lightened. Then the sun burst forth, and over her head a little bird
sang out, and the church bells sounded for early service. Everything
was holy around her, and her heart was chastened. She acknowledged the
goodness of God, she acknowledged the duties she had to perform, and
eagerly she went home. She bent over her husband, who still slept; her
warm devoted kiss awakened him, and heart-felt words of love came from
the lips of both. And she was gentle and strong, as a wife can be; and
from her came the consoling words,
"God's will is always the best."
Then her husband asked her,
"From whence hast thou all at once derived this strength--this feeling
of consolation?"
And she kissed him, and kissed her children, and said, "They came from
God, through the child in the grave."
SOUP ON A SAUSAGE-PEG.
I.
"That was a remarkably fine dinner yesterday," observed an old Mouse
of the female sex to another who had not been at the festive
gathering. "I sat number twenty-one from the old mouse king, so that I
was not badly placed. Should you like to hear the order of the
banquet? The courses were very well arranged--mouldy bread,
bacon-rind, tallow candle, and sausage--and then the same dishes over
again from the beginning: it was just as good as having two banquets
in succession. There was as much joviality and agreeable jesting as in
the family circle. Nothing was left but the pegs at the ends of the
sausages. And the discourse turned upon these; and at last the
expression, 'Soup on sausage-rinds,' or, as they have the proverb in
the neighbouring country, 'Soup on a sausage-peg,' was mentioned.
Every one had heard the proverb, but no one had ever tasted the
sausage-peg soup, much less prepared it. A capital toast was drunk to
the inventor of the soup, and it was said he deserved to be a
relieving officer. Was not that witty? And the old mouse king stood
up, and promised that the young female mouse who could best prepare
that soup should be his queen; and a year was allowed for the trial."
"That was not at all bad," said the other Mouse; "but how does one
prepare this soup?"
"Ah, how is it prepared? That is just what all the young female mice,
and the old ones too, are asking. They would all very much like to be
queen; but they don't want to take the trouble to go out into the
world to learn how to prepare the soup, and that they would certainly
have to do. But every one has not the gift of leaving the family
circle and the chimney corner. In foreign parts one can't get
cheese-rinds and bacon every day. No, one must bear hunger, and
perhaps be eaten up alive by a cat."
Such were probably the considerations by which the majority were
deterred from going out into the wide world and gaining information.
Only four mice announced themselves ready to depart. They were young
and brisk, but poor. Each of them wished to proceed to one of the four
quarters of the globe, and then it would become manifest which of them
was favoured by fortune. Every one took a sausage-peg, so as to keep
in mind the object of the journey. The stiff sausage-peg was to be to
them as a pilgrim's staff.
It was at the beginning of May that they set out, and they did not
return till the May of the following year; and then only three of them
appeared. The fourth did not report herself, nor was there any
intelligence of her, though the day of trial was close at hand.
"Yes, there's always some drawback in even the pleasantest affair,"
said the Mouse King.
And then he gave orders that all mice within a circuit of many miles
should be invited. They were to assemble in the kitchen, where the
three travelled mice would stand up in a row, while a sausage-peg,
shrouded in crape, was set up as a memento of the fourth, who was
missing. No one was to proclaim his opinion till the mouse king had
settled what was to be said. And now let us hear.
II.
_What the first little Mouse had seen and learnt in her travels._
"When I went out into the wide world," said the little Mouse, "I
thought, as many think at my age, that I had already learnt
everything; but that was not the case. Years must pass before one gets
so far. I went to sea at once. I went in a ship that steered towards
the north. They had told me that the ship's cook must know how to
manage things at sea; but it is easy enough to manage things when one
has plenty of sides of bacon, and whole tubs of salt pork, and mouldy
flour. One has delicate living on board; but one does not learn to
prepare soup on a sausage-peg. We sailed along for many days and
nights; the ship rocked fearfully, and we did not get off without a
wetting. When we at last reached the port to which we were bound, I
left the ship; and it was high up in the far north.
"It is a wonderful thing, to go out of one's own corner at home, and
sail in a ship, where one has a sort of corner too, and then suddenly
to find oneself hundreds of miles away in a strange land. I saw great
pathless forests of pine and birch, which smelt so strong that I
sneezed, and thought of sausage. There were great lakes there too.
