THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES(Page 8)

‘‘To be sure,’ said he. ‘And there in the corner stood a
waterpail, where I used to swim my boats.’
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‘‘True; but first we went to school to learn somewhat,’
said she; ‘and then we were confirmed. We both cried;
but in the afternoon we went up the Round Tower, and
looked down on Copenhagen, and far, far away over the
water; then we went to Friedericksberg, where the King
and the Queen were sailing about in their splendid barges.’
‘‘But I had a different sort of sailing to that, later; and
that, too, for many a year; a long way off, on great
voyages.’
‘‘Yes, many a time have I wept for your sake,’ said she.
‘I thought you were dead and gone, and lying down in the
deep waters. Many a night have I got up to see if the wind
had not changed: and changed it had, sure enough; but
you never came. I remember so well one day, when the
rain was pouring down in torrents, the scavengers were

before the house where I was in service, and I had come
up with the dust, and remained standing at the door—it
was dreadful weather—when just as I was there, the
postman came and gave me a letter. It was from you!
What a tour that letter had made! I opened it instantly and
read: I laughed and wept. I was so happy. In it I read that
you were in warm lands where the coffee-tree grows.
What a blessed land that must be! You related so much,
and I saw it all the while the rain was pouring down, and I
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standing there with the dust-box. At the same moment
came someone who embraced me.’
‘‘Yes; but you gave him a good box on his ear that
made it tingle!’
‘‘But I did not know it was you. You arrived as soon as
your letter, and you were so handsome—that you still
are—and had a long yellow silk handkerchief round your
neck, and a bran new hat on; oh, you were so dashing!
Good heavens! What weather it was, and what a state the
street was in!’
‘‘And then we married,’ said he. ‘Don’t you remember?
And then we had our first little boy, and then Mary, and
Nicholas, and Peter, and Christian.’
‘‘Yes, and how they all grew up to be honest people,
and were beloved by everybody.’
’ ‘And their children also have children,’ said the old
sailor; ‘yes, those are our grand-children, full of strength
and vigor. It was, methinks about this season that we had
our wedding.’
‘‘Yes, this very day is the fiftieth anniversary of the
marriage,’ said old Granny, sticking her head between the
two old people; who thought it was their neighbor who
nodded to them. They looked at each other and held one
another by the hand. Soon after came their children, and
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their grand-children; for they knew well enough that it
was the day of the fiftieth anniversary, and had come with
their gratulations that very morning; but the old people
had forgotten it, although they were able to remember all
that had happened many years ago. And the Elderbush
sent forth a strong odour in the sun, that was just about to
set, and shone right in the old people’s faces. They both
looked so rosy-cheeked; and the youngest of the
grandchildren danced around them, and called out quite
delighted, that there was to be something very splendid
that evening—they were all to have hot potatoes. And old
Nanny nodded in the bush, and shouted ‘hurrah!’ with the
rest.’
‘But that is no fairy tale,’ said the little boy, who was
listening to the story.
‘The thing is, you must understand it,’ said the narrator;
‘let us ask old Nanny.’
‘That was no fairy tale, ‘tis true,’ said old Nanny; ‘but
now it’s coming. The most wonderful fairy tales grow out
of that which is reality; were that not the case, you know,
my magnificent Elderbush could not have grown out of
the tea-pot.’ And then she took the little boy out of bed,
laid him on her bosom, and the branches of the Elder
Tree, full of flowers, closed around her. They sat in an
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aerial dwelling, and it flew with them through the air. Oh,
it was wondrous beautiful! Old Nanny had grown all of a
sudden a young and pretty maiden; but her robe was still
the same green stuff with white flowers, which she had
worn before. On her bosom she had a real Elderflower,
and in her yellow waving hair a wreath of the flowers; her
eyes were so large and blue that it was a pleasure to look at
them; she kissed the boy, and now they were of the same
age and felt alike.
Hand in hand they went out of the bower, and they
were standing in the beautiful garden of their home. Near
the green lawn papa’s walking-stick was tied, and for the
little ones it seemed to be endowed with life; for as soon
as they got astride it, the round polished knob was turned
into a magnificent neighing head, a long black mane
fluttered in the breeze, and four slender yet strong legs
shot out. The animal was strong and handsome, and away
they went at full gallop round the lawn.
