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The Shoes of Fortune
Hans Christian Anderson
V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk
The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten,
thought meanwhile of the galoshes he had found and taken with him to the
hospital; he now went to fetch them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody
else in the street, claimed them as his property, they were delivered over to
the police-office.*
"Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own," said
one of the clerks, eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he,
sharp as he was, was not able to discover. "One must have more than the eye of a
shoemaker to know one pair from the other," said he, soliloquizing; and putting,
at the same time, the galoshes in search of an owner, beside his own in the
corner.
"Here, sir!" said one of the men, who panting brought
him a tremendous pile of papers.
The copying-clerk turned round and spoke awhile with the
man about the reports and legal documents in question; but when he had finished,
and his eye fell again on the Shoes, he was unable to say whether those to the
left or those to the right belonged to him. "At all events it must be those
which are wet," thought he; but this time, in spite of his cleverness, he
guessed quite wrong, for it was just those of Fortune which played as it were
into his hands, or rather on his feet. And why, I should like to know, are the
police never to be wrong? So he put them on quickly, stuck his papers in his
pocket, and took besides a few under his arm, intending to look them through at
home to make the necessary notes. It was noon; and the weather, that had
threatened rain, began to clear up, while gaily dressed holiday folks filled the
streets. "A little trip to Fredericksburg would do me no great harm," thought
he; "for I, poor beast of burden that I am, have so much to annoy me, that I
don't know what a good appetite is. 'Tis a bitter crust, alas! at which I am
condemned to gnaw!"
Nobody could be more steady or quiet than this young
man; we therefore wish him joy of the excursion with all our heart; and it will
certainly be beneficial for a person who leads so sedentary a life. In the park
he met a friend, one of our young poets, who told him that the following day he
should set out on his long-intended tour.
"So you are going away again!" said the clerk. "You are
a very free and happy being; we others are chained by the leg and held fast to
our desk."
"Yes; but it is a chain, friend, which ensures you the
blessed bread of existence," answered the poet. "You need feel no care for the
coming morrow: when you are old, you receive a pension."
"True," said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders; "and
yet you are the better off. To sit at one's ease and poetise--that is a
pleasure; everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always
your own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one
year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial matters."
The poet shook his head, the copying-clerk did the same.
Each one kept to his own opinion, and so they separated.
"It's a strange race, those poets!" said the clerk, who
was very fond of soliloquizing. "I should like some day, just for a trial, to
take such nature upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make no
such miserable verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most delicious day
for a poet. Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening into life. The air is
so unusually clear, the clouds sail on so buoyantly, and from the green herbage
a fragrance is exhaled that fills me with delight, For many a year have I not
felt as at this moment."
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is
become a poet; to give further proof of it, however, would in most cases be
insipid, for it is a most foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other
men. Among the latter there may be far more poetical natures than many an
acknowledged poet, when examined more closely, could boast of; the difference
only is, that the poet possesses a better mental memory, on which account he is
able to retain the feeling and the thought till they can be embodied by means of
words; a faculty which the others do not possess. But the transition from a
commonplace nature to one that is richly endowed, demands always a more or less
breakneck leap over a certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus
must the sudden change with the clerk strike the reader.
"The sweet air!" continued he of the police-office, in
his dreamy imaginings; "how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my
aunt Magdalena! Yes, then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school very
regularly. O heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on those times. The
good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She always had a few twigs or
green shoots in water--let the winter rage without as it might. The violets
exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I pressed against the windowpanes covered
with fantastic frost-work the copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made
peep-holes. What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change-what
magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted by their
whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But when the spring,
with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival, a new and busy life arose;
with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn asunder, the ships were fresh tarred and
rigged, that they might sail away to distant lands. But I have remained
here--must always remain here, sitting at my desk in the office, and patiently
see other people fetch their passports to go abroad. Such is my fate!
Alas!"--sighed he, and was again silent. "Great Heaven! What is come to me!
Never have I thought or felt like this before! It must be the summer air that
affects me with feelings almost as disquieting as they are refreshing."
He felt in his pocket for the papers. "These
police-reports will soon stem the torrent of my ideas, and effectually hinder
any rebellious overflowing of the time-worn banks of official duties"; he said
to himself consolingly, while his eye ran over the first page. "DAME TIGBRITH,
tragedy in five acts." "What is that? And yet it is undeniably my own
handwriting. Have I written the tragedy? Wonderful, very wonderful! --And
this--what have I here? 'INTRIGUE ON THE RAMPARTS; or THE DAY OF REPENTANCE:
vaudeville with new songs to the most favorite airs.' The deuce! Where did I get
all this rubbish? Some one must have slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke.