When I came close to them the waters were quite clear, but from a
distance they looked black as ink. Great swans floated upon them: I
thought at first they were spots of foam, they lay so still; but then
I saw them walk and fly, and I recognized them. They belong to the
goose family--one can see that by their walk; for no one can deny his
parentage. I kept with my own kind. I associated with the forest and
field mice, who, by the way, know very little, especially as regards
cookery, though this was the very subject that had brought me abroad.
The thought that soup might be boiled on a sausage-peg was such a
startling statement to them, that it flew at once from mouth to mouth
through the whole forest. They declared the problem could never be
solved; and little did I think that there, in the very first night, I
should be initiated into the method of its preparation. It was in the
height of summer, and that, the mice said, was the reason why the wood
smelt so strongly, and why the herbs were so fragrant, and the lakes
so transparent and yet so dark, with their white swimming swans.
"On the margin of the wood, among three or four houses, a pole as tall
as the mainmast of a ship had been erected, and from its summit hung
wreaths and fluttering ribbons: this was called a maypole. Men and
maids danced round the tree, and sang as loudly as they could, to the
violin of the fiddler. There were merry doings at sundown and in the
moonlight, but I took no part in them--what has a little mouse to do
with a May dance? I sat in the soft moss and held my sausage-peg fast.
The moon threw its beams especially upon one spot, where a tree stood,
covered with moss so exceedingly fine, I may almost venture to say it
was as fine as the skin of the mouse king; but it was of a green
colour, and that is a great relief to the eye.
"All at once, the most charming little people came marching forth.
They were only tall enough to reach to my knee. They looked like men,
but were better proportioned: they called themselves elves, and had
delicate clothes on, of flower leaves trimmed with the wings of flies
and gnats, which had a very good appearance. Directly they appeared,
they seemed to be seeking for something--I know not what; but at last
some of them came towards me, and the chief pointed to my sausage-peg,
and said, 'That is just such a one as we want--it is pointed--it is
capital!' and the longer he looked at my pilgrim's staff the more
delighted he became.
"'I will lend it,' I said, 'but not to keep.'
"'Not to keep!' they all repeated; and they seized the sausage-peg,
which I gave up to them, and danced away to the spot where the fine
moss grew; and here they set up the peg in the midst of the green.
They wanted to have a maypole of their own, and the one they now had
seemed cut out for them; and they decorated it so that it was
beautiful to behold.
"First, little spiders spun it round with gold thread, and hung it all
over with fluttering veils and flags, so finely woven, bleached so
snowy white in the moonshine, that they dazzled my eyes. They took
colours from the butterfly's wing, and strewed these over the white
linen, and flowers and diamonds gleamed upon it, so that I did not
know my sausage-peg again: there is not in all the world such a
maypole as they had made of it. And now came the real great party of
elves. They were quite without clothes, and looked as genteel as
possible; and they invited me to be present at the feast; but I was to
keep at a certain distance, for I was too large for them.
"And now began such music! It sounded like thousands of glass bells,
so full, so rich, that I thought the swans were singing. I fancied
also that I heard the voice of the cuckoo and the blackbird, and at
last the whole forest seemed to join in. I heard children's voices,
the sound of bells, and the song of birds; the most glorious
melodies--and all came from the elves' maypole, namely, my
sausage-peg. I should never have believed that so much could come out
of it; but that depends very much upon the hands into which it falls.
I was quite touched. I wept, as a little mouse may weep, with pure
pleasure.
"The night was far too short; but it is not longer up yonder at that
season. In the morning dawn the breeze began to blow, the mirror of
the forest lake was covered with ripples, and all the delicate veils
and flags fluttered away in the air. The waving garlands of spider's
web, the hanging bridges and balustrades, and whatever else they are
called, flew away as if they were nothing at all. Six elves brought me
back my sausage-peg, and asked me at the same time if I had any wish
that they could gratify; so I asked them if they could tell me how
soup was made on a sausage-peg.
"'How _we_ do it?' asked the chief of the elves, with a smile. 'Why,
you have just seen it. I fancy you hardly knew your sausage-peg
again?'