‘Huzza! Now we are riding miles off,’ said the boy.
‘We are riding away to the castle where we were last
year!’
And on they rode round the grass-plot; and the little
maiden, who, we know, was no one else but old Nanny,
kept on crying out, ‘Now we are in the country! Don’t
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you see the farm-house yonder? And there is an Elder
Tree standing beside it; and the cock is scraping away the
earth for the hens, look, how he struts! And now we are
close to the church. It lies high upon the hill, between the
large oak-trees, one of which is half decayed. And now we
are by the smithy, where the fire is blazing, and where the
half-naked men are banging with their hammers till the
sparks fly about. Away! away! To the beautiful countryseat!’
And all that the little maiden, who sat behind on the
stick, spoke of, flew by in reality. The boy saw it all, and
yet they were only going round the grass-plot. Then they
played in a side avenue, and marked out a little garden on
the earth; and they took Elder-blossoms from their hair,
planted them, and they grew just like those the old people
planted when they were children, as related before. They
went hand in hand, as the old people had done when they
were children; but not to the Round Tower, or to
Friedericksberg; no, the little damsel wound her arms
round the boy, and then they flew far away through all
Denmark. And spring came, and summer; and then it was
autumn, and then winter; and a thousand pictures were
reflected in the eye and in the heart of the boy; and the
little girl always sang to him, ‘This you will never forget.’
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And during their whole flight the Elder Tree smelt so
sweet and odorous; he remarked the roses and the fresh
beeches, but the Elder Tree had a more wondrous
fragrance, for its flowers hung on the breast of the little
maiden; and there, too, did he often lay his head during
the flight.
‘It is lovely here in spring!’ said the young maiden. And
they stood in a beech-wood that had just put on its first
green, where the woodroof* at their feet sent forth its
fragrance, and the pale-red anemony looked so pretty
among the verdure. ‘Oh, would it were always spring in
the sweetly-smelling Danish beech-forests!’
* Asperula odorata.
‘It is lovely here in summer!’ said she. And she flew
past old castles of by-gone days of chivalry, where the red
walls and the embattled gables were mirrored in the canal,
where the swans were swimming, and peered up into the
old cool avenues. In the fields the corn was waving like
the sea; in the ditches red and yellow flowers were
growing; while wild-drone flowers, and blooming
convolvuluses were creeping in the hedges; and towards
evening the moon rose round and large, and the haycocks
in the meadows smelt so sweetly. ‘This one never forgets!’
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‘It is lovely here in autumn!’ said the little maiden. And
suddenly the atmosphere grew as blue again as before; the
forest grew red, and green, and yellow-colored. The dogs
came leaping along, and whole flocks of wild-fowl flew
over the cairn, where blackberry-bushes were hanging
round the old stones. The sea was dark blue, covered with
ships full of white sails; and in the barn old women,
maidens, and children were sitting picking hops into a
large cask; the young sang songs, but the old told fairy
tales of mountain-sprites and soothsayers. Nothing could
be more charming.
‘It is delightful here in winter!’ said the little maiden.
And all the trees were covered with hoar-frost; they
looked like white corals; the snow crackled under foot, as
if one had new boots on; and one falling star after the
other was seen in the sky. The Christmas-tree was lighted
in the room; presents were there, and good-humor
reigned. In the country the violin sounded in the room of
the peasant; the newly-baked cakes were attacked; even
the poorest child said, ‘It is really delightful here in
winter!’
Yes, it was delightful; and the little maiden showed the
boy everything; and the Elder Tree still was fragrant, and
the red flag, with the white cross, was still waving: the flag
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under which the old seaman in the New Booths had
sailed. And the boy grew up to be a lad, and was to go
forth in the wide world-far, far away to warm lands,
where the coffee-tree grows; but at his departure the little
maiden took an Elder-blossom from her bosom, and gave
it him to keep; and it was placed between the leaves of his
Prayer-Book; and when in foreign lands he opened the
book, it was always at the place where the keepsakeflower
lay; and the more he looked at it, the fresher it
became; he felt as it were, the fragrance of the Danish
groves; and from among the leaves of the flowers he could
distinctly see the little maiden, peeping forth with her
bright blue eyes—and then she whispered, ‘It is delightful
here in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter"; and a
hundred visions glided before his mind.
