Prevod

I. A Beginning. It was in Copenhagen, in one of the houses on Østergade, not far from Kongens Nytorv, that a grand party was being held, for one must give a party now and then; then it is done with, and one can be invited out again. Half the company were already seated at the card tables, while the other half waited to see what would come of their hostess’s remark: “Well, now we must think of something to do!” That was how matters stood, and the conversation went along as best it could. Among other things, the talk turned to the Middle Ages. Some considered them far better than our own times; indeed, Councillor of Justice Knap defended this opinion so eagerly that the hostess at once took his side, and together they inveighed against Ørsted’s remarks in the almanac on old and new times, which gave our own age the advantage in all essentials. The councillor thought the days of King Hans the finest and happiest of all.

While all this talk for and against went on, interrupted only for a moment by the arrival of the newspaper, which contained nothing worth reading, let us go out into the entrance room, where the overcoats, walking sticks, umbrellas, and galoshes were kept. Here sat two women, one young and one old. One might have supposed they had come to escort their mistresses home—some elderly unmarried lady or widow—but a closer look soon showed that they were no ordinary servants. Their hands were too delicate, their bearing and every movement too regal, for regal they were, and their clothes, too, had a peculiarly daring cut. They were two fairies. The younger was not Fortune herself, but a maid to one of her ladies-in-waiting, entrusted with delivering Fortune’s lesser gifts. The older looked profoundly serious: she was Sorrow, who always goes on her errands herself, in her own exalted person; then she knows they are properly carried out.

They were telling each other where they had been that day. The maid to Fortune’s lady-in-waiting had so far attended to only a few insignificant errands: she had, she said, saved a new hat from a downpour, obtained a greeting for an honest man from a distinguished nobody, and such things; but the task she still had before her was something quite out of the ordinary.

“I must tell you,” she said, “that today is my birthday, and in honour of it I have been entrusted with a pair of galoshes to bring to mankind. These galoshes have the property that whoever puts them on is instantly in the place or time where he most wishes to be. Every wish concerning time or place is fulfilled at once, and so, at last, a human being can be happy here below!”

“Oh, indeed he can!” said Sorrow. “He will be dreadfully unhappy, and bless the moment when he is rid of the galoshes again!” “What nonsense!” said the other. “Now I shall put them here by the door; someone will take them by mistake, and he will be the happy one!”

Well, that was their conversation.

II. What Happened to the Councillor. It was late. Councillor Knap, deep in the days of King Hans, wished to go home, and so it was arranged that he put on Fortune’s galoshes instead of his own and stepped out into Østergade. But through the magic of the galoshes he had stepped back into the reign of King Hans, and therefore planted his foot straight in the mire and mud of the street, since in those days there was no paving as yet.

“This is dreadful! What a quagmire!” said the councillor. “The whole pavement has disappeared, and all the lamps are out!” The moon had not yet risen high enough, and the air was rather misty besides, so everything around him dissolved into darkness. At the nearest corner, however, a lantern hung before an image of the Madonna, but it gave scarcely any light; he noticed it only when he stood directly beneath it and his eyes fell on the painted picture of the mother and child.

“That must be an art shop,” he thought, “where they have forgotten to bring in the sign!” A couple of people in the dress of the period passed him. “What extraordinary clothes! They must be coming from a masquerade!”

Suddenly drums and fifes sounded, and bright torches flared. The councillor stopped and saw a strange procession passing by. At its head marched a whole troop of drummers, who handled their instruments with considerable skill, followed by guards with bows and crossbows. The most distinguished figure in the procession was a clergyman. Astonished, the councillor asked what it all meant and who the man was.

“That is the Bishop of Zealand!” came the reply. “Good heavens, what has come over the bishop?” sighed the councillor, shaking his head. Surely it could not possibly be the bishop. Pondering this, and looking neither to right nor left, he walked through Østergade and across Højbroplads. The bridge to Slotspladsen was nowhere to be found. He made out a low riverbank and at last came upon two men waiting there with a boat.

“Would the gentleman like to be taken across to Holmen?” they asked. “Across to Holmen?” said the councillor, who of course had no idea what age he was walking about in. “I want to go to Lille Torvegade in Christianshavn!”

The men stared at him. “Just tell me where the bridge is!” he said. “It is disgraceful that none of the lamps are lit, and the mud is like walking through a bog!”

The longer he talked to the boatmen, the less he could understand them. “I don’t understand your Bornholm dialect!” he said angrily at last, and turned his back on them. He could not find the bridge, and there was no railing either! “The state of this place is a scandal!” he said. Never had he found his own age more wretched than on this evening. “I think I shall take a cab!” he thought. But where were the cabs? Not one was to be seen. “I must go back to Kongens Nytorv; there will surely be carriages there, or I shall never get out to Christianshavn!”

So he returned to Østergade and had almost reached the end of it when the moon came out. “Good heavens, what sort of scaffolding have they put up here?” he said, catching sight of Østerport, which in those days stood at the end of Østergade.

At last, however, he found a little gate, and through it came out onto what is now our Nytorv; but it was a broad stretch of meadow. A few bushes stuck up here and there, and a wide canal or stream ran across it. On the opposite bank stood some miserable wooden huts for the Dutch skippers, from whom the place took its name of Hallandsås.

“Either I am seeing what they call a fata morgana, or I am drunk!” lamented the councillor. “What can this be? What can this be?” He turned back, firmly convinced that he was ill. As he entered the street, he looked more closely at the houses: most were half-timbered, and many had nothing but thatched roofs.

“No, I am not at all well!” he sighed. “And yet I drank only one glass of punch! But I cannot stand it! And it was quite wrong of them to give us punch and hot salmon! I shall tell the agent’s wife so, too! Should I go back and let them know how I am feeling? But it is so embarrassing! And I wonder whether they are still up!”

