The Complete Fairy Tales

  The specter bent her head to answer, yes, and placed her hand upon her breast.

  “Can I help you to obtain peace?” whispered the minister.

  “Yes,” answered his poor wife.

  “But how?”

  “Get me a hair, just one hair, from the head of a sinner who is to burn eternally in hell,” pleaded the ghost.

  “Yes, so easy it must be to release you from your pain, you who were so good,” exclaimed the minister.

  “Then follow me,” commanded the ghost. “For it has been granted you that you can fly as swiftly as your thoughts, to wherever you desire to go. I shall accompany you, but before the cock crows you must have found one man who is by God condemned to the eternal fires.”

  Quickly, carried by thought, they were in the big city. On the walls of the houses, written in fiery letters, were the deadly sins: pride, miserliness, gluttony, the whole seven-colored rainbow of man’s mortal sins.

  “In there, yes, in there. Oh, if I were only sure,” mumbled the minister as they stood outside the great portals of a rich man’s house. Broad stairs led up to a great ballroom and the sound of dance music could be heard all the way down in the street. A servant in livery, carrying a cane with a gold knob on its end, barred the entrance to those who were not invited.

  “Our ball is as elegant as the king’s,” he said as he looked at the mob that had gathered outside, and on his face contempt and arrogance were plainly written.

  “Pride,” whispered the ghost, “look at him!”

  “Him!” The rector shook his head. “He is only a fool, a clown, he will not be punished in the eternal fires.”

  “Only a fool!” His words echoed through the house of pride, and the title fitted everyone there.

  They flew through the bare rooms of the miser, where an old man lay, freezing and hungry on a rickety bed. So miserable, and yet his thoughts clung to his gold. They saw him rise and throw off his threadbare covering. With feverish, trembling hands he removed a stone in the wall, and from the hole there he took out a stocking filled with gold coins—that was its hiding place. His cold hands shook as he counted and recounted every coin.

  “He is sick! It is insanity, hopeless, meaningless insanity. What fears, what evil dreams must he not experience?”

  They fled and soon they stood in the large cell of a prison, where the criminals slept, side by side, on their plank beds. Like a wild animal, one of them screamed in his sleep, then he awoke and with his elbow tried to wake his neighbor.

  The other man only turned while he mumbled angrily, “Shut up, you ox, and sleep! You wake me every night.”

  “Every night,” repeated the man who had screamed. “Yes, every night I hear it howl and it comes to try to strangle me. My evil temper has led me to do wrong, and twice before have I been inside these walls. But have I not been punished! One crime, though, I have never confessed. It happened on the day when I was released from prison last. As I came past my master’s house, I remembered an old insult and anger boiled within me. I took a match and struck it against the wall and set the thatched roof on fire. The house burned, for the fire had a temper like mine. I helped save the furniture and got the horses out. No living thing, man or beast, lost their lives, except for some pigeons and the old dog who was chained, I forgot him. One could hear him howling amid the flames. That howling cur I still hear every time I want to sleep; and if I finally close my eyes, then the dog comes, big and furry, and lies down upon my chest until I suffocate.… Listen to me! You who sleep all night while I only rest for minutes, listen!” In fury, the man threw himself upon his comrade, who had turned his back on him, and hit his face as hard as he could.

  “Angry Lars has gone mad again!” shouted the other criminals as they jumped out of bed and threw themselves upon the furious man. They wrestled with him and forced his head down between his legs, and in that position they tied him up. His eyes were bloodshot and he could hardly breathe.

  “You will kill him!” shouted the minister. “Poor unfortunate!” And he stretched out his arm to protect the poor sinner who suffered so.

  As the night passed they flew through the halls of the rich and hovels of the poor. Envy, greed, lust: all the mortal sins they saw, and an angel read out both the men’s crimes and what could be said in their defense. Often that was not much, but God, who can read our hearts and knows all, He knows too of all the evil that tempts us both from within and without. He is all mercy, all love.

  The minister’s hand shook; he did not dare raise it to tear a hair from the head of a sinner. He cried and tears are the waters of grace and love, and they shall put out hell’s fires.

  Then the cock crowed!

  “Have pity, God,” the minister begged, “and give her peace in her grave that I could not bring her.”

  “Oh, but you have,” said the ghost of his wife. “For it was your hard words, your dark and severe human judgment over God and His creation, that made me come tonight. Learn to know your fellow men, for even in the most evil of them there is a godly part, which will at last become victorious and quench the fires of hell.”

  Someone pressed a kiss on the minister’s mouth; he opened his eyes. The sun was shining into the room. There stood his wife alive and smiling at him; she had just awakened him from a dream that God had sent him.

  54

  The Silent Album

  The highway passed through a forest; in the midst of it lay a lonely farm. The road divided the farmyard in two. The sun was shining and all the windows were open; the place seemed very much alive. But in the garden under a little bower of lilac trees stood an open coffin. There were no mourners; no one stood near it shedding tears.

