Part 8 (1/2)
* In Danish the sun is of the feminine gender, and not, as with us, when personified, spoken of as ”he.” We beg to make this observation, lest the roses' wish ”to kiss the sun,” be thought unmaidenly. We are anxious, also, to remove a stumbling block, which might perchance trip up exquisitely-refined modern notions, sadly shocked, no doubt, as they would be, at such an apparent breach of modesty and decorum.--(Note of the Translator.)
”If you _will_ ask questions, do let them be a little rational at least,” said the mother. ”Don't you see that they are feathers, living stuff for clothing such as I wear, and such as you will wear also? But ours is finer. I should, however, be glad if we had it up here in our nest, for it keeps one warm. I am curious to know at what the ducks were so frightened; at us, surely not; 'tis true I said 'chirp,' to you rather loud. In reality, the thick-headed roses ought to know, but they know nothing; they only gaze on themselves and smell: for my part, I am heartily tired of these neighbors.”
”Listen to the charming little birds above,” said the roses, ”they begin to want to sing too, but they cannot as yet. However, they will do so by and by: what pleasure that must afford! It is so pleasant to have such merry neighbors!”
Suddenly two horses came galloping along to be watered. A peasant boy rode on one, and he had taken off all his clothes except his large broad black hat. The youth whistled like a bird, and rode into the pond where it was deepest; and as he pa.s.sed by the rosebush he gathered a rose and stuck it in his hat; and now he fancied himself very fine, and rode on. The other roses looked after their sister, and asked each other, ”Whither is she going?” but that no one knew.
”I should like to go out into the world,” thought one; ”yet here at home amid our foliage it is also beautiful. By day the sun s.h.i.+nes so warm, and in the night the sky s.h.i.+nes still more beautifully: we can see that through all the little holes that are in it.” By this they meant the stars, but they did not know any better.
”We enliven the place,” said the mamma sparrow; ”and the swallow's nest brings luck, so people say, and therefore people are pleased to have us. But our neighbors! Such a rose-bush against the wall produces damp; it will doubtless be cleared away, and then, perhaps, some corn at least may grow there. The roses are good for nothing except to look at and to smell, and, at most to put into one's hat. Every year--that I know from my mother--they fall away; the peasants wife collects them together and strews salt among them; they then receive a French name which I neither can nor care to p.r.o.nounce, and are put upon the fire, when they are to give a pleasant odor. Look ye, such is their life; they are only here to please the eye and nose! And so now you know the whole matter.”
As the evening came on, and the gnats played in the warm air and in the red clouds, the nightingale came and sang to the roses; sang that the beautiful is as the suns.h.i.+ne in this world, and that the beautiful lives for ever. But the roses thought that the nightingale sang his own praise, which one might very well have fancied; for that the song related to them, of that they never thought: they rejoiced in it, however, and meditated if perhaps all the little sparrows could become nightingales too.
”I understood _the song of that bird quite well_,” said the young sparrows; ”one word only was not quite clear to me. What was the meaning of 'the beautiful?'”
”That is nothing,” said the mamma sparrow, ”that is only something external. Yonder at the mansion, where the pigeons have a house of their own, and where every day peas and corn is strewn before them--I have myself eaten there with them, and you shall, too, in time; tell me what company you keep, and I'll tell you who you are--yes, yonder at the mansion they have got two birds with green necks and a comb on their head; they can spread out their tail like a great wheel, and in it plays every color, that it quite hurts one's eyes to look at it.
These birds are called peac.o.c.ks, and that is 'THE BEAUTIFUL.' They only want to be plucked a little, and then they would not look at all different from the rest of us. I would already have plucked them, if they had not been quite so big.”
”I will pluck them,” chirped the smallest sparrow, that as yet had not a single feather.
In the peasant's cottage dwelt a young married couple; they loved each other dearly, and were industrious and active: everything in their house looked so neat and pretty. On Sunday morning early the young woman came out, gathered a handful of the most beautiful roses, and put them into a gla.s.s of water, which she placed on the shelf.
”Now I see that it is Sunday,” said the man, and kissed his little wife. They sat down, read in the hymn-book, and held each other by the hand: the sun beamed on the fresh roses and on the young married couple.
”This is really too tiring a sight,” said the mamma sparrow, who from her nest could look into the room, and away she flew.
The next Sunday it was the same, for every Sunday fresh roses were put in the gla.s.s: yet the rose-tree bloomed on equally beautiful. The young sparrows had now feathers, and wanted much to fly with their mother; she, however, would not allow it, so they were forced to remain. Off she flew; but, however, it happened, before she was aware, she got entangled in a springe of horse-hair, which some boys had set upon a bough. The horse-hair drew itself tightly round her leg, so tightly as though it would cut it in two. That was an agony, a fright!
The boys ran to the spot and caught hold of the bird, and that too in no very gentle manner.
”It's only a sparrow,” said they; but they, nevertheless, did not let her fly, but took her home with them, and every time she cried they gave her a tap on the beak.
There stood in the farm-yard an old man, who knew how to make shaving-soap and soap for was.h.i.+ng, in square cakes as well as in round b.a.l.l.s. He was a merry, wandering old man. When he saw the sparrow that the boys had caught, and which, as they said, they did not care about at all, he asked, ”Shall we make something very fine of him?” Mamma sparrow felt an icy coldness creep over her. Out of the box, in which were the most beautiful colors, the old man took a quant.i.ty of gold leaf, and the boys were obliged to go and fetch the white of an egg, with which the sparrow was painted all over; on this the gold was stuck, and mamma sparrow was now entirely gilded; but she did not think of adornment, for she trembled in every limb. And the soap-dealer tore a bit off the lining of his old jacket, cut scollops in it so that it might look like a c.o.c.k's comb, and stuck it on the head of the bird.
”Now, then, you shall see master gold-coat fly,” said the old man, and let the sparrow go, who, in deadly fright, flew off, illumined by the beaming sun. How she shone! All the sparrows, even a crow, although an old fellow, were much frightened at the sight; they, however flew on after him, in order to learn what foreign bird it was.
Impelled by anguish and terror, he flew homewards: he was near falling exhausted to the earth. The crowd of pursuing birds increased; yes, some indeed even tried to peck at him.
”Look! there's a fellow! Look! there's a fellow!” screamed they all.
”Look! there's a fellow! Look! there's a fellow!” cried the young sparrows, as the old one approached the nest. ”That, for certain, is a young peac.o.c.k; all sorts of colors are playing in his feathers: it quite hurts one's eyes to look at him, just as our mother told us.
Chirp! chirp! That is the beautiful!” And now they began pecking at the bird with their little beaks, so that it was quite impossible for the sparrow to get into the nest: she was so sadly used that she could not even say ”Chirrup,” still less, ”Why, I am your own mother!” The other birds, too, now set upon the sparrow, and plucked out feather after feather; so that at last she fell bleeding in the rose-bush below.
”Oh! poor thing!” said all the roses, ”be quieted; we will hide you.
Lean your little head on us.”
The sparrow spread out her wings once more, then folded them close to her body, and lay dead in the midst of the family who were her neighbors,--the beautiful fresh roses.
”Chirp! chirp!” sounded from the nest. ”Where can our mother be? It is quite inconceivable! It cannot surely be a trick of hers by which she means to tell us that we are now to provide for ourselves? She has left us the house as an inheritance; but to which of us is it exclusively to belong, when we ourselves have families'?”