He looked for the house, but it was nowhere to be found. “This is dreadful! I cannot recognise Østergade! There is not a single shop! All I see are old, wretched hovels, as though I were in Roskilde or Ringsted! Oh, I am ill! There is no point in being shy about it! But where in the world is the agent’s house? It is no longer itself! Still, there are people awake in there. Oh, I certainly am ill!”

Now he came upon a half-open door, with light shining through the crack. It was one of the inns of those days, a sort of alehouse. The room resembled the great halls of Holstein farmhouses. A number of worthy folk—skippers, Copenhagen townsmen, and a couple of scholars—sat deep in conversation over their tankards, and paid little attention to the man who entered.

“Excuse me,” said the councillor to the landlady, who came towards him, “I have been taken so very ill! Would you be so kind as to get me a cab to Christianshavn?”

The woman looked at him and shook her head; then she addressed him in German. The councillor supposed that she could not speak Danish, and therefore made his request in German. This, together with his clothes, confirmed her belief that he was a foreigner. She soon grasped that he felt unwell, and so gave him a tankard of water, somewhat brackish, it is true, for it had been fetched from the well outside.

The councillor rested his head on his hand, drew a deep breath, and pondered all the strange things around him. “Is that this evening’s ‘Dagen’?” he asked, merely to say something, as he saw the woman move a large sheet of paper.

She did not understand what he meant, but handed him the sheet. It was a woodcut showing an apparition seen in the sky over the city of Cologne. “This is very old!” said the councillor, quite cheered by coming upon such an antique. “Wherever did you get hold of this rare print? It is most interesting, though the whole thing is a fable! Such apparitions are explained as the northern lights; they are probably produced by electricity!”

Those sitting nearest, who heard what he said, looked at him in astonishment, and one of them rose, respectfully took off his hat, and said with the most solemn expression: “You must be a very learned man, monsieur!”

“Oh, no!” replied the councillor. “I can talk about a thing or two, as one ought to be able to!” “Modestia is a fine virtue!” said the man. “As for what you have said, however, mihi secus videtur, though I willingly suspend my Judicium on the matter!”

“May I ask whom I have the pleasure of speaking to?” asked the councillor. “I am a bachelor of Holy Scripture!” replied the man.

This answer was enough for the councillor; the title matched the clothes. He must be an old village schoolmaster, he thought, an odd fellow of the kind one can still come across up in Jutland.

“This may not be a locus docendi,” the man began, “yet I beg you to favour us with your conversation! You have surely read widely among the ancients!” “Oh, yes, indeed!” replied the councillor. “I enjoy reading useful old books, but I also like the newer ones, only not the ‘Everyday Stories’; we have quite enough of those in real life!”

“Everyday Stories?” asked our bachelor. “Yes, I mean these new novels that are about.” “Oh,” the man smiled, “there is great ingenuity in them, though, and they are read at court. The king is particularly fond of the romance of Sir Iffven and Sir Gaudian, which tells of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. He has joked about it with his great lords!”* * Holberg relates in his History of the Kingdom of Denmark that one day, after reading the romance of King Arthur, King Hans jested with the well-known Otto Rud, of whom he was very fond: “Sir Iffvent and Sir Gaudian, whom I find in this book, were remarkable knights; one finds no such knights nowadays!” To which Otto Rud replied, “If there were such champions as King Arthur, there would surely also be many knights like Sir Iffvent and Sir Gaudian!”

“Well, I have not read that one yet!” said the councillor. “It must be quite a new one that Heiberg has brought out!” “No,” replied the man, “it was not brought out by Heiberg, but by Godfred von Gehmen!”

“So that is the author!” said the councillor. “That is a very old name! Was he not the first printer in Denmark?” “Yes, he is our first printer!” said the man. So far, things went quite well. Now one of the worthy townsmen spoke of the terrible pestilence that had raged a couple of years before, meaning the plague of 1484. The councillor supposed they were talking about cholera, and so the discussion went very well. The privateering war of 1490 was so recent that it had to be touched upon: English privateers had seized the ships in the roads, they said; and the councillor, who had lived so intensely through the events of 1801, joined heartily in their denunciations of the English. The rest of the conversation, however, did not go so well. At every turn it took on, on both sides, the solemn tone of an undertaker. The worthy bachelor was far too ignorant, while the councillor’s simplest remarks sounded to him too bold and too fantastic. They stared at one another, and whenever things grew too bad, the bachelor spoke Latin, believing that he would then be better understood; but it did not help.

“How are you feeling?” asked the landlady, tugging at the councillor’s sleeve. Now he came to his senses, for while he had been talking he had quite forgotten everything that had happened before.

“Good heavens, where am I?” he said, growing dizzy at the thought. “We shall drink claret! Mead and Bremen ale!” shouted one of the guests. “And you must drink with us!”

Two girls came in, one of them wearing a cap of two colours. They poured the drinks and curtsied; an icy shiver ran down the councillor’s back. “What can this be? What can this be?” he said. But he had to drink with them; they set upon the good man in earnest. He was in utter despair, and when one of them said that he was drunk, he did not doubt the man’s word at all, but merely begged them to get him a cab, whereupon they thought he was speaking Muscovite.

Never had he been in such rough and vulgar company. One would think the country had relapsed into heathendom, he thought. “This is the most dreadful moment of my life!” But just then it occurred to him to duck beneath the table, crawl to the door, and try to slip out. As he reached the exit, however, the others noticed what he was doing and seized him by the legs; and then, to his good fortune, the galoshes came off—and with them, the whole enchantment.

