Chapter VII: Book III: Faith (6)

As a matter of fact, the work for which Chamisso is best known, a work which has become international in popularity, _Peter Schlemihl_ (1813), is an early bit of such realistic prose. The tale of the man who sells his shadow to the devil for the sake of the sack of Fortunatus has become in Chamisso's hands a genuine folk-fairy-tale in key-note and style. At the same time it is thoroughly Romantic in subject-matter and treatment. The word Schlemihl is a Hebrew word variously interpreted as "Lover of God," or as "awkward fellow." If it mean the former, Schlemihl then becomes a Theophilus, that medieval Faust who also made a compact with the devil; if the latter, one who breaks his finger when sticking it into a custard pie; then Schlemihl is Chamisso himself, "that dean of Schlemihls," feeling himself at a loss in any environment. He may be the man without a country, he may be the man who draws attention to himself by selling what seems of little value to him, but which afterward proves indispensable for the right conduct of life. The story in this way brings forward a bit of popular ethics, or, rather, it examines an ethical note from the popular point of view. Like Hoffmann, Chamisso takes his reader into the midst of current life, but, unlike Hoffmann, his moods are not the dissolving views which leave the reader in doubt as to whether the whole is a phantasmagoria and a hallucination. _Schlemihl_ is genuinely and consistently realistic. It is a story in the first person and has a rigidly logical arrangement of episodes leading up to its climax. It does not make mood--it has mood.

The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the products of Romantic scholarship; they represent the highest type of scholarly attainment and of scholarly personality. They are always thought of together, for they shared all possessions alike and were not drawn apart by the fact that William married and Jacob remained a bachelor. Their fidelity to each other is touching, and no more lovable story is told than that of Jacob's breaking down in a lecture and crying, "My brother is so sick!"

Jacob (1785-1863) was the philologist, the inductive gatherer of scientific material, the close logical deducer of facts. He "presented Germany with its mythology, with its history of legal antiquities, with its grammar and its history of language." He is the author of Grimm's law of consonant permutation which laid the foundations of modern philological science and is the founder of philological science in general.

Wilhelm (1786-1859), no less exact a scientist, was more a Romantic nature, with a greater power of synthesis under poetic stress. The two brothers began their collecting activities under the influence of Arnim, and their work with folk-tales in prose corresponds to _The Boy's Magic Horn_ in verse. It was Wilhelm who gave Grimms' _Fairy Tales_ their artistic form. He remolded, joined, separated--in fact, wrought the crude materials into such shape that this work has penetrated into every land and has become a household word for young and old. The various early editions show the progress in the method of Wilhelm. The first edition (1812) reproduces more exactly what the brothers heard; the later ones show that Wilhelm consciously attempted to give artistic form to the tales. That his method was justified the history of the stories proves; they are not only material for ethnological study, but are dear to all hearts. The stories have the genuine folk-tone; they are true products of the folk-imagination, with all the logic of that imagination. All phases of life are touched and the interest never flags. The spirit of nature has been kept.

The Romanticists were not successful in the drama. Kleist, the greatest dramatist of the period, was not primarily a Romantic poet. The Schlegels wrote frosty plays and Tieck attempted dramatic production. It was left for the most bizarre of the Romantic group to write the play of greatest power in it and to set a dramatic fashion which for more than a decade carried all before it.

