Once upon a time there was a little girl named Aennchen. She was very
pretty and good-natured, but a little spoiled, and therefore capricious
and quick-tempered; for she was the only child of wealthy people, and
her parents gave her her own way in everything. From the time Aennchen
was a year old, she had been loaded with presents of all kinds at every
opportunity. First there were india-rubber animals, then little houses
and gardens with green trees, then small pails, sieves, cake shapes,
and shovels to work in the sand, then rocking-horses and big donkeys on
wheels, and finally dolls, small and large, fair and dark, unbreakable
wooden ones and very fragile china ones, simply and richly dressed. But
the one which was given to her by her aunt, on her fifth birthday, was
more beautiful than any she had ever had before.
This was a very aristocratic lady, almost as large as Aennchen herself,
and dressed like a princess. She had a satin cloak, a silk gown with
several flounces, gold buckles at her little waist, white leather
shoes, embroidered underclothes, and a magnificent velvet and lace hat,
with an ostrich plume. A mother-of-pearl fan hung from her belt, and
she carried in her hand a dainty sunshade. She wore bracelets, a
necklace, and earrings, the only things which Aennchen did not like;
for her mother had told her that only savages bore holes in the ears,
nose, and lips to hang jewels in them. The doll had long, silky light
hair, which was waved, braided, and artistically arranged with hairpins
and little tortoise-shell combs. When she was laid down, she instantly
shut her big blue eyes, and fell asleep. When she was lifted up, she
opened her eyes and was awake again at once. She could say Papa, Mamma,
and many other things distinctly, but usually maintained a well-bred
silence, and spoke only when she was invited to do so by a pressure on
her body. She did not come to Aennchen like a person who has nothing
except what she carries on her back, but brought with her a magnificent
outfit, a chest of clothes, a bureau full of under linen, a sideboard
supplied with china, glass, and metal dishes, and table damask. At
first Aennchen felt really embarrassed when her new playmate was
introduced to her. She could not take her in her arms and carry her
about, she was too large and too heavy. She was told that she must not
undress and dress her, lest she should spoil her beautiful clothes, and
undressing and dressing her doll is the greatest pleasure a little girl
takes in it. Aennchen admired her, but she did not really love her, and
did not grow intimate enough with her to speak to her familiarly. When
she first became better acquainted with her, she discovered a very
serious fault—the new doll was extremely proud.
Aennchen had wanted to call her Minna. This was the name of her nurse,
whom her parents had kept in the house after the child outgrew milk,
and to whom Aennchen was deeply attached. But the doll would not have
the name. She did not hear it. She did not turn her head, when Aennchen
called her by it, but remained sitting as stiffly as if she was made of
wood. And yet she had been manufactured of the finest, most pliable kid
and china, and her limbs moved at every joint. This obstinacy provoked
Aennchen so much that she struck the doll. Then the latter said dryly:
“Pardon me. People do not strike me.”
“If you don’t want to be struck,” replied Aennchen, angrily, “answer
when you are called by name.”
“Minna is no name for me,” replied the doll, coldly.
“What do you want to be called, then?” asked Aennchen, bewildered.
“At least Kunigunde,” answered the haughty doll.
At first Aennchen was greatly inclined to box her ears, and say: “A
name that is good enough for my dear nurse is far too good for a
stupid, puffed-up thing like you,” but the doll’s cool audacity awed
her. She yielded, and the doll received the name of Kunigunde.
Aennchen had trouble with Kunigunde in another way. She had three
favorite dolls. They were small and easily handled, simply dressed, and
very dear to the little girl, because she had had them a long time, and
because she was allowed to dress and undress them as much as she
wished. Their clothes were no longer perfectly fresh, and showed here
and there a ripped seam, a loose button, or even a rent, and their
faces and hands could not be considered exactly models of cleanliness,
though Aennchen, who was very fond of splashing in the water, often
scrubbed them with soap, sponge, and brushes.
She wanted to make Kunigunde acquainted with these three older dolls,
and invited her to a coffee party. She put Kunigunde’s handsomest
table-cloth on the table, set out her beautiful dishes, and brought out
the three dolls. When Kunigunde saw the little shabby figures, she sat
up as straight as a dart, and stared into vacancy with her big blue
eyes, taking no more notice of the three dolls than if they had been
empty air. Aennchen put her three friends into little chairs, and was
going to do