The councillor saw quite plainly a bright lamp burning before him, and beyond it stood a large house. He recognised it and the neighbouring houses: he was in Østergade, just as we all know it. He lay with his legs towards a gateway, and directly opposite sat the watchman, asleep.

“My Maker, have I been lying here in the street dreaming?” he said. “Yes, this is Østergade! How blessedly bright and lively! It is dreadful what an effect that glass of punch must have had on me!”

Two minutes later he was sitting in a cab that was taking him to Christianshavn. He thought of the fear and misery he had endured, and praised from his heart the happy reality of our own age, which, with all its faults, was still far better than the one he had just been in; and there the councillor showed good sense!

III. The Watchman’s Adventure. “Well, there is a pair of galoshes lying there!” said the watchman. “They must belong to the lieutenant who lives upstairs. They are lying right by the gateway!”

The honest man would gladly have rung the bell and handed them in, for there was still a light upstairs, but he did not want to wake the other people in the house, and so he left it alone.

“It must be nice and warm to have a pair of things like these on!” he said. “The leather is so soft!” They fitted snugly round his feet. “What a queer world it is! Now, he could go to his good bed, but does he? Not a bit of it! Up and down the floor he paces! He is a lucky fellow! He has neither the missus nor the little ones to worry about! Every evening he is out in company. I wish I were him; then I should be a happy man!”

The moment he uttered his wish, the galoshes he had put on took effect: the watchman assumed the lieutenant’s entire person and way of thinking. There he stood in the room upstairs, holding between his fingers a little sheet of rose-coloured paper on which was a poem—a poem by the lieutenant himself; for who has not, at some time in his life, felt moved to write poetry? And if one writes the thought down, there is the verse. This is what was written:

“If only I were rich!” “If only I were rich!” I often prayed, when scarcely one yard tall I stood. If I were rich, an officer I’d be, with sword and plume and uniform so good.

The time did come when I an officer became, but rich, alas, I never grew! God helped me through! Young, full of joy, I sat one evening hour; a girl of seven kissed me tenderly, for I was rich in tales of mystery, though poor in money as a man could be. But tales were all the little girl desired; then I was rich, though not in gold, alas—God knew!

“If only I were rich!” is still my prayer; the girl of seven is now grown and fair, so wise, so kind, so beautiful to see. If she could read my heart’s own fairy tale, if, as before—I mean, were fond of me! But I am poor, and therefore silent, sadly; God wills it so!

If I were rich in comfort and in peace, my sorrow would not find its way to paper! You whom I love, if you can understand, read this as verses from my youthful years!

Yet better if you do not understand: I am poor, my future dark, alas; may God bless you! Yes, that is the kind of verse one writes when one is in love, but a sensible man does not have it printed. A lieutenant, love, and poverty: that makes a triangle, or, just as well, half of Fortune’s broken die. The lieutenant felt this too, and so he rested his head against the window frame and sighed very deeply:

“The poor watchman out in the street is far happier than I! He knows nothing of what I call want! He has a home, a wife and children who weep at his sorrows and rejoice in his joys! Oh, I should be happier than I am if I could change places with him outright, for he is happier than I!”

At that very moment the watchman was a watchman again, for it was through Fortune’s galoshes that he had become the lieutenant; but, as we saw, he had then felt far less content and preferred, after all, to be what he really was. And so the watchman was a watchman again.

“That was a nasty dream!” he said. “But queer enough it was. I thought I was the lieutenant up there, and it was no pleasure at all. I missed the missus and the little ones, who nearly kiss my eyes out!”

He sat nodding again, unable quite to shake the dream from his thoughts; he still had the galoshes on his feet. A shooting star flashed across the sky.

“There it went!” he said. “There are plenty left, though! I should rather like to see those things a little closer, especially the moon, for that will not slip away while you are looking at it. When we die, said the student my wife does the heavy washing for, we fly from one to another. That is a lie, but it might be rather pleasant. I wish I could take a little leap up there, and leave my body here on the steps!”

Now, there are certain things in this world one must be very careful about saying, but one should be more careful still when one has Fortune’s galoshes on one’s feet. Just listen to what happened to the watchman.

As for us human beings, almost all of us know the speed of steam; we have experienced it either on the railways or aboard a ship at sea. Yet this flight is like the progress of a sloth or the march of a snail beside the speed of light. Light travels nineteen million times faster than the finest racehorse, and yet electricity is faster still. Death is an electric shock to the heart; on the wings of electricity the freed soul flies. Sunlight takes eight minutes and a few seconds to travel more than twenty million miles; by electricity’s express post, the soul needs fewer minutes to make the same journey. The space between worlds is no greater for it than the distance between our friends’ houses in a single town is for us, even when those houses stand quite close together. Nevertheless, this electric shock to the heart costs us the use of our bodies here below, unless, like the watchman, we have Fortune’s galoshes on.

In a few seconds the watchman had travelled the 52,000 miles to the moon, which, as everyone knows, is made of a substance far lighter than our earth, and is what we should call soft, like newly fallen snow. He found himself on one of the countless ring-shaped mountains familiar to us from Dr. Mädler’s great map of the moon—for surely you know it? Inside, the mountain dropped sheer into a crater a whole Danish mile deep. At the bottom lay a town that looked like egg white in a glass of water, just as soft, with towers and domes and sail-shaped balconies, transparent and swaying in the thin air. Our earth hung above his head like a great fiery-red ball.

There were many creatures there, all of them presumably what we should call human beings, though they looked quite different from us. They also had a language, but no one could expect the watchman’s soul to understand it; nevertheless, it did.

The watchman’s soul understood the moon-dwellers’ language very well. They were discussing our earth and doubting whether it could be inhabited: the air there must be too thick for any sensible moon-creature to live in. They considered the moon alone to have living beings; it was the true world, where the ancient world-folk lived.