Thus passed many years, and he was now an old man,
and sat with his old wife under the blooming tree. They
held each other by the hand, as the old grand-father and
grand-mother yonder in the New Booths did, and they
talked exactly like them of old times, and of the fiftieth
anniversary of their wedding. The little maiden, with the
blue eyes, and with Elderblossoms in her hair, sat in the
tree, nodded to both of them, and said, ‘To-day is the
fiftieth anniversary!’ And then she took two flowers out of
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her hair, and kissed them. First, they shone like silver, then
like gold; and when they laid them on the heads of the old
people, each flower became a golden crown. So there they
both sat, like a king and a queen, under the fragrant tree,
that looked exactly like an elder: the old man told his wife
the story of ‘Old Nanny,’ as it had been told him when a
boy. And it seemed to both of them it contained much
that resembled their own history; and those parts that were
like it pleased them best.
‘Thus it is,’ said the little maiden in the tree, ‘some call
me ‘Old Nanny,’ others a ‘Dryad,’ but, in reality, my
name is ‘Remembrance’; ‘tis I who sit in the tree that
grows and grows! I can remember; I can tell things! Let
me see if you have my flower still?’
And the old man opened his Prayer-Book. There lay
the Elder-blossom, as fresh as if it had been placed there
but a short time before; and Remembrance nodded, and
the old people, decked with crowns of gold, sat in the
flush of the evening sun. They closed their eyes, and—
and—! Yes, that’s the end of the story!
The little boy lay in his bed; he did not know if he had
dreamed or not, or if he had been listening while someone
told him the story. The tea-pot was standing on the table,
but no Elder Tree was growing out of it! And the old
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man, who had been talking, was just on the point of going
out at the door, and he did go.
‘How splendid that was!’ said the little boy. ‘Mother, I
have been to warm countries.’
‘So I should think,’ said his mother. ‘When one has
drunk two good cupfuls of Elder-flower tea, ‘tis likely
enough one goes into warm climates"; and she tucked him
up nicely, least he should take cold. ‘You have had a good
sleep while I have been sitting here, and arguing with him
whether it was a story or a fairy tale.’
‘And where is old Nanny?’ asked the little boy.
‘In the tea-pot,’ said his mother; ‘and there she may
remain.’
THE BELL
People said ‘The Evening Bell is sounding, the sun is
setting.’ For a strange wondrous tone was heard in the
narrow streets of a large town. It was like the sound of a
church-bell: but it was only heard for a moment, for the
rolling of the carriages and the voices of the multitude
made too great a noise.
Those persons who were walking outside the town,
where the houses were farther apart, with gardens or little
fields between them, could see the evening sky still better,
and heard the sound of the bell much more distinctly. It
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was as if the tones came from a church in the still forest;
people looked thitherward, and felt their minds attuned
most solemnly.
A long time passed, and people said to each other—‘I
wonder if there is a church out in the wood? The bell has
a tone that is wondrous sweet; let us stroll thither, and
examine the matter nearer.’ And the rich people drove
out, and the poor walked, but the way seemed strangely
long to them; and when they came to a clump of willows
which grew on the skirts of the forest, they sat down, and
looked up at the long branches, and fancied they were
now in the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of
the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon
after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his
stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it
was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the
people returned home, they said it had been very
romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a
pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who
asserted they had penetrated to the end of the forest, and
that they had always heard the wonderful sounds of the
bell, but it had seemed to them as if it had come from the
town. One wrote a whole poem about it, and said the bell
sounded like the voice of a mother to a good dear child,
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and that no melody was sweeter than the tones of the bell.
The king of the country was also observant of it, and
vowed that he who could discover whence the sounds
proceeded, should have the title of ‘Universal Bell-ringer,’
even if it were not really a bell.
Many persons now went to the wood, for the sake of
getting the place, but one only returned with a sort of
explanation; for nobody went far enough, that one not
further than the others. However, he said that the sound
proceeded from a very large owl, in a hollow tree; a sort
of learned owl, that continually knocked its head against
the branches. But whether the sound came from his head
or from the hollow tree, that no one could say with
certainty. So now he got the place of ‘Universal
Bellringer,’ and wrote yearly a short treatise ‘On the
Owl"; but everybody was just as wise as before.