Zacharias Werner (1768-1823), after a life of wild sensual excesses, finally found refuge in the Roman Church and as a popular and sensational preacher aroused Vienna with drastic sermons and clownish antics. Of his various plays, _The Sons of the Valley_ (1803) and the _Cross on the Baltic_ (1806) deserve mention for their religious and mystic subject-matter, for which Werner himself has attempted an explanation, though without adding to their understanding. _Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Power_ (1807) is a pageant play of great interest. Its recantation, _The Power of Weakness_, was written after Werner's conversion. More important than these is his so-called "fate tragedy," _The 24th of February_ (1810 per formed in Weimar; published 1815). This day was a day of terror to Werner, for on it he lost in the same year his mother and his most intimate friend. He therefore in the play invests the day with a fatal significance, and on it a malignant fate has especial power over the fortunes of the persons of the drama; there is also a fatal requisite and a general atmosphere of fatalism. The play started a whole series; some of these were crude and weak imitations, others, like Grillparzer's _The Ancestress_, were of great power. These plays were conditioned by something in the air. Perhaps Napoleon, the man of fate, ruling the minds and destinies of a whole continent, had something to do with the philosophical background. Werner caught the fatalistic spirit, gave it concise and logical form, and succeeded in producing a play which has both atmosphere and logic of development. In all of these plays, in so far as they are good, the effect is produced by the recognition scenes which hold the reader rapt to the end. But the weak and vulgar imitations of the category outnumbered the powerful plays in the _genre_, and the well-merited death-blow was given them by Platen's _The Fateful Fork_ (1826).

E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) was a thoroughly Romantic person. Like his fellow-Königsberger, Werner, he went through a period of wildest dissipation, and all his life was easily influenced by alcohol. He was a painter, a writer, and a musician. His ability in the pictorial arts was mainly in caricature and his career as a composer is typically Romantic; though he never but once completed a composition, that he started, he was thoroughly at home in the theory of the art. Like all Romanticists, Hoffmann was interested in and tried all phases of life and refused to recognize the boundaries between the various parts of existence, between the arts, and between reality and unreality. Hoffmann, with all his North German power of reasoning and his zeal and conscientiousness in public office, was emphatically _that_ Romanticist associated with the night-sides of literature and life. There is something uncanny both in the man and his writings. His power of putting the scene of his most unreal stories in the midst of well-known places, his ability to shift the reader from the real to the unreal and _vice versa_, make some of his stories seem like phantasmagorias.

In all of Hoffmann's stories there is some unpleasant, bizarre character; this is the author's satire on his own strange personality. There is none of Poe's objectivity in Hoffmann, but he uses his subjectivity in a peculiarly Romantic fashion. It is his idea to raise the reader above the every-day point of view, to flee from this to a magic world where the unusual shall take the place of the real and where wonder shall rule. So there are in Hoffmann's stories a series of characters who are really doubles. To the uninitiated they seem every-day creatures; to those who know, they are fairies or beings from the supernatural world. Such characters are found at their best in _The Golden Pot_.

Hoffmann has influenced both French and English literatures more than any other Romantic poet. Hawthorne and Poe read him, and he was felt by the French to be one of the first Germans whom they understood. It was not merely that his clear reason appealed to the French, but that they saw in him one endowed as with a sixth sense. He has a fineness of observation, especially for the ridiculous sides of humanity, together with a tenderness of spirit, that was new in German literature as such men as Sainte-Beuve and Gautier saw it. The soul at war with itself, uncovering its most secret thoughts, the _"malheur d'être poète,"_ coupled with wit, taste, gaiety, and the comedy spirit--all these the French found in Hoffmann as in no other German. Poe was also influenced by Hoffmann, but Poe's whole world is the supernatural, and where Hoffmann slips with fantastic but logical changes from the real to the unreal, Poe's metempsychosis is the real in his world and he has a deeper insight into the world of terror. The difference between Hawthorne and Hoffmann is even more striking, for in the American the supernatural is the embodiment of the Puritan New England conscience. In Hoffmann there is no such elevation of the moral world to the rank of an atmosphere.

In Hoffmann there is no out-of-doors, no lyric love; some of his characters are frankly insane. The musical takes on a supreme significance among the sensations, and music seemed the only art which was able to draw the soul of the man from his earth-bound habitation. Only in music did Hoffmann find the ability to make the Romantic escape from the homelessness of this existence to the all-embracing world of the unreal. But too often in his works does the unreal fail to satisfy the reader. There is an effort felt, an effect sought for, and, while the amalgamation of the two worlds is perfect, the world to which Hoffmann is able to take us proves to be without the cogency which our imaginations expect. Here Hoffmann fails. His world of the imagination cannot always be taken seriously.

