven handsome Prince stood there. But the youngest had a swan’s wing instead of an arm, for a sleeve was wanting to his shirt—she had not quite finished it.     83   
  “Now I may speak!” she said. “I am innocent!”     84   
  And the people who saw what happened bowed before her as before a saint; but she sank lifeless into her brothers’ arms, such an effect had suspense, anguish, and pain had upon her.     85   
  “Yes, she is innocent,” said the eldest brother.     86   
  And now he told everything that had taken place; and while he spoke a fragrance arose as of a million of roses, for every piece of fagot in the pile had taken root and was sending forth shoots; and a fragrant hedge stood there, tall and great, covered with red roses, and at the top a flower, white and shining, gleaming like a star. This flower the King plucked and placed in Eliza’s bosom; and she arose with peace and happiness in her heart.     87   
  And all the church bells rang of themselves, and the birds came in great flocks. And back to the castle went such a marriage-procession as no King had ever seen.     88