But let us return to Østergade and see how the watchman’s body is faring. It sat lifeless on the steps; the spiked mace had fallen from its hand, and its eyes looked up towards the moon after the honest soul walking about up there.

“What is the time, watchman?” asked a passer-by. But the watchman gave no answer; so the man flicked him very gently on the nose, and that upset his balance. The body lay stretched at full length: the man was dead. The fellow who had flicked him was terribly frightened. The watchman was dead, and dead he remained. It was reported and talked about, and in the morning his body was carried to the hospital.

It might now be quite a joke for the soul if it returned and, as seemed likely, looked for the body in Østergade, only to find nothing there. Presumably it would first run to the police station, then to the public information office, to have it advertised among the lost property, and finally to the hospital. Still, we may take comfort in the thought that the soul is cleverest when left to itself; the body only makes it stupid.

As we have said, the watchman’s body was taken to the hospital and brought into the washing room, where the first thing they did, naturally, was to take off the galoshes. Then the soul had to return; it made straight for the body, and suddenly the man came to life. He declared that it had been the most dreadful night of his life; not for two marks would he go through such sensations again, but now, of course, it was over.

He was discharged that same day, but the galoshes remained at the hospital.

IV. A Matter of the Head. A Recitation. A Most Unusual Journey. Every Copenhagener knows what the entrance to Frederik’s Hospital in Copenhagen looks like, but as some people who are not Copenhageners will probably also read this story, we must give a brief description.

The hospital is separated from the street by a fairly high iron fence, in which the thick bars stand so far apart that, it is said, very thin junior doctors have squeezed through them and thus made their little visits outside. The part of the body most difficult to manoeuvre through was the head; here, as so often in the world, the smallest heads were therefore the most fortunate. That will be enough by way of introduction.

One of the young volunteer assistants, of whom it could be said only in the physical sense that he was thick-headed, happened to be on duty that evening. It was pouring with rain; yet despite both these obstacles, he had to go out, just for a quarter of an hour. That, he thought, was hardly worth confiding to the porter when one could slip between the iron bars. There lay the galoshes the watchman had forgotten. The last thing he imagined was that they belonged to Fortune; they might be very useful in this weather, so he put them on. The question now was whether he could squeeze through; he had never tried it before. There he stood.

“If only I had my head outside!” he said, and at once, though it was very thick and large, it slipped easily and safely through; the galoshes had to see to that. But now his body had to follow, and there he stuck.

"Oh, I’m too fat!" he said. "I thought my head would be the worst of it! I can’t get through." He now tried to pull his head back smartly, but it would not budge. He could move his neck easily enough, but that was all. His first feeling was anger; his second was that his spirits sank well below zero. The Galoshes of Fortune had brought him into the most dreadful predicament, and unfortunately it never occurred to him to wish himself free. No, he struggled, and got nowhere. The rain poured down; not a soul was to be seen in the street. He could not reach the bell at the gate. How on earth was he to get loose? He foresaw that he might have to stand there until morning, when they would have to send for a blacksmith to file through the iron bars. But that could not be done in a moment; the whole school of boys in blue across the way would be up and about, all Nyboder would come flocking to see him standing in the pillory, and there would be a crowd quite unlike the one that had gathered round the giant agave the year before. "Oh! The blood is rushing to my head till I shall go mad! Yes, I am going mad! Oh, if only I were free again, then it would surely pass!"

Now, he ought to have said that a little sooner. The instant the thought was uttered, his head was free, and he rushed indoors, quite beside himself with the fright the Galoshes of Fortune had given him.

We must not suppose that this was the end of it. No—it gets worse yet. The night passed, and the following day too, and no one came to fetch the galoshes.

That evening a performance was to be given at the little theatre in Kannikestræde. The house was packed; among the recitations was a new poem. Let us hear it. Its title was:

Auntie’s Spectacles. My grandmother’s wisdom is widely known; in the "olden days" they would have burned the crone. She knows all that happens, and much more too: she sees straight into the year that is new, yes, into "forty"—a wonderful feat! But she never will tell us the tale complete.

What will the coming year bring our way? What wonders? Oh, I should like her to say what fate holds for me, for art, crown and nation; but Grandmother will not disclose the information.

I plagued her, then, and it did some good: at first she was silent, then scolded as she could. But she might as well have preached to the wall, for am I not her darling, after all?

"For this once I shall grant you your wish," she said, and gave me her spectacles. "Now go ahead to any place you choose to be, a place where many good people you’ll see. Stand where you have the best view of them all, and look through my glasses across the hall. At once, you may take my word for it, the crowd will look like a pack of cards spread out.

"From these you can tell what is to be!" I thanked her and hurried away to see. But where, I wondered, do most people go? To Langelinie? You catch cold there, you know.

To Østergade? Bah! There’s mud everywhere! But the theatre? That would be splendid, I swear! This evening’s entertainment comes just right—so here I am, presenting myself tonight.

Will you allow me to use Auntie’s glasses, merely to see—don’t go, my good lasses and gentlemen!—whether you look like a pack of cards that will tell what the future brings back.

I take your silence to mean you agree; in thanks, you shall share in the secret with me. We are all in the game together tonight. I’ll tell your fortunes and mine outright, and that of the country, the crown and the land; now let us see what the cards have in hand.

(And then he put on the spectacles.) Yes, it is true! Oh, I must laugh at the sight! If only you could come up here tonight! So many court cards, so many fine faces, and queens of hearts in rows in their places.

Those black ones there are clubs and spades. Soon I shall see how the whole game is played. The queen of spades, I perceive, has set her serious heart on the jack of diamonds yet.