Count August von Platen-Hallermund (1796-1835) is characterized by the eternal Romantic homelessness; at every turn of his career this impresses one. Of ancient noble Franconian stock, he felt himself a foreigner in Bavaria which had acquired Franconia in the Napoleonic period. In his early life in the military academy at Munich he was never thoroughly at home, for his was not a military spirit and he was unable to follow his literary tastes. When finally he was enabled to study at Würzburg and Erlangen, even the friendship of Schelling could not compensate for the late beginning of a university career which was filled with the study of modern European and Oriental languages but which had the bitterest personal disappointments. Even in Italy, the land of every German poet's dreams, Platen never felt himself at home, and the pictures of him from his Italian life are of a tragic, lonesome figure. The discord between body and soul, that homelessness in one's own physical body which characterized Hoffmann and made him seem diabolical to so many, is also to be noted in Platen. Carried over to the moral world, it accounts for his ardent cultivation of friendship rather than love, and frees him from the bitter accusations of Heine, whose attack in _The Baths of Lucca_ is one of the most scurrilous and venomous pasquils in all literary history. Finally, in the esthetic world, Platen seems largely un-German. His esthetics were of the Classical and Renaissance times; in an age of the breaking down of conventions and of literary revolutions, Platen held himself rigidly aristocratic; he clung to a canon of beauty in an age which was giving birth to realism.

Platen's poetry falls into two periods--the early German tentative period and the later or foreign period, the poems of which were mostly written in Italy and in imitation of, or adapted from, foreign metres. Platen is always represented as a master of form, and, since Jacob Grimm's characterization of him, has been accused of "marble coldness." That Platen handled difficult metres with virtuosity is not to be laid against him; it is to the advantage of German verse that such poems as his _ghasels_ made indigenous, in part, the feeling for mere beauty in verse. German poets have too often gone the road of mere formlessness. Platen cultivated style, polished and revised his lines with as great care as did his arch-enemy Heine, and it is only a confession of lack of ear to refuse him the name of poet. No one who reads his Polish Songs can help feeling that they are the products of fire and inspiration.

It must be confessed, however, that there is in Platen a remarkable lack of inner experience. He went through life without ever having been shaken to the depths of his nature and was, unfortunately, not of so Olympian a calmness that, like Goethe, he could present the world in plastic repose and sublimity. With all his refinement and fervor he has left but few poems of lasting interest, and of these _The Grave in the Busento_ is perhaps the best.

_LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM AND CLEMENS BRENTANO_

* * * * *

THE BOY'S MAGIC HORN[7] (1806)

WERE I A LITTLE BIRD

Were I a little bird,
And had two little wings,
I'd fly to thee;
But I must stay, because
That cannot be.

Though I be far from thee,
In sleep I dwell with thee,
Thy voice I hear.
But when I wake again,
Then all is drear.

Each nightly hour my heart
With thoughts of thee will start
When I'm alone;
For thou 'st a thousand times
Pledged me thine own.

* * * * *

THE MOUNTAINEER

Oh, would I were a falcon wild,
I should spread my wings and soar;
Then I should come a-swooping down
By a wealthy burgher's door.

In his house there dwells a maiden,
She is called fair Magdalene,
And a fairer brown-eyed damsel
All my days I have not seen.

On a Monday morning early,
Monday morning, they relate,
Magdalene was seen a-walking
Through the city's northern gate.

Then the maidens said: "Thy pardon--
Magdalene, where wouldst thou go?"
"Oh, into my father's garden,
Where I went the night, you know."

And when she to the garden came,
And straight into the garden ran,
There lay beneath the linden-tree
Asleep, a young and comely man.