  The dead man’s face was covered with a piece of white linen and his head rested on a big book. It was an album or, more correctly, a herbarium, for on each of the thick gray pages of the book a different flower or plant had been pressed. Each one of them must have been a chapter in the man’s life, for it had been his wish that this album with the dried and withered plants should be buried with him.

  “Who was he?” we asked; we were travelers passing through, and filled with curiosity.

  “He was the old student from Uppsala,” explained an old man who worked on the farm. “They say that once he was respected, knew how to speak foreign languages and write verses. But then something went wrong, and he drank both his talent and his health away. He was sent down here to the farm; someone paid for his keep. He was as good and kind as a child, except when dark moods came over him. Then he would run away into the forest like a hunted deer. We caught him every time and brought him back. Then when we got him into the house we would give him his album to look at, as you give a child a picture book. He could sit all day quietly looking at it. Sometimes tears would run down his cheeks. God knows what he saw when he looked at those dead plants. He asked that the book be put in the coffin with him; now he has it as a pillow. In a little while the carpenter will come and nail down the lid and he, poor fellow, can sleep sweetly in his grave.”

  The old man lifted the linen. The dead man’s face looked peacefully up at us. The sunlight played on his brow. A swallow dove down over the coffin and turned in the air, just above our heads.

  How strange it is! I think we have all had the experience of reading old letters that we have received in our youth. A lost world is regained for a moment; all the expectations and all the disappointments are experienced once more. And where are all the people now who meant so much to us then? For us, they are dead, even though they are still alive, for we have forgotten them. We no longer give them a thought, though they once were so close to us that we shared our happiness and our sorrow with them.

  The dried oak leaf on the gray page: had that been picked the year he graduated from school? Had it been given to him by a friend when they pledged eternal friendship? Where does that friend live now? The leaf is still there, but the friendship is gone, forgotten! Here is a plant that must have been grown in a hothouse; it is too
delicate for the climate of the north. Had it been plucked in a castle garden? Had he received it from the hand of a young noblewoman? The white water lily on the next page I am sure he picked himself and watered with many a salt tear. Here is a nettle, why had he picked that? What could it have reminded him of? A lily of the valley, that flower grows in the loneliest spots. On the next page a leaf from a honeysuckle. Had it been plucked from one of the potted plants that cover the window sills of an inn? On the last page is a single blade of grass, why that?

  The fragrant lilac branches, heavy with flowers, shade the dead man’s coffin. The swallow flies by again. It darts through the bower singing: “Tweet … tweet.”

  Here comes the carpenter, with hammer and nails; he will close the coffin. Inside lies the dead man, his head resting on the book that is now forever silent. Gone—forgotten!

  55

  The Old Gravestone

  In one of the smaller towns in Denmark, one evening in August, the whole family was gathered in the living room of the home of one of the wealthier citizens. The weather outside was still summer-mild, but the evenings had begun to grow darker; the lamp had been lighted and the curtains drawn, so only the flowers on the window sill enjoyed the moonlight. The conversation was about an old stone that lay out in the yard. The children liked to play upon it, and the maids, when the sun shone, put the newly polished copper pots and pans out to dry on it. It had once been a gravestone.

  “Yes,” said the husband, “I believe it comes from the old cloister church. When it was torn down, everything was sold: the pulpit and gravestones—the whole lot. My father bought some of them and had them broken up to use as filling in the road; that old stone was left over and it has been lying in the yard ever since.”

  “You can see that it has been a gravestone,” said one of the older children. “You can still make out an hourglass and part of an angel. But the names of the dead are almost gone. When the stones have been washed by the rain you can see the name Preben and the letter S. A little further down is carved the name Martha.”

  “Goodness me, it must be old Preben Svane’s and his wife Martha’s gravestone,” exclaimed an old, old man who was old enough to be grandfather to anyone in the room. “Yes, they were among the last to be buried in the churchyard of the old cloister. They were a fine old couple, I remember them, I was a boy then. Everybody knew them and everybody liked them. They were the oldest couple in the town! People said that they were rich and had more than one barrel filled with gold in the cellar. They were always simply dressed, in homespun cloth, but their linen was clean and shiny white. They were a nice old couple, Preben and Martha. I remember them sitting on the little bench that stood at the top of the stone staircase that led to the entrance of their house. A big linden tree grew nearby and its branches shaded the old people. They would smile and nod so kindly to you that you could not help but feel happier because of it. They were marvelously kind to the poor, helped them with both food and clothes. They were true Christians in their charity, and very sensible, too.

  “The wife died first. I remember that day well, I was a little boy and my father had taken me along to visit old Preben. The old man was crying like a little child.—The body of his wife was still lying in the bedroom—he talked about how lonely he would be now, and how good and kind his wife had been. Then he told us how they had met and fallen in love with each other so very many years ago. As I have already said, I was only a little boy then, but it moved me strangely to hear the old man and watch how his cheeks grew rosy and his eyes lively as he talked about his engagement, and the innocent little tricks he had played, just so that they could meet each other. When he talked about his wedding day, one could almost believe from looking at him that he was back in that time of happiness and hope. While in the little room nearby lay his wife; she was dead, and he was a very old man. Well, that is life. Then I was a child and now I am old, as old as Preben Svane was. Time never stops and only change is constant.