"'You only mean that as a joke," I replied. And then I told them in so
many words, why I had undertaken a journey, and what great hopes were
founded on the operation at home. 'What advantage,' I asked, 'can
accrue to our mouse king, and to our whole powerful state, from the
fact of my having witnessed all this festivity? I cannot shake it out
of the sausage-peg, and say, "Look, here is the peg, now the soup will
come." That would be a dish that could only be put on the table when
the guests had dined.'
[Illustration: THE ELVES APPLY FOR THE LOAN OF THE SAUSAGE-PEG.]
"Then the elf dipped his little finger into the cup of a blue violet,
and said to me:
"'See here! I will anoint your pilgrim's staff; and when you go back
to your country, and come to the castle of the mouse king, you have
but to touch him with the staff, and violets will spring forth and
cover its whole surface, even in the coldest winter-time. And so I
think I've given you something to carry home, and a little more than
something!'"
But before the little Mouse said what this "something more" was, she
stretched her staff out towards the king, and in very truth the most
beautiful bunch of violets burst forth; and the scent was so powerful,
that the mouse king incontinently ordered the mice who stood nearest
the chimney to thrust their tails into the fire and create a smell of
burning, for the odour of the violets was not to be borne, and was not
of the kind he liked.
"But what was the 'something more,' of which you spoke?" asked the
Mouse King.
"Why," the little Mouse answered, "I think it is what they call
effect!" and herewith she turned the staff round, and lo! there was
not a single flower to be seen upon it; she only held the naked
skewer, and lifted this up, as a musical conductor lifts his _baton_.
"'Violets,' the elf said to me, 'are for sight, and smell, and touch.
Therefore it yet remains to provide for hearing and taste!'" And now
the little Mouse began to beat time; and music was heard, not such as
sounded in the forest among the elves, but such as is heard in the
kitchen. There was a bubbling sound of boiling and roasting; and all
at once it seemed as if the sound were rushing through every chimney,
and pots and kettles were boiling over. The fire-shovel hammered upon
the brass kettle, and then, on a sudden, all was quiet again. They
heard the quiet subdued song of the tea-kettle, and it was wonderful
to hear--they could not quite tell if the kettle were beginning to
sing or leaving off; and the little pot simmered, and the big pot
simmered, and neither cared for the other: there seemed to be no
reason at all in the pots. And the little Mouse flourished her _baton_
more and more wildly; the pots foamed, threw up large bubbles, boiled
over, and the wind roared and whistled through the chimney. Oh! it
became so terrible, that the little Mouse lost her stick at last.
"That was a heavy soup!" said the Mouse King. "Shall we not soon hear
about the preparation?"
"That was all," said the little Mouse, with a bow.
"That is all! Then we should be glad to hear what the next has to
relate," said the Mouse King.
III.
_What the second little Mouse had to tell._
"I was born in the palace library," said the second Mouse. "I and
several members of our family never knew the happiness of getting into
the dining-room, much less into the store-room; on my journey, and
here to-day, are the only times I have seen a kitchen. We have indeed
often been compelled to suffer hunger in the library, but we got a
good deal of knowledge. The rumour penetrated even to us, of the royal
prize offered to those who could cook soup upon a sausage-peg; and it
was my old grandmother who thereupon ferreted out a manuscript, which
she certainly could not read, but which she had heard read out, and in
which it was written: 'Those who are poets can boil soup upon a
sausage-peg.' She asked me if I were a poet. I felt quite innocent on
the subject, and then she told me I must go out, and manage to become
one. I again asked what was requisite in that particular, for it was
as difficult for me to find that out, as to prepare the soup; but
grandmother had heard a good deal of reading, and she said that three
things were especially necessary: 'Understanding, imagination,
feeling--if you can manage to obtain these three, you are a poet, and
the sausage-wide peg affair will be quite easy to you.'
"And I went forth, and marched towards the west, away into the world,
to become a poet.
"Understanding is the most important thing in every affair. I knew
that, for the two other things are not held in half such respect, and
consequently I went out first to seek understanding. Yes, where does
he dwell? 'Go to the ant and be wise,' said the great King of the
Jews; I knew that from my library experience; and I never stopped till
I came to the first great ant-hill, and there I placed myself on the
watch, to become wise.