"Wake up, young man, be stirring,
Oh rise, for time is dear,
I hear the keys a-rattling,
And mother will be here."

"Hearst thou her keys a-rattling,
And thy mother must be nigh,
Then o'er the heath this minute
Oh come with me, and fly!"

And as they wandered o'er the heath,
There for these twain was spread,
A shady linden-tree beneath,
A silken bridal-bed.

And three half hours together,
They lay upon the bed.
"Turn round, turn round, brown maiden;
Give me thy lips so red!"

"Thou sayst so much of turning round,
But naught of wedded troth,
I fear me I have slept away
My faith and honor both."

"And fearest thou, thou hast slept away
Thy faith and honor too,
I say I'll wed thee yet, my dear,
So thou shalt never rue."

Who was it sang this little lay,
And sang it o'er with cheer?
On St. Annenberg by the town,
It was the mountaineer.

He sang it there right gaily,
Drank mead and cool red wine,
Beside him sat and listened
Three dainty damsels fine.

As many as sand-grains in the sea,
As many as stars in heaven be,
As many as beasts that dwell in fields,
As many as pence which money yields,
As much as blood in veins will flow,
As much as heat in fire will glow,
As much as leaves in woods are seen
And little grasses in the green,
As many as thorns that prick on hedges,
As grains of wheat that harvest pledges,
As much as clover in meadows fair,
As dust a-flying in the air,
As many as fish in streams are found,
And shells upon the ocean's ground,
And drops that in the sea must go,
As many as flakes that shine in snow--
As much, as manifold as life abounds both far and nigh,
So much, so many times, for e'er, oh thank the Lord on high!

* * * * *

THE SWISS DESERTER

At Strassburg in the fort
All woe began for me
The Alpine bugle's call enticed me o'er,
I had to swim to my dear country's shore;
That should not be.

One hour 'twas in the night,
They took me in my plight,
And led me straightway to the captain's door.
O God, they caught me in the stream--what more?
Now all is o'er.

Tomorrow morn at ten
The regiment I'll have to face;
They'll lead me there to beg for grace.
I'll have my just reward, I know.
It must be so.

Ye brothers, all ye men,
Ye'll never see me here again;
The shepherd boy, I say, began it all,
And I accuse the Alpine bugle-call
Of this my fall.

I pray ye, brothers three,
Come on and shoot at me;
Fear not my tender life to hurt,
Shoot on and let the red blood spurt--
Come on, I say!

O Lord of heaven, on high!
Take my poor erring soul
Unto its heavenly goal;
There let it stay forever--
Forget me never!

* * * * *

THE TAILOR IN HELL

A tailor 'gan to wander
One Monday morning fair,
And then he met the devil,
Whose feet and legs were bare:
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Come now with me to hell--oh,
And measure clothes for us to wear,
For what we will, is well, oh!

The tailor measured, then he took
His scissors long, and clipped
The devils' little tails all off,
And to and fro they skipped.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now hie thee out of hell--oh,
We do not need this clipping, sir,
For what we will, is well, oh!

The tailor took his iron out,
And tossed it in the fire;
The devils' wrinkles then he pressed;
Their screams were something dire.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Begone now from our hell--oh,
We do not need this pressing,
For what we will, is well, oh!

"Keep still!" he said and pierced their heads
With a bodkin from his sack.
"This way we put the buttons on,
For that's our tailor's knack!
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now get thee out of hell--oh,
We do not need this dressing,
For what we will, is well, oh!

With thimble and with needle then
His stitching he began,
And closed the devils' nostrils up
As tight as e'er one can.

Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now his thee out of hell--oh,
We cannot use our noses,
Do what we will for smell, oh!

Then he began to cut away--
It must have made them smart;
With all his might the tailor ripped
The devils' ears apart.
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now march away from hell--oh,
We else should need a doctor,
If what we will were well--oh!