It was the day of confirmation. The clergyman had
spoken so touchingly, the children who were confirmed
had been greatly moved; it was an eventful day for them;
from children they become all at once grown-up-persons;
it was as if their infant souls were now to fly all at once
into persons with more understanding. The sun was
shining gloriously; the children that had been confirmed
went out of the town; and from the wood was borne
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towards them the sounds of the unknown bell with
wonderful distinctness. They all immediately felt a wish to
go thither; all except three. One of them had to go home
to try on a ball-dress; for it was just the dress and the ball
which had caused her to be confirmed this time, for
otherwise she would not have come; the other was a poor
boy, who had borrowed his coat and boots to be
confirmed in from the innkeeper’s son, and he was to give
them back by a certain hour; the third said that he never
went to a strange place if his parents were not with him—
that he had always been a good boy hitherto, and would
still be so now that he was confirmed, and that one ought
not to laugh at him for it: the others, however, did make
fun of him, after all.
There were three, therefore, that did not go; the others
hastened on. The sun shone, the birds sang, and the
children sang too, and each held the other by the hand; for
as yet they had none of them any high office, and were all
of equal rank in the eye of God.
But two of the youngest soon grew tired, and both
returned to town; two little girls sat down, and twined
garlands, so they did not go either; and when the others
reached the willow-tree, where the confectioner was, they
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said, ‘Now we are there! In reality the bell does not exist;
it is only a fancy that people have taken into their heads!’
At the same moment the bell sounded deep in the
wood, so clear and solemnly that five or six determined to
penetrate somewhat further. It was so thick, and the
foliage so dense, that it was quite fatiguing to proceed.
Woodroof and anemonies grew almost too high;
blooming convolvuluses and blackberry-bushes hung in
long garlands from tree to tree, where the nightingale sang
and the sunbeams were playing: it was very beautiful, but
it was no place for girls to go; their clothes would get so
torn. Large blocks of stone lay there, overgrown with
moss of every color; the fresh spring bubbled forth, and
made a strange gurgling sound.
‘That surely cannot be the bell,’ said one of the
children, lying down and listening. ‘This must be looked
to.’ So he remained, and let the others go on without him.
They afterwards came to a little house, made of
branches and the bark of trees; a large wild apple-tree bent
over it, as if it would shower down all its blessings on the
roof, where roses were blooming. The long stems twined
round the gable, on which there hung a small bell.
Was it that which people had heard? Yes, everybody
was unanimous on the subject, except one, who said that
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the bell was too small and too fine to be heard at so great a
distance, and besides it was very different tones to those
that could move a human heart in such a manner. It was a
king’s son who spoke; whereon the others said, ‘Such
people always want to be wiser than everybody else.’
They now let him go on alone; and as he went, his
breast was filled more and more with the forest solitude;
but he still heard the little bell with which the others were
so satisfied, and now and then, when the wind blew, he
could also hear the people singing who were sitting at tea
where the confectioner had his tent; but the deep sound of
the bell rose louder; it was almost as if an organ were
accompanying it, and the tones came from the left hand,
the side where the heart is placed. A rustling was heard in
the bushes, and a little boy stood before the King’s Son, a
boy in wooden shoes, and with so short a jacket that one
could see what long wrists he had. Both knew each other:
the boy was that one among the children who could not
come because he had to go home and return his jacket and
boots to the innkeeper’s son. This he had done, and was
now going on in wooden shoes and in his humble dress,
for the bell sounded with so deep a tone, and with such
strange power, that proceed he must.
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‘Why, then, we can go together,’ said the King’s Son.
But the poor child that had been confirmed was quite
ashamed; he looked at his wooden shoes, pulled at the
short sleeves of his jacket, and said that he was afraid he
could not walk so fast; besides, he thought that the bell
must be looked for to the right; for that was the place
where all sorts of beautiful things were to be found.
‘But there we shall not meet,’ said the King’s Son,
nodding at the same time to the poor boy, who went into
the darkest, thickest part of the wood, where thorns tore
his humble dress, and scratched his face and hands and feet
till they bled. The King’s Son got some scratches too; but
the sun shone on his path, and it is him that we will
follow, for he was an excellent and resolute youth.
‘I must and will find the bell,’ said he, ‘even if I am
obliged to go to the end of the world.’
The ugly apes sat upon the trees, and grinned. ‘Shall we
thrash him?’ said they. ‘Shall we thrash him? He is the son
of a king!’