"The ants are a respectable people. They are understanding itself.
Everything with them is like a well-worked sum, that comes right. To
work and to lay eggs, they say, is to live while you live, and to
provide for posterity; and accordingly that is what they do. They were
divided into the clean and the dirty ants. The rank of each is
indicated by a number, and the ant queen is number ONE; and her view
is the only correct one, she is the receptacle of all wisdom; and that
was important for me to know. She spoke so much, and it was all so
clever, that it sounded to me like nonsense. She declared her ant-hill
was the loftiest thing in the world; though close by it grew a tree,
which was certainly loftier, much loftier, that could not be denied,
and therefore it was never mentioned. One evening an ant had lost
herself upon the tree: she had crept up the stem--not up to the crown,
but higher than any ant had climbed until then; and when she turned,
and came back home, she talked of something far higher than the
ant-hill that she had found in her travels; but the other ants
considered that an insult to the whole community, and consequently she
was condemned to wear a muzzle, and to continual solitary confinement.
But a short time afterwards another ant got on the tree, and made the
same journey and the same discovery; and this one spoke with emphasis,
and indistinctly, they said; and as, moreover, she was one of the pure
ants and very much respected, they believed her; and when she died
they erected an egg-shell as a memorial of her, for they had a great
respect for the sciences. I saw," continued the little Mouse, "that
the ants were always running to and fro with their eggs on their
backs. One of them once dropped her egg; she exerted herself greatly
to pick it up again, but she could not succeed. Then two others came
up, and helped her with all their might, insomuch that they nearly
dropped their own eggs over it; but then they certainly at once
relaxed their exertions, for each should think of himself first--the
ant queen had declared that by so doing they exhibited at once heart
and understanding.
"'These two qualities,' she said, 'place us ants on the highest step
among all reasoning beings. Understanding is seen among us all in
predominant measure, and I have the greatest share of understanding.'
And so saying, she raised herself on her hind-legs, so that she was
easily to be recognized. I could not be mistaken, and I ate her up. We
were to go to the ants to learn wisdom--and I had got the queen!
"I now proceeded nearer to the before-mentioned lofty tree. It was an
oak, and had a great trunk, and a far-spreading top, and was very old.
I knew that a living being dwelt here, a Dryad as it is called, who is
born with the tree, and dies with it. I had heard about this in the
library; and now I saw an oak tree, and an oak girl. She uttered a
piercing cry when she saw me so near. Like all females, she was very
much afraid of mice; and she had more ground for fear than others, for
I might have gnawed through the stem of the tree on which her life
depended. I accosted the maiden in a friendly and honest way, and bade
her take courage. And she took me up in her delicate hand; and when I
had told her my reason for coming out into the wide world, she
promised me that perhaps on that very evening I should have one of the
two treasures of which I was still in quest. She told me that
Phantasus, the genius of imagination, was her very good friend, that
he was beautiful as the god of love, and that he rested many an hour
under the leafy boughs of the tree, which then rustled more strongly
than ever over the pair of them. He called her his dryad, she said,
and the tree his tree, for the grand gnarled oak was just to his
taste, with its root burrowing so deep in the earth, and the stem and
crown rising so high out in the fresh air, and knowing the beating
snow, and the sharp wind, and the warm sunshine as they deserve to be
known. 'Yes,' the Dryad continued, 'the birds sing aloft there in the
branches, and tell each other of strange countries they have visited;
and on the only dead bough the stork has built a nest which is highly
ornamental, and moreover, one gets to hear something of the land of
the pyramids. All that is very pleasing to Phantasus; but it is not
enough for him: I myself must talk to him, and tell him of life in the
woods, and must revert to my childhood, when I was little, and the
tree such a delicate thing that a stinging-nettle overshadowed it--and
I have to tell everything, till now that the tree is great and strong.
Sit you down under the green thyme, and pay attention; and when
Phantasus comes, I shall find an opportunity to pinch his wings, and
to pull out a little feather. Take the pen--no better is given to any
poet--and it will be enough for you!'