And last of all came Lucifer
And cried: "What horror fell!
No devil has his little tail;
So drive him out of hell."
Hallo, thou tailor-fellow,
Now his thee out of hell--oh,
We need to wear no clothes at all--
For what we will, is well, oh!

And when the tailor's sack was packed,
He felt so very well--oh!
He hopped and skipped without dismay
And had a laughing spell, oh!
And hurried out of hell--oh,
And stayed a tailor-fellow;
And the devil will catch no tailor now,
Let him steal, as he will--it is well, though!

* * * * *

THE REAPER

There is a reaper, Death his name;
His might from God the highest came.
Today his knife he'll whet,
'Twill cut far better yet;
Soon he will come and mow,
And we must bear the woe--
Beware, fair flower!

The flowers fresh and green today,
Tomorrow will be mowed away
Narcissus so white,
The meadows' delight,
The hyacinthias pale
And morning-glories frail--
Beware, fair flower!

Full many thousand blossoms blithe
Must fall beneath his deadly scythe:
Roses and lilies pure,
Your end is all too sure!
Imperial lilies rare
He will not spare--
Beware, fair flower!

The bluet wee, of heaven's hue,
The tulips white and yellow too,
The dainty silver bell,
The golden phlox as well--
All sink upon the earth.
Oh, what a sorry dearth!
Beware, fair flower!

Sweet lavender of lovely scent,
And rosemary, dear ornament,
Sword-lilies proud, unfurled,
And basil, quaintly curled,
And fragile violet blue--
He soon will seize you too!
Beware, fair flower!

Death, I defy thee! Hasten near
With one great sweep--I have no fear!
Though hurt, I'll stay undaunted,
For I shall be transplanted
Into the garden by heaven's gate,
The heavenly garden we all await.
Rejoice, fair flower!

_JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM_

* * * * *

FAIRY TALES[8] (1812)

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY MARGARET HUNT

THE FROG-KING, OR IRON HENRY

In old times, when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face. Close by the King's castle lay a great dark forest, and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when the day was warm the King's child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain, and when she was dull she took a golden ball and threw it up high and caught it, and this ball was her favorite plaything.

Now it so happened that, on one occasion, the princess' golden ball did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it, but onto the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The King's daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was deep so deep that the bottom could not be seen. On this she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And as she thus lamented, some one said to her: "What ails thee, King's daughter? Thou weepest so that even a stone would show pity." She looked around to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. "Ah! old water-splasher, is it thou?" asked she; "I am weeping for my golden ball, which has fallen into the well."

"Be quiet, and do not weep," answered the frog; "I can help thee; but what wilt thou give me if I bring thy plaything up again?" "Whatever thou wilt have, dear frog," said she--"my clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even the golden crown which I am wearing."

The frog answered, "I do not care for thy clothes, thy pearls and jewels, or thy golden crown, but if thou wilt love me and let me be thy companion and play-fellow, and sit by thee at thy little table, and eat off thy little golden plate, and drink out of thy little cup, and sleep in thy little bed--if thou wilt promise me this I will go down below and bring thee thy golden ball again."

"Oh, yes," said she, "I promise thee all thou wishest, if thou wilt but bring me my ball back again." She, how ever, thought, "How the silly frog does talk! He lives in the water with the other frogs and croaks, and can be no companion to any human being!"

But the frog, when he had received this promise, put his head into the water and sank down, and in a short time came swimming up again with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The King's daughter was delighted to see her pretty plaything once more, and picked it up, and ran away with it. "Wait, wait," said the frog; "take me with thee; I can't run as thou canst." But what did it avail him to scream his croak, croak, after her, as loudly as he could? She did not listen to it, but ran home and soon forgot the poor frog, who was forced to go back into his well again.

The next day, when she had seated herself at the table with the King and all the courtiers and was eating from her little golden plate, something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and cried, "Princess, youngest princess, open the door for me." She ran to see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The King saw plainly that her heart was beating violently, and said, "My child, what art thou so afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to carry thee away?" "Ah, no," replied she, "it is no giant, but a disgusting frog."