But on he went, without being disheartened, deeper
and deeper into the wood, where the most wonderful
flowers were growing. There stood white lilies with
blood-red stamina, skyblue tulips, which shone as they
waved in the winds, and apple-trees, the apples of which
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looked exactly like large soapbubbles: so only think how
the trees must have sparkled in the sunshine! Around the
nicest green meads, where the deer were playing in the
grass, grew magnificent oaks and beeches; and if the bark
of one of the trees was cracked, there grass and long
creeping plants grew in the crevices. And there were large
calm lakes there too, in which white swans were
swimming, and beat the air with their wings. The King’s
Son often stood still and listened. He thought the bell
sounded from the depths of these still lakes; but then he
remarked again that the tone proceeded not from there,
but farther off, from out the depths of the forest.
The sun now set: the atmosphere glowed like fire. It
was still in the woods, so very still; and he fell on his
knees, sung his evening hymn, and said: ‘I cannot find
what I seek; the sun is going down, and night is coming—
the dark, dark night. Yet perhaps I may be able once more
to see the round red sun before he entirely disappears. I
will climb up yonder rock.’
And he seized hold of the creeping-plants, and the
roots of trees—climbed up the moist stones where the
water-snakes were writhing and the toads were croaking—
and he gained the summit before the sun had quite gone
down. How magnificent was the sight from this height!
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The sea—the great, the glorious sea, that dashed its long
waves against the coast—was stretched out before him.
And yonder, where sea and sky meet, stood the sun, like a
large shining altar, all melted together in the most glowing
colors. And the wood and the sea sang a song of rejoicing,
and his heart sang with the rest: all nature was a vast holy
church, in which the trees and the buoyant clouds were
the pillars, flowers and grass the velvet carpeting, and
heaven itself the large cupola. The red colors above faded
away as the sun vanished, but a million stars were lighted,
a million lamps shone; and the King’s Son spread out his
arms towards heaven, and wood, and sea; when at the
same moment, coming by a path to the right, appeared, in
his wooden shoes and jacket, the poor boy who had been
confirmed with him. He had followed his own path, and
had reached the spot just as soon as the son of the king had
done. They ran towards each other, and stood together
hand in hand in the vast church of nature and of poetry,
while over them sounded the invisible holy bell: blessed
spirits floated around them, and lifted up their voices in a
rejoicing hallelujah!
THE OLD HOUSE
In the street, up there, was an old, a very old house-it
was almost three hundred years old, for that might be
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known by reading the great beam on which the date of
the year was carved: together with tulips and hop-binds
there were whole verses spelled as in former times, and
over every window was a distorted face cut out in the
beam. The one story stood forward a great way over the
other; and directly under the eaves was a leaden spout
with a dragon’s head; the rain-water should have run out
of the mouth, but it ran out of the belly, for there was a
hole in the spout.
All the other houses in the street were so new and so
neat, with large window panes and smooth walls, one
could easily see that they would have nothing to do with
the old house: they certainly thought, ‘How long is that
old decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street?
And then the projecting windows stand so far out, that no
one can see from our windows what happens in that
direction! The steps are as broad as those of a palace, and
as high as to a church tower. The iron railings look just
like the door to an old family vault, and then they have
brass tops—that’s so stupid!’
On the other side of the street were also new and neat
houses, and they thought just as the others did; but at the
window opposite the old house there sat a little boy with
fresh rosy cheeks and bright beaming eyes: he certainly
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liked the old house best, and that both in sunshine and
moonshine. And when he looked across at the wall where
the mortar had fallen out, he could sit and find out there
the strangest figures imaginable; exactly as the street had
appeared before, with steps, projecting windows, and
pointed gables; he could see soldiers with halberds, and
spouts where the water ran, like dragons and serpents.
That was a house to look at; and there lived an old man,
who wore plush breeches; and he had a coat with large
brass buttons, and a wig that one could see was a real wig.
Every morning there came an old fellow to him who put
his rooms in order, and went on errands; otherwise, the
old man in the plush breeches was quite alone in the old
house. Now and then he came to the window and looked
out, and the little boy nodded to him, and the old man
nodded again, and so they became acquaintances, and then
they were friends, although they had never spoken to each
other—but that made no difference. The little boy heard
his parents say, ‘The old man opposite is very well off, but
he is so very, very lonely!’