  “I remember his wife’s funeral; old Preben walked behind the coffin. A few years before they had had their gravestone made, then their names had been cut into the stone, everything but the dates of death. That evening the stone was put on the grave, and the following year another date was inscribed and old Preben was laid to rest underneath it. The riches, those barrels of gold that people had talked so much about—well, they were never found. Some nephews and nieces who lived in another town inherited what there was. Their house under the linden tree with the stone stairs and the little bench was torn down by order of the town council because it was so dilapidated, it could be dangerous. The old cloister church had the same fate, and when the churchyard finally was closed and no longer was called holy ground, then all the gravestones were sold to anyone who cared to buy them. Most of them were used to pave roads. Chance saved Martha’s and Preben’s gravestone and made it a place where pots and pans are put out to dry and children play. I think the new road goes right over the old people’s grave. No one remembers them any more.” The old man shook his head sadly. “They are forgotten, just as everything else will be forgotten.”

  The conversation in the room turned to other subjects, but the youngest child, a boy with big, thoughtful eyes, climbed up on a chair and looked through the window down into the yard. The moonlight fell on the stone; he had never thought about it before as anything but a flat stone. Now it seemed to him like a page from a story book. All that the child had heard about Preben and wife seemed to be inside the stone. He looked down at it once more and then up at the full moon. The night was clear and the moon was the face of a God shining down upon the earth.

  “Yes, everything will be forgotten,” someone in the room said.

  Just at that moment an angel kissed the boy’s head and whispered to him: “Keep this little seed, keep it until it has become ripe. For you, my child, shall rewrite the faded inscription on the old gravestone so that, golden and clear, it will be able to be read by coming generations. The old couple shall again walk down the streets of the town, smiling with fresh rosy cheeks; they shall sit on their little bench nodding to everyone, rich or poor, who passes by. The seed planted in your soul this night shall grow and produce poetry. For all that is truly good and all that is truly beautiful on this earth is not forgotten, it lives in songs and legends.”

  56

  There Is a Difference

  It was in the month of May; the wind was still a bit cool, but all the trees and bushes agreed that spring had finally come. The fields and meadows were filled with flowers; and in the hedge, along the road, stood a small apple tree and proclaimed that spring was truly here. One of its branches—but only one—was flowering. Its pinkish-white buds had almost opened. The branch knew very well how beautiful it looked and therefore it was not surprised when the carriage from the castle stopped near it.

  The young countess declared that the branch of the apple tree was the very image of spring and very lovely. The branch was broken off the tree and given to the countess. She held it carefully in her hands, shading it under her parasol, all the way back to the castle. There it was carried through long corridors and pretty rooms into the great hall. The tall windows were open and the white muslin curtains swayed gently in the breeze. The hall was filled with flowers that stood in crystal vases. One of the vases looked as if it had been cut out of new-fallen snow; into that the apple branch was put together with some beech branches with pale green leaves; it was a joy to look at them.

  The apple branch grew proud and that was very human of it!

  There were lots of people coming and going through the hall and, according to their rank, they spoke and commented upon the beauty of the flowers. Some did not dare say anything at all and others spoke a little too much and too long. It did not take long for the apple branch to understand that there was a difference between people as there was between plants.

  “Some are born to be beautiful, others to be useful, and some we could very well do without,” said the apple branch
confidently.

  The vase was standing by the open window, and therefore the apple branch had all the opportunity it could wish for to see and contemplate the other trees and plants in the garden. There were both rich and poor plants, and some that were much too poor.

  “The poor neglected herbs!” said the apple branch. “What a difference is made between myself and them! How wretched they must feel, knowing how low their position is—that is, if they can feel, as we higher plants can. But there must be a difference, or everybody would be equal.”

  The apple branch glanced with most pity down at the flowers in the ditches and the fields. There was one flower that the branch felt particularly sorry for, a most common little plant that seemed to grow everywhere. It was much too ordinary ever to be taken inside and put in a vase. Why, it even grew between the cobblestones. It was the dandelion; and in Denmark it is called by that ugly name, “the devil’s milk pail.”

  “Poor despised little plant,” moaned the apple branch. “It is not your fault that you are what you are, that you are so wretchedly common and have been given such a dreadful nickname. But there must be a difference among plants as among men.”

  “ ‘Difference!” mocked the sun rays, and kissed both the blossoms of the apple branch and the little yellow dandelion flowers in fields. They did not distinguish between the rich flowers and the poor ones.

  The apple branch had never thought of God’s love for everything living on this earth. It had never even considered the possibility that much of the good and beautiful could be hidden, but because of that it was not necessarily forgotten, and least of all by God. In this, too, the branch was quite human.