Oh, this vision almost goes to my head! There’s plenty of money here for the house ahead, and strangers from lands beyond the sea. But that was not what we wished to foresee.

The Estates? Let us see! In time to come—! But you’ll read all about that later at home. If I chatter now, I shall injure the press; I won’t take the choicest morsel off its dish.

The theatre, then? New plays? Taste and tone? No, I’d rather the management left me alone. My own future? Yes, as you all know, our own affairs concern us deeply so!

I see! But what I see I cannot say; you’ll hear of it when it comes my way. Who is the happiest person here? The happiest? I shall soon make that clear!

It is—no, that might embarrass someone, and even distress a good many more! Who will live longest? That lady? That man? No, to tell such a thing is worse than before!

What shall I foretell, then? No? About—? No! About—? No! About—? At last I don’t know! I am shy; it is easy to give offence. Well, I’ll see what you think, and to that intent

I shall devote all my prophetic power. You think? What is that? From all round the room you think it will all come to nothing at last; you’re certain it’s only a jingling blast.

Then I shall be silent, most honoured assembly; I owe you the right to think as you please! The poem was splendidly recited, and the performer was a great success. Among the audience was the young medical trainee from the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten his adventure of the night before. He was wearing the galoshes, for they had not been fetched, and as the streets were muddy, they could serve him very well.

He liked the poem. The idea occupied his mind a good deal; he would dearly have liked a pair of spectacles like those. Perhaps, if one used them properly, one might look straight into people’s hearts. That, he thought, would really be more interesting than seeing what was to happen next year, for one would learn that soon enough, whereas one would never learn the other. "Just imagine that whole row of ladies and gentlemen on the front bench—if one could look straight into their breasts! There would have to be an opening, of course, a sort of shop. Oh, how my eyes would go shopping! In that lady I should certainly find a great fashion emporium! In that one the shop is empty, though it could do with cleaning. But there would be sound, well-stocked shops too! Ah, yes!" he sighed. "I know one where everything is sound, but there is already a shopman there; that is the only thing wrong with the whole establishment! From one or another a voice would call, ‘Please, step inside!’ Yes, if only I could step inside and pass through their hearts like a neat little thought!"

Now, that was enough for the galoshes. The whole trainee shrank away, and a most extraordinary journey began through the hearts of the front row of spectators. The first heart he passed through was a lady’s; but at once he thought himself at the orthopaedic institute, as they call the place where the doctor removes people’s deformities and makes them stand straight. He was in the room where plaster casts of misshapen limbs hang upon the walls. There was this difference, however: at the institute the casts are taken when the patient comes in, but here in the heart they had been taken and stored away when the good people had gone out. What was kept here was a collection of casts of her women friends, with all their bodily and spiritual defects.

He was quickly inside another woman’s heart, but this seemed to him a great, holy church. The white dove of innocence fluttered above the high altar. How gladly he would have sunk to his knees! But he had to hurry on into the next heart. Still he heard the organ’s notes, and felt that he himself had become a new and better man. He did not feel unworthy to enter the next sanctuary, which revealed a poor attic room with a sick mother in it. But God’s warm sunshine streamed through the open window, lovely roses nodded from the little wooden box on the roof, and two sky-blue birds sang of childlike joy, while the sick mother prayed for blessings on her daughter.

Now he crawled on hands and knees through an overcrowded butcher’s shop. There was meat, nothing but meat, wherever he turned. This was the heart of a rich, respectable man, whose name must surely be found in the directory.

Now he was in the heart of the man’s wife. It was an old, dilapidated dovecote. Her husband’s portrait served as a weathercock, connected to the doors, so that they opened and shut whenever the husband turned.

Next he entered a hall of mirrors, like the one we have at Rosenborg Castle, but the mirrors magnified to an incredible degree. In the middle of the floor sat the owner’s insignificant self, like a Dalai Lama, astonished at the sight of his own greatness.

After this he thought himself inside a narrow needle case, full of sharp needles. "This must certainly be the heart of an old maid!" he could not help thinking. But that was not the case; it belonged to a very young officer with several decorations, precisely the sort who was described as a man of spirit and heart.

The poor sinful trainee emerged quite bewildered from the last heart in the row. He could not put his thoughts in order, but supposed that his overactive imagination had run away with him.

"Good heavens!" he sighed. "I certainly have the beginnings of madness! And it is unforgivably hot in here! The blood is rushing to my head!" And now he remembered the great event of the night before, when his head had been stuck between the iron bars at the hospital. "That must be where I caught it!" he thought. "I must take this in time. A Russian bath might do me good. If only I were already lying on the top shelf!"

And there he lay on the top shelf of the steam bath, but with all his clothes on, boots and galoshes included. Hot drops of water dripped from the ceiling onto his face.

"Oh!" he cried, and scrambled down to take a shower. The attendant also gave a loud cry at the sight of a fully dressed man in there. The trainee had enough presence of mind, however, to whisper to him, "It’s a wager!" But the first thing he did when he reached his own room was to have a large Spanish-fly blistering plaster put on the back of his neck, and another down his back, to draw out the madness.

Next morning his back was bleeding. That was what he had gained from the Galoshes of Fortune.

V. The Copying Clerk’s Transformation. Meanwhile the watchman, whom we have surely not forgotten, remembered the galoshes he had found and taken to the hospital. He fetched them, but as neither the lieutenant nor anyone else in the street would claim them, they were handed in at the police station.

"They look just like my own galoshes!" said one of the copying clerks, examining the lost property and setting them beside his own. "It would take more than a shoemaker’s eye to tell them apart!"