There is too a letter to me; a crumpled letter and the seal broken."
Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager
of a theatre, in which both pieces were flatly refused.
"Hem! hem!" said the clerk breathlessly, and quite
exhausted he seated himself on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart
so tender; and involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a
simple daisy, just bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after a
number of imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It related the
mythus of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that spread out its
delicate leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air with their incense--and
then he thought of the manifold struggles of life, which in like manner awaken
the budding flowers of feeling in our bosom. Light and air contend with
chivalric emulation for the love of the fair flower that bestowed her chief
favors on the latter; full of longing she turned towards the light, and as soon
as it vanished, rolled her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of
the air. "It is the light which adorns me," said the flower.
"But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe," said
the poet's voice.
Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet
ditch. The drops of water splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk
thought of the million of ephemera which in a single drop were thrown up to a
height, that was as great doubtless for their size, as for us if we were to be
hurled above the clouds. While he thought of this and of the whole metamorphosis
he had undergone, he smiled and said, "I sleep and dream; but it is wonderful
how one can dream so naturally, and know besides so exactly that it is but a
dream. If only to-morrow on awaking, I could again call all to mind so vividly!
I seem in unusually good spirits; my perception of things is clear, I feel as
light and cheerful as though I were in heaven; but I know for a certainty, that
if to-morrow a dim remembrance of it should swim before my mind, it will then
seem nothing but stupid nonsense, as I have often experienced
already--especially before I enlisted under the banner of the police, for that
dispels like a whirlwind all the visions of an unfettered imagination. All we
hear or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the
subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but viewed by
daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed quite sorrowful, and
gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch, "they
are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do I prize
that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature with any
other creature, I fain would be such a happy little lark!"
He had hardly uttered these hasty words when the skirts
and sleeves of his coat folded themselves together into wings; the clothes
became feathers, and the galoshes claws. He observed it perfectly, and laughed
in his heart. "Now then, there is no doubt that I am dreaming; but I never
before was aware of such mad freaks as these." And up he flew into the green
roof and sang; but in the song there was no poetry, for the spirit of the poet
was gone. The Shoes, as is the case with anybody who does what he has to do
properly, could only attend to one thing at a time. He wanted to be a poet, and
he was one; he now wished to be a merry chirping bird: but when he was
metamorphosed into one, the former peculiarities ceased immediately. "It is
really pleasant enough," said he: "the whole day long I sit in the office amid
the driest law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens
of Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it." He now
fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every side, and
with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in comparison to his
present size, seemed as majestic as the palm-branches of northern Africa.
Unfortunately the pleasure lasted but a moment.
Presently black night overshadowed our enthusiast, who had so entirely missed
his part of copying-clerk at a police-office; some vast object seemed to be
thrown over him. It was a large oil-skin cap, which a sailor-boy of the quay had
thrown over the struggling bird; a coarse hand sought its way carefully in under
the broad rim, and seized the clerk over the back and wings. In the first moment
of fear, he called, indeed, as loud as he could-"You impudent little blackguard!
I am a copying-clerk at the police-office; and you know you cannot insult any
belonging to the constabulary force without a chastisement. Besides, you
good-for-nothing rascal, it is strictly forbidden to catch birds in the royal
gardens of Fredericksburg; but your blue uniform betrays where you come from."
This fine tirade sounded, however, to the ungodly sailor-boy like a mere "Pippi-pi."
He gave the noisy bird a knock on his beak, and walked on.
He was soon met by two schoolboys of the upper
class-that is to say as individuals, for with regard to learning they were in
the lowest class in the school; and they bought the stupid bird. So the
copying-clerk came to Copenhagen as guest, or rather as prisoner in a family
living in Gother Street.
"'Tis well that I'm dreaming," said the clerk, "or I
really should get angry. First I was a poet; now sold for a few pence as a lark;
no doubt it was that accursed poetical nature which has metamorphosed me into
such a poor harmless little creature. It is really pitiable, particularly when
one gets into the hands of a little blackguard, perfect in all sorts of cruelty
to animals: all I should like to know is, how the story will end."
The two schoolboys, the proprietors now of the
transformed clerk, carried him into an elegant room. A stout stately dame
received them with a smile; but she expressed much dissatisfaction that a common
field-bird, as she called the lark, should appear in such high society. For
to-day, however, she would allow it; and they must shut him in the empty cage
that was standing in the window. "Perhaps he will amuse my good Polly," added
the lady, looking with a benignant smile at a large green parrot that swung
himself backwards and forwards most comfortably in his ring, inside a
magnificent brass-wired cage. "To-day is Polly's birthday," said she with stupid
simplicity: "and the little brown field-bird must wish him joy."
Mr. Polly uttered not a syllable in reply, but swung to
and fro with dignified condescension; while a pretty canary, as yellow as gold,
that had lately been brought from his sunny fragrant home, began to sing aloud.
"Noisy creature! Will you be quiet!" screamed the lady
of the house, covering the cage with an embroidered white pocket handkerchief.
"Chirp, chirp!" sighed he. "That was a dreadful
snowstorm"; and he sighed again, and was silent.
The copying-clerk, or, as the lady said, the brown
field-bird, was put into a small cage, close to the Canary, and not far from "my
good Polly." The only human sounds that the Parrot could bawl out were, "Come,
let us be men!" Everything else that he said was as unintelligible to everybody
as the chirping of the Canary, except to the clerk, who was now a bird too: he
understood his companion perfectly.
"I flew about beneath the green palms and the blossoming
almond-trees," sang the Canary; "I flew around, with my brothers and sisters,
over the beautiful flowers, and over the glassy lakes, where the bright
water-plants nodded to me from below. There, too, I saw many splendidly-dressed
paroquets, that told the drollest stories, and the wildest fairy tales without
end."
"Oh! those were uncouth birds," answered the Parrot.
"They had no education, and talked of whatever came into their head.
If my mistress and all her friends can laugh at what I
say, so may you too, I should think. It is a great fault to have no taste for
what is witty or amusing--come, let us be men."
"Ah, you have no remembrance of love for the charming
maidens that danced beneath the outspread tents beside the bright fragrant
flowers? Do you no longer remember the sweet fruits, and the cooling juice in
the wild plants of our never-to-be-forgotten home?" said the former inhabitant
of the Canary Isles, continuing his dithyrambic.
"Oh, yes," said the Parrot; "but I am far better off
here. I am well fed, and get friendly treatment. I know I am a clever fellow;
and that is all I care about. Come, let us be men. You are of a poetical nature,
as it is called--I, on the contrary, possess profound knowledge and
inexhaustible wit. You have genius; but clear-sighted, calm discretion does not
take such lofty flights, and utter such high natural tones. For this they have
covered you over--they never do the like to me; for I cost more. Besides, they
are afraid of my beak; and I have always a witty answer at hand. Come, let us be
men!"
"O warm spicy land of my birth," sang the Canary bird;
"I will sing of thy dark-green bowers, of the calm bays where the pendent boughs
kiss the surface of the water; I will sing of the rejoicing of all my brothers
and sisters where the cactus grows in wanton luxuriance."
"Spare us your elegiac tones," said the Parrot giggling.
"Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily. Laughing is an
infallible sign of the highest degree of mental development. Can a dog, or a
horse laugh? No, but they can cry. The gift of laughing was given to man alone.
Ha! ha! ha!" screamed Polly, and added his stereotype witticism. "Come, let us
be men!"
"Poor little Danish grey-bird," said the Canary; "you
have been caught too. It is, no doubt, cold enough in your woods, but there at
least is the breath of liberty; therefore fly away. In the hurry they have
forgotten to shut your cage, and the upper window is open. Fly, my friend; fly
away. Farewell!"
Instinctively the Clerk obeyed; with a few strokes of
his wings he was out of the cage; but at the same moment the door, which was
only ajar, and which led to the next room, began to creak, and supple and
creeping came the large tomcat into the room, and began to pursue him. The
frightened Canary fluttered about in his cage; the Parrot flapped his wings, and
cried, "Come, let us be men!" The Clerk felt a mortal fright, and flew through
the window, far away over the houses and streets. At last he was forced to rest
a little.
The neighboring house had a something familiar about it;
a window stood open; he flew in; it was his own room. He perched upon the table.
"Come, let us be men!" said he, involuntarily imitating
the chatter of the Parrot, and at the same moment he was again a copying-clerk;
but he was sitting in the middle of the table.
"Heaven help me!" cried he. "How did I get up here--and
so buried in sleep, too? After all, that was a very unpleasant, disagreeable
dream that haunted me! The whole story is nothing but silly, stupid nonsense!"
Next
VI. The Best That
the Galoshes Gave
* As on the continent, in
all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but any circumstance, however
trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well as the number of papers
that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find
copying-clerks among many other scribes of various denominations, of which, it
seems, our hero was one.
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