Prevod

What did the whole family say? Well, first listen to what little Marie said. It was little Marie’s birthday, the loveliest of all days, she thought. All her little friends, boys and girls, came to play with her, and she was wearing her finest dress. Her grandmother had given it to her; Grandmother was with the good Lord now, but she had cut out and sewn the dress herself before going up to bright, beautiful heaven. The table in Marie’s room was bright with presents. There was the prettiest little kitchen, with everything a kitchen ought to have, and a doll that could roll its eyes and say “Ow!” when you pressed its tummy. And there was a picture book, too, with the loveliest stories to read, once you knew how to read! But lovelier than all the stories was to live to see many birthdays.

“Oh, it is wonderful to be alive!” said little Marie. Godfather added that it was the loveliest fairy tale of all. In the next room were her two brothers. They were big boys, one nine years old, the other eleven. They, too, thought it wonderful to be alive—to live in their own way, not to be a child like Marie, but a lively schoolboy, with “excellent” in his report book, able to have friendly tussles with his schoolmates, to skate in winter and ride a velocipede in summer, to read about knights’ castles, drawbridges, and dungeons, and to hear about discoveries in the heart of Africa. One of the boys did have a worry about that, though: everything might be discovered before he grew up, for then he meant to go adventuring. Life is the loveliest fairy tale, as Godfather said, and you yourself have a part in it.

It was on the ground floor that these children lived and romped about. Upstairs lived another branch of the family, also with children, but these had shaken childhood from their sleeves, so grown-up were they. One son was seventeen, another twenty, but the third was very old, little Marie said: he was twenty-five and engaged to be married. They were all fortunate, with good parents, good clothes, and fine gifts of mind, and they knew what they wanted. “Forward! Down with all the old fences! An open view over the whole world! It is the loveliest world we know. Godfather is right: life is the loveliest fairy tale!”

Father and Mother, both older people—older than the children they must naturally be—said, with smiles on their lips, in their eyes, and in their hearts, “How young these young people are! The world does not go quite as they imagine, but it does go on. Life is a strange and lovely fairy tale!”

Up above, a little nearer heaven, as people say when someone lives in the attic, lived Godfather. He was old and yet so young at heart, always in good spirits, and how he could tell stories, so many and so long! He had travelled far and wide, and lovely things from every country in the world stood in his room. There were pictures from ceiling to floor, and several windowpanes were of red and yellow glass. If you looked through them, the whole world lay in sunshine, however grey the weather outside. Green plants grew in a great glass case, and in a separate compartment within it goldfish swam. They looked at you as though they knew a great deal they had no wish to talk about. The room always smelled of flowers, even in winter, when a great fire burned in the fireplace. It was such fun to sit gazing into it and listen to it crackle and snap. “It reads old memories aloud to me!” Godfather said, and little Marie, too, seemed to see many pictures in the fire.

But in the great bookcase close by stood the real books. Godfather often read one of these, which he called the book of books: it was the Bible. There, in pictures, was the history of the whole world and all mankind: the Creation, the Flood, the kings, and the King of Kings.

“Everything that has happened and everything that will happen is in this book!” said Godfather. “So infinitely much in a single book! Think of that! Yes, everything a person needs to pray for is expressed and gathered into a few words in the prayer ‘Our Father.’ It is a drop of grace, a pearl of comfort from God. It is laid as a gift upon the child’s cradle, laid close to the child’s heart. Little child, keep it safe! Never lose it, however tall you grow, and you will not be forsaken on life’s changing roads! It will shine within you, and you will not be lost!”

Godfather’s eyes shone as he spoke; they beamed with joy. Once, in his younger days, they had wept. “And that was good, too,” he said. “Those were times of trial, when everything looked grey. Now I have sunshine around me and within me. The older one grows, the more clearly one sees, in adversity and prosperity alike, that Our Lord is always with us, that life is the loveliest fairy tale, which he alone can give us, and that it lasts throughout eternity!”

“It is wonderful to be alive!” said little Marie. The little boys and the big boys said so too; Father and Mother, the whole family said it, but above all Godfather. And he spoke from experience: he was the oldest of them all, he knew all the stories, all the fairy tales, and he said it straight from his heart. “Life is the loveliest fairy tale!”