"Mr Clerk!" said a constable, coming in with some papers. The clerk turned and spoke to the man, but when they had finished and he looked at the galoshes, he was quite at a loss to know whether his were the pair on the left or the pair on the right. "They must be the wet ones!" he thought. But that was precisely his mistake, for those were Fortune’s. Still, why should the police not make mistakes too? He put them on, slipped some papers into his pocket and others under his arm; they were to be read through and copied at home. But it happened to be Sunday morning, and the weather was fine. A walk to Frederiksberg, he thought, would do me good! And off he went.

No one could have been quieter or more industrious than this young man, and we heartily wish him joy of his little walk. It would certainly do him a great deal of good after so much sitting. At first he merely walked, without thinking of anything, so the galoshes had no opportunity to display their magic power.

In the avenue he met an acquaintance, a young poet, who told him that he was setting off on his summer travels the following day. "So you’re off again!" said the clerk. "What a happy, free fellow you are! You can fly wherever you please, while the rest of us have a chain round our ankles!"

"But it is fastened to the bread tree!" replied the poet. "You need never worry about tomorrow, and when you grow old you will have a pension!"

"All the same, you have the better life!" said the clerk. "To sit writing poetry—why, that is a pleasure! The whole world says pleasant things to you, and you are your own master! You ought to try sitting in court with all those trivial cases!"

The poet shook his head, and the clerk shook his too. Each kept his own opinion, and they parted. "A peculiar breed, these poets!" said the clerk. "I should like to try entering into such a nature, to become a poet myself. I’m sure I should not write such whining verses as the others!—What a spring day this is for a poet! The air is so unusually clear, the clouds so beautiful, and there is such a fragrance in the greenery! Why, I have not felt as I do at this moment for many years."

We can already tell that he has become a poet. It was not especially noticeable, to be sure, for it is foolish to imagine that a poet is different from other people. Among them there may be natures far more poetic than many a great and acknowledged poet. The only difference is that the poet has a better memory of the spirit; he can hold fast to an idea and a feeling until they have passed clearly and distinctly into words, which the others cannot. But to pass from an everyday nature to a gifted one is always a transformation, and the clerk had now undergone it.

"That lovely fragrance!" he said. "How it reminds me of the violets at Aunt Lone’s! Yes, that was when I was a little boy! Good heavens, I have not thought of that for ages! The dear old lady! She lived round behind the Exchange. She always had a twig or a few green shoots standing in water, however bitter the winter might be. The violets scented the air while I pressed warmed copper coins against the frozen windowpane to make peepholes. What a charming view it was! Outside in the canal the ships lay frozen in, deserted by their crews; a cawing crow was the entire ship’s company. But when spring stirred in the air, how busy it became! With songs and cheers they sawed through the ice, the ships were tarred and rigged, and away they went to foreign lands. I have stayed here, and must stay for ever, always sitting at the police station watching other people get passports to travel abroad. That is my lot! Ah, yes!" He sighed deeply, but suddenly stopped short. "Good heavens, what has come over me? I have never thought or felt like this before! It must be the spring air! It is both unsettling and pleasant!" He reached into his pocket for his papers. "These will give me something else to think about!" he said, running his eyes over the first sheet. "Lady Sigbrith, an original tragedy in five acts," he read. "What is this? And it is in my own handwriting! Have I written that tragedy? Intrigue on the Ramparts, or Great Prayer Day, a vaudeville.—But where did I get it? Someone must have slipped it into my pocket. Here is a letter!" Yes, it was from the theatre management; the plays had been rejected, and the letter itself was far from politely worded. "Hm! Hm!" said the clerk, and sat down on a bench. His thoughts were so vivid, his heart so tender. Almost without knowing it, he picked one of the flowers nearest him, a simple little chamomile. What the botanist takes many lectures to tell us, it revealed in a minute. It told the myth of its birth; it told of the power of sunlight, which spread its delicate petals and compelled them to give out fragrance. Then he thought of life’s struggles, which in the same way awaken the feelings in our breasts. Air and light were the flower’s suitors, but light was the favoured one. Towards the light it bent; when light disappeared, it folded its petals and fell asleep in the air’s embrace. "It is light that adorns me!" said the flower. "But the air lets you breathe!" whispered the poet’s voice.

Nearby a boy stood striking a muddy ditch with his stick. Drops of water splashed up among the green branches, and the clerk thought of the millions of invisible creatures in those drops, flung to a height which, for their size, was like being whirled high above the clouds would be for us. As he thought of this, and of the whole transformation that had come over him, the clerk smiled. "I am asleep and dreaming! Still, it is remarkable how naturally one can dream, even while knowing it is only a dream. If only I can remember it tomorrow when I wake! Just now I seem to be in wonderfully good spirits! I see everything clearly and feel so alert, but I am sure that if I remember any of it tomorrow, it will be nonsense. I have had that happen before! All the wise and splendid things one hears and says in dreams are like the gold of the underground folk: when one receives it, it is rich and glorious, but seen by daylight it is only stones and withered leaves. Ah!" he sighed, quite sadly, looking at the singing birds hopping so cheerfully from branch to branch. "They are much better off than I am! Flying is a wonderful art. Happy is he who is born with it! Yes, if I were to turn into anything, it should be a little lark like that!"

At that very moment his coat-tails and sleeves folded together into wings, his clothes became feathers, and his galoshes claws. He noticed it plainly enough and laughed to himself. "There, now I can see I am dreaming! But never before have I dreamed anything so ridiculous!" And he flew up into the green branches and sang. But there was no poetry in his song, for the poet’s nature was gone. The galoshes, like anyone who does a thing properly, could do only one thing at a time. He had wanted to be a poet, and had become one; now he wanted to be a little bird, but in becoming that, he lost his former gift.

"This is amusing enough," he said. "By day I sit at the police station among the most sober documents, and by night I can dream of flying like a lark in Frederiksberg Gardens. Upon my word, one could write a whole popular comedy about it!"