"What does the frog want with thee?" "Ah, dear father, yesterday when I was in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden ball fell into the water. And because I cried so the frog brought it out again for me, and because he insisted so on it, I promised him he should be my companion; but I never thought he would be able to come out of his water! And now he is outside there, and wants to come in to me."

In the meantime it knocked a second time, and cried

"Princess! youngest princess!
Open the door for me!
Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me
Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain!
Princess, youngest princess!
Open the door for me!"

Then said the King, "That which thou has promised must thou perform. Go and let him in." She went and opened the door, and the frog hopped in and followed her, step by step, to her chair. There he sat still and cried, "Lift me up beside thee." She delayed, until at last the King commanded her to do it. When the frog was once on the chair he wanted to be on the table, and when he was on the table he said, "Now, push thy little golden plate nearer to me that we may eat together." She did this, but it was easy to see that she did not do it willingly. The frog enjoyed what he ate, but almost every mouthful she took choked her. At length he said, "I have eaten and am satisfied; now I am tired, carry me into thy little room and make thy little silken bed ready, and we will both lie down and go to sleep."

The King's daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog which she did not like to touch, and which was now to sleep in her pretty, clean little bed. But the King grew angry and said, "He who helped thee when thou wert in trouble ought not afterward to be despised by thee." So she took hold of the frog with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner. But when she was in bed he crept to her and said, "I am tired, I want to sleep as well as thou; lift me up or I will tell thy father." Then she was terribly angry, and took him up and threw him with all her might against the wall. "Now thou wilt be quiet, odious frog," said she. But when he fell down he was no frog but a king's son with beautiful kind eyes. He by her father's will was now her dear companion and husband. Then he told her how he had been bewitched by a wicked witch, and how no one could have delivered him from the well but herself, and that tomorrow they would go together into his kingdom. Then they went to sleep, and next morning when the sun awoke them, a carriage came driving up with eight white horses, which had white ostrich feathers on their heads, and were harnessed with golden chains, and behind stood the young King's servant, faithful Henry. Faithful Henry had been so unhappy when his master was changed into a frog that he had caused three iron bands to be laid round his heart, lest it should burst with grief and sadness. The carriage was to conduct the young King into his kingdom. Faithful Henry helped them both in, and placed himself behind again, and was full of joy because of this deliverance. And when they had driven a part of the way, the King's son heard a crackling behind him as if something had broken. So he turned round and cried, "Henry, the carriage is breaking."

"No, master, it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart, which was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and imprisoned in the well." Again and once again while they were on their way something cracked, and each time the King's son thought the carriage was breaking; but it was only the bands which were springing from the heart of faithful Henry because his master was set free and was happy.

* * * * *

THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS

There was once on a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and she loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called all seven to her and said, "Dear children, I have to go into the forest; be on your guard against the wolf; if he comes in, he will devour you all--skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet." The kids said, "Dear mother, we will take good care of ourselves; you may go away without any anxiety." Then the old one bleated and went on her way with an easy mind.

It was not long before some one knocked at the house door, and cried, "Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the little kids knew that it was the wolf, by the rough voice. "We will not open the door," cried they; "thou art not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but thy voice is rough; thou art the wolf!" Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this, and made his voice soft with it. Then he came back, knocked at the door of the house, and cried, "Open the door, dear children; your mother is here and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and the children saw them and cried, "We will not open the door; our mother has not black feet like thee; thou art the wolf!" Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, "I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me." And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said, "Strew some white meal over my feet for me." The miller thought to himself, "The wolf wants to deceive some one," and refused; but the wolf said, "If thou wilt not do it, I will devour thee." Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly men are like that.

So now the wretch went for the third time to the house door, knocked at it, and said, "Open the door for me, children; your dear little mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back from the forest with her." The little kids cried, "First show us thy paws that we may know if thou art our dear little mother." Then he put his paws in through the window, and when the kids saw that they were white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who should come in but the wolf! They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh into the clock-case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great ceremony; one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest in the clock-case was the only one he did not find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself down under a tree in the green meadow outside, and went to sleep. Soon afterward the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah! what a sight she saw there! The house door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and benches were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them one after another by name, but no one answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice cried, "Dear mother, I am in the clock-case." She took the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how she wept over her poor children.

At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree snoring so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged body. "Ah, heavens!" said she, "is it possible that my poor children, whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?" Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread, and the goat cut open the monster's stomach. Hardly had she made one cut than one little kid thrust its head out; and, when she had cut further, all six sprang out one after another. They were all still alive and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed them down whole. What rejoicing there was! Then they embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a tailor at his wedding. The mother, however, said, "Now go and look for some big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast's stomach with them while he is still asleep." Then the seven kids dragged the stones thither with all speed, and put as many of them into his stomach as they could get in; and the mother sewed him up again in the greatest haste, so that he was not aware of anything, and never once stirred.

When the wolf at length had had his sleep out, he got on his legs, and, as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he wanted to go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and to move about, the stones in his stomach knocked against one another and rattled. Then cried he--

"What rumbles and tumbles
Against my poor bones?
I thought 'twas six kids,
But it's naught but big stones."

And when he got to the well and stooped over the water and was just about to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in and there was no help, but he had to drown miserably. When the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot, and cried aloud, "The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!" and danced for joy round about the well with their mother.

* * * * *

RAPUNZEL

There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire. These people had a little window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, and had the greatest desire to eat some. This desire increased every day, and as she knew that she could not get any of it, she quite pined away and looked pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and asked, "What aileth thee, dear wife?" "Ah," she replied, "if I can't get some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, to eat, I shall die." The man, who loved her, thought, "Sooner than let my wife die, I will bring her some of the rampion myself, let it cost me what it will." In the twilight of evening, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad of it and ate it with much relish. She, however, liked it so much, so very much, that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before, and, if he was to have any rest, her husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening, therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him. "How canst thou dare," said she with angry look, "to descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? Thou shalt suffer for it!" "Ah," answered he, "let mercy take the place of justice; I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to eat." Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said to him, "If the case be as thou sayest, I will allow thee to take away with thee as much rampion as thou wilt, only I make one condition--thou must give me the child which thy wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated and I will care for it like a mother." The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child beneath the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower which lay in a forest and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath this, and cried cried--

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair to me."

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After a year or two, it came to pass that the King's son rode through the forest and went by the tower; there he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The King's son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart that every day he went out into the forest and listened to it. Once, when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried--

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair."

Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. "If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I will for once try my fortune," said he; and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried--

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair."

Immediately the hair fell down and the King's son climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man such as her eyes had never yet beheld came to her; but the King's son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, "He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does;" and she said yes, and laid her hand in his. She said, "I will willingly go away with thee, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with thee a skein of silk every time that thou comest, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and thou wilt take me on thy horse." They agreed that, until that time, he should always come to see her in the evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once Rapunzel said to her, "Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young King's son--he is with me in a moment." "Ah! thou wicked child," cried the enchantress, "what do I hear thee say? I thought I had separated thee from all the world, and yet thou hast deceived me!" In her anger she clutched Rapunzel's beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and, snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

On the same day, however, that she cast out Rapunzel, the enchantress in the evening fastened the braids of hair which she had cut off to the hook of the window, and when the King's son came and cried cried--

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down thy hair,"

she let the hair down. The King's son ascended, but he did not find his dearest Rapunzel above-only the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. "Aha!" she cried mockingly, "thou wouldst fetch thy dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out thy eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to thee; thou wilt never see her more." The King's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went toward it, and, when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again so that he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterward, happy and contented.