"And when Phantasus came the feather was plucked, and I seized it,"
said the little Mouse. "I put it in water, and held it there till it
grew soft. It was very hard to digest, but I nibbled it up at last. It
is very easy to gnaw oneself into being a poet, though there are many
things one must do. Now I had these two things, imagination and
understanding, and through these I knew that the third was to be found
in the library; for a great man has said and written that there are
romances, whose sole and single use is that they relieve people of
their superfluous tears, and that they are, in fact, a sort of sponges
sucking up human emotion. I remembered a few of these old books which
had always looked especially palatable, and were much thumbed and very
greasy, having evidently absorbed a great deal of feeling into
themselves.
"I betook myself back to the library, and, so to speak, devoured a
whole novel--that is, the essence of it, the interior part, for I left
the crust or binding. When I had digested this, and a second one in
addition, I felt a stirring within me, and I ate a bit of a third
romance, and now I was a poet. I said so to myself, and told the
others also. I had headache, and chestache, and I can't tell what
aches besides. I began thinking what kind of stories could be made to
refer to a sausage-peg; and many pegs, and sticks, and staves, and
splinters came into my mind--the ant queen must have had a
particularly fine understanding. I remembered the man who took a white
stick in his mouth, by which means he could render himself and the
stick invisible; I thought of stick hobby-horses, of 'stock rhymes,'
of 'breaking the staff' over an offender, and Heaven knows of how many
phrases more concerning sticks, stocks, staves, and pegs. All my
thoughts ran upon sticks, staves, and pegs; and when one is a poet
(and I am a poet, for I have worked most terribly hard to become one)
a person can make poetry on these subjects. I shall therefore be able
to wait upon you every day with a poem or a history--and that's the
soup I have to offer."
"Let us hear what the third has to say," was now the Mouse King's
command.
"Peep! peep!" cried a small voice at the kitchen-door, and a little
mouse--it was the fourth of the mice who had contended for the prize,
the one whom they looked upon as dead--shot in like an arrow. She
toppled the sausage-peg with the crape covering over in a moment. She
had been running day and night, and had travelled on the railway, in
the goods train, having watched her opportunity, and yet she had
almost come too late. She pressed forward, looking very much rumpled,
and she had lost her sausage-peg, but not her voice, for she at once
took up the word, as if they had been waiting only for her, and wanted
to hear none but her, and as if everything else in the world were of
no consequence. She spoke at once, and spoke fully: she had appeared
so suddenly, that no one found time to object to her speech or to her,
while she was speaking. And let us hear what she said.
IV.
[Illustration: THE GAOLER'S GRANDDAUGHTER TAKES PITY ON THE LITTLE
MOUSE.]
_What the fourth Mouse, who spoke before the third had spoken, had to
tell._
"I betook myself immediately to the largest town," she said; "the name
has escaped me--I have a bad memory for names. From the railway I was
carried, with some confiscated goods, to the council house, and when I
arrived there I ran into the dwelling of the gaoler. The gaoler was
talking of his prisoners, and especially of one who had spoken
unconsidered words. These words had given rise to others, and these
latter had been written down and recorded.
"'The whole thing is soup on a sausage-peg,' said the gaoler; 'but the
soup may cost him his neck.'
"Now, this gave me an interest in the prisoner," continued the Mouse,
"and I watched my opportunity and slipped into his prison--for there's
a mouse-hole to be found behind every locked door. The prisoner looked
pale, and had a great beard, and bright sparkling eyes. The lamp
flickered and smoked, but the walls were so accustomed to that, that
they grew none the blacker for it. The prisoner scratched pictures and
verses in white upon the black ground, but I did not read them. I
think he found it tedious, and I was a welcome guest. He lured me with
bread crumbs, with whistling, and with friendly words: he was glad to
see me, and gradually I got to trust him, and we became good friends.
He let me run upon his hand, his arm, and into his sleeve; he let me
creep about in his beard, and called me his little friend. I really
got to love him, for these things are reciprocal. I forgot my mission
in the wide world, forgot my sausage-peg: that I had placed in a crack
in the floor--it's lying there still. I wished to stay where I was,
for if I went away, the poor prisoner would have no one at all, and
that's having _too_ little, in this world. _I_ stayed, but _he_ did
not stay. He spoke to me very mournfully the last time, gave me twice
as much bread and cheese as usual, and kissed his hand to me; then he
went away, and never came back. I don't know his history.