Now he flew down into the grass, turned his head in every direction, and tapped with his beak at the supple blades, which, in proportion to his present size, seemed as large as the palm fronds of North Africa.

Only a moment passed before everything round him went pitch-black. An object that seemed enormous to him had been thrown over him: it was a large cap, which a boy from Nyboder had tossed over the bird. A hand came in and grasped the clerk round his back and wings, making him squeak. In his first fright he cried out, "You impudent young rascal! I am a copying clerk at the police station!" But to the boy it sounded like "Peep, peep, peep!" He tapped the bird on the beak and walked away.

In the avenue he met two schoolboys of the educated class—that is, socially speaking; intellectually they were at the bottom of the school. They bought the bird for eight skilling, and so the clerk came to Copenhagen, to a family’s home in Gothersgade.

"It is a good thing I am dreaming!" said the clerk. "Otherwise I should be furious! First I was a poet, and now a lark! Yes, it was the poet’s nature that turned me into this little creature! It is a miserable business, though, especially when one falls into the hands of boys. I should like to know how this will end!"

The boys carried him into a very elegant drawing room. A stout, laughing lady welcomed them, but she was not at all pleased to have the common field bird, as she called the lark, brought inside. Still, for today she would let it pass, and they might put it in the empty cage by the window. "Perhaps it will amuse Polly!" she added, laughing towards a large green parrot swinging grandly on his ring in a splendid brass cage. "It is Polly’s birthday!" she said with foolish innocence. "So the little field bird has come to wish him many happy returns!"

Polly answered not a single word, but swung grandly back and forth. A lovely canary, however, brought there the previous summer from its warm, fragrant homeland, began to sing loudly.

"You squawker!" said the lady, throwing a white handkerchief over its cage. "Peep, peep!" it sighed. "What a dreadful snowstorm!" And with that sigh it fell silent.

The clerk, or, as the lady called him, the field bird, was put in a little cage close beside the canary, not far from the parrot. The only human phrase Polly could babble, and one which often came in very comically, was, "Come now, let’s be human!" Everything else he screeched was as unintelligible as the canary’s twittering—except to the clerk, who was now a bird himself. He understood his companions perfectly.

"I flew beneath the green palm and the flowering almond tree!" sang the canary. "I flew with my brothers and sisters over the splendid flowers and over the crystal-clear lake, where the plants nodded on the bottom. I saw many beautiful parrots too, who told the funniest stories, so long and so many!"

"Those were wild birds," replied the parrot. "They had no education. Come now, let’s be human!—Why don’t you laugh? If the lady and all her visitors can laugh at it, so can you. It is a serious failing not to appreciate a joke. Come now, let’s be human!"

"Oh, do you remember the lovely girls who danced beneath the spreading tent beside the flowering trees? Do you remember the sweet fruit and the cooling juice in the wild-growing plants?"

"Oh yes!" said the parrot. "But I am far better off here! I have good food and affectionate treatment; I know I am a clever fellow, and I ask no more than that. Let’s be human! You are what they call a poetic soul; I have sound knowledge and wit. You have this genius, but no common sense; you lose yourself in these lofty notes of nature, and that is why they cover you up. They don’t do that to me, no, for I cost them rather more! I impress them with my beak, and I can crack a ‘quip! quip! quip!’ Come now, let’s be human!"

"Oh, my warm, flowering homeland!" sang the canary. "I will sing of your dark-green trees, of your quiet bays where the branches kiss the clear water, sing of the rejoicing of all my brilliant brothers and sisters, where ‘the desert’s living fountains’¹ grow!"

¹ Cacti. "Do stop those whining notes," said the parrot. "Say something one can laugh at! Laughter is the mark of the highest intellectual development. Just see whether a dog or a horse can laugh! No, it can cry, but laughter is given to human beings alone. Ho, ho, ho!" laughed Polly, and added his joke: "Let’s be human."

"You little grey Danish bird," said the canary, "you too have become a prisoner! It must be cold in your forests, but at least there is freedom there. Fly out! They have forgotten to shut your cage, and the upper window is open. Fly, fly!"

And the clerk did. In a flash he was out of the cage. At that very moment the half-open door to the next room creaked, and the house cat slipped in, supple and green-eyed, and gave chase. The canary fluttered in its cage, and the parrot beat his wings and cried, "Let’s be human!" The clerk felt the most mortal terror and flew out through the window, over houses and streets. At last he had to rest a little.

The house opposite had a homelike look. A window stood open, and he flew in. It was his own room; he perched on the table. "Let’s be human!" he said, without thinking what he was saying; he had caught it from the parrot. And in that same instant he was the clerk again, but sitting on the table.

"Good heavens!" he said. "How did I get up here and fall asleep like this? What a restless dream I have had, too! The whole story was a lot of foolish nonsense!"

VI. The Best the Galoshes Brought. Early the next morning, while the clerk was still in bed, there was a knock at his door. It was his neighbour on the same floor, a student preparing for the ministry. He came in.

"Lend me your galoshes," he said. "It is so wet in the garden, but the sun is shining beautifully, and I should like to smoke a pipe down there." He put on the galoshes and was soon in the garden, which boasted a plum tree and a pear tree. Even so small a garden as this counts as a great luxury in Copenhagen.

The student walked up and down the path. It was only six o’clock; from the street came the sound of a post horn. "Oh, to travel! To travel!" he exclaimed. "That is the greatest happiness in the world! It is the highest goal of all my wishes! Then this restlessness I feel would be stilled. But it would have to be far away! I should like to see glorious Switzerland, to travel in Italy, and—"

Yes, it was just as well that the galoshes took effect at once, or he would have wandered much too far afield, both for his own sake and for ours. He was travelling. He was deep in Switzerland, but packed into the interior of a stagecoach with eight other people; his head ached, his neck was weary, and the blood had settled in his legs, which were swollen and pinched by his boots. He hovered between sleeping and waking. In his right-hand pocket he had his letter of credit, in his left his passport, and in a little leather pouch on his chest a few louis d’or sewn securely in place; every dream announced that one or another of these treasures was lost, and so he would start up feverishly, his hand’s first movement tracing a triangle from right to left and up towards his chest, to feel whether he still had them. Umbrellas, walking sticks, and hats swayed in the net overhead, largely blocking the view, which was most impressive. He stole glances at it while his heart sang what at least one poet we know has sung in Switzerland, though he has not yet had it printed:

Yes, all is as fair as the heart could desire; I see Mont Blanc, my dear. If only my money would last till the end, ah, how happy I should be here! All nature round about was grand, solemn, and dark. The pine forests looked like tufts of heather on the lofty crags, whose summits were hidden in the misty clouds; now it began to snow, and a cold wind blew.

“Ugh!” he sighed. “If only we were on the other side of the Alps! Then it would be summer, and I should have drawn some money on my letter of credit. My anxiety about it keeps me from enjoying Switzerland. Oh, if only I were on the other side!”

And there he was on the other side, deep in Italy, between Florence and Rome. Lake Trasimene lay like blazing gold in the evening light among the dark-blue mountains; here, where Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the vines now peacefully clasped one another’s green fingers. Lovely half-naked children tended a herd of coal-black pigs beneath a cluster of fragrant laurels beside the road. If we could do justice to this picture, everyone would cry out, “Beautiful Italy!” But neither the theology student nor a single one of his fellow travellers in the vetturino’s carriage said anything of the kind.

Vicious flies and mosquitoes flew in upon them by the thousand. In vain they lashed about them with a myrtle branch; the flies bit all the same. There was not a person in the carriage whose face was not swollen and bloodied with bites. The poor horses looked like carcasses, with flies clinging to them in great clumps, and it brought only a moment’s relief when the driver climbed down and scraped the creatures clean. Now the sun sank, and a brief but icy chill passed through all nature; it was far from pleasant. Yet all around, the mountains and clouds took on the loveliest green, so clear, so radiant—yes, go and see for yourself; that is better than reading the description! It was matchless! The travellers thought so too, but—their stomachs were empty, their bodies weary, and all their hearts’ longing was for a night’s lodging. But what would it be like? They looked out for that far more eagerly than for the beauties of nature.

The road ran through an olive grove; it was as though he were driving among the gnarled willows at home. Here stood the lonely inn. Some ten crippled beggars had encamped outside; the most able-bodied of them looked like “Famine’s eldest son, come of age”¹. The others were either blind, or had withered legs and crawled on their hands, or shrunken arms with fingerless hands. It was misery itself thrust out of its rags. “Eccellenza, miserabili!” they moaned, stretching out their diseased limbs. The landlady herself, barefoot, unkempt, and dressed in nothing but a filthy blouse, received the guests. The doors were tied together with string; the floors of the rooms were a half-torn-up paving of bricks; bats flew beneath the ceiling, and the stench inside— — ¹ Snarleyyow.

“Do ask her to lay the table down in the stable!” said one of the travellers. “Down there at least one knows what one is breathing!” The windows were opened to let in a little fresh air, but the withered arms came in faster than the air, along with the endless whining: miserabili, Eccellenza! There were many inscriptions on the walls, half of them denouncing bella Italia.

The food was brought in: a soup of water seasoned with pepper and rancid oil, and then the very same oil again on the salad; rotten eggs and fried cockscombs were the choicest dishes. Even the wine had an unpleasant taste; it was a veritable medicinal draught.

For the night, the trunks were piled against the door; one of the travellers kept watch while the others slept. The theology student was on duty. Oh, how stifling it was in there! The heat was oppressive, the mosquitoes buzzed and bit, and outside the miserabili whined in their sleep.

“Yes, travelling is all very well!” sighed the student. “If only one had no body! If only it could rest while the spirit flew abroad. Wherever I go, there is some want that weighs upon my heart; I long for something better than the present moment—yes, something better, the best of all, but where and what is it? At heart I know well enough what I want: I want to reach a happy destination, the happiest of all!”

And as the words were spoken, he was at home. Long white curtains hung before the window, and in the middle of the floor stood a black coffin. In it he lay in the quiet sleep of death. His wish was fulfilled: his body rested, his spirit travelled. Call no man happy until he is in his grave, were Solon’s words; here they were proved true once more.

Every corpse is immortality’s sphinx; nor did the sphinx here in the black coffin answer for us what the living man had written down two days before:

O mighty Death, your silence wakens dread; your only traces are the churchyard graves. Must thought’s own Jacob’s ladder break its thread? Shall I rise only as grass in Death’s garden waves?

The world sees little of our deepest pain! You who were lonely to your final breath, much in this world weighs heavier on the heart than earth they cast upon your coffin lid in death!

Two figures moved about the room; we know them both. They were the Fairy of Sorrow and Fortune’s messenger, and they bent over the dead man. “You see,” said Sorrow, “what happiness have your galoshes brought mankind?”

“At least they have brought a lasting blessing to the man who sleeps here!” Joy replied. “Oh no!” said Sorrow. “He went of his own accord; he was not called! His spiritual strength here was not sufficient to claim the treasures there which he is destined to claim! I shall do him a kindness!”

And she took the galoshes off his feet. Then the sleep of death was over, and the man restored to life rose up. Sorrow vanished, but so did the galoshes; she must have regarded them as her property.