* * * * *

HAENSEL AND GRETHEL

Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Haensel and the girl Grethel. He had little to bite and to break, and once, when great scarcity fell on the land, he could no longer procure daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife, "What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?" "I'll tell you what, husband," answered the woman, "early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest, and there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one piece of bread more; then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them." "No, wife," said the man, "I will not do that; how can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest? The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces." "O, thou fool!" said she, "then we must all four die of hunger and thou mayest as well plane the planks for our coffins;" and she left him no peace until he consented. "But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same," said the man.

The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Grethel wept bitter tears, and said to Haensel, "Now all is over with us." "Be quiet, Grethel," said Haensel. "Do not distress thyself, I will soon find a way to help us." And when the old folks had fallen asleep, he got up, put on his coat, opened the door below, and crept outside. The moon shone brightly and the white pebbles which lay in front of the house glittered like real silver pennies. Haensel stooped and put as many of them in the little pocket of his coat as he could possibly get in. Then he went back and said to Grethel, "Be comforted, dear little sister, and sleep in peace; God will not forsake us;" and he lay down again in his bed. When day dawned, but before the sun had risen, the woman came and awoke the two children, saying, "Get up, you sluggards! we are going into the forest to fetch wood." She gave each a little piece of bread, and said, "There is something for your dinner, but do not eat it up before then, for you will get nothing else." Grethel took the bread under her apron, as Haensel had the stones in his pocket. Then they all set out together on the way to the forest. When they, had walked a short time, Haensel stood still and peeped back at the house, and did so again and again. His father said, "Haensel, what art thou looking at there and staying behind for? Mind what thou art about, and do not forget how to use thy legs." "Ah, father," said Haensel, "I am looking at my little white cat, which is sitting upon the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me." The wife said, "Fool, that is not thy little cat; that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys." Haensel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his pocket on the road.

When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said, "Now, children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you may not be cold." Haensel and Grethel gathered brushwood together, as high as a little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the flames were burning very high the woman said, "Now, children, lay yourselves down by the fire and rest and we will go into the forest and cut some wood. When we have done, we will come back and fetch you away."

Haensel and Grethel sat by the fire, and, when noon came, each ate a little piece of bread, but, as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe, they believed that their father was near. It was, however, not the axe; it was a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backward and forward; and, as they had been sitting such a long time, their eyes shut with fatigue and they fell fast asleep. When at last they awoke it was already dark night. Grethel began to cry and said, "How are we to get out of the forest now?" But Haensel comforted her and said, "Just wait a little, until the moon has risen, and then we will soon find the way." And when the full moon had risen, Haensel took his little sister by the hand and followed the pebbles, which shone like newly-coined silver pieces and showed them the way.

They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more to their father's house. They knocked at the door, and when the woman opened it and saw that it was Haensel and Grethel, she said, "You naughty children, why have you slept so long in the forest? We thought you were never coming back at all!" The father, however, rejoiced, for it had cut him to the heart to leave them behind alone.

Not long afterward, there was once more great scarcity in all parts, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father, "Everything is eaten again; we have one-half loaf left, and after that there is an end. The children must go. We will take them farther into the wood, so that they will not find their way out again; there is no other means of saving ourselves!" The man's heart was heavy, and he thought, "It would be better for thee to share the last mouthful with thy children." The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he had to say, but scolded and reproached him. He who says A must say B likewise, and, as he had yielded the first time, he had to do so a second time also.

The children were, however, still awake and had heard the conversation. When the old folks were asleep, Haensel again got up, and wanted to go out and pick up pebbles; but the woman had locked the door, and Haensel could not get out. Nevertheless he comforted his little sister, and said, "Do not cry, Grethel, go to sleep quietly. The good God will help us."

Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their beds. Their bit of bread was given to them, but it was still smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest Haensel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground. "Haensel, why dost thou stop and look around?" asked the father; "go on." "I am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me," answered Haensel. "Simpleton!" said the woman, "that is not thy little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney." Haensel, however, little by little, threw all the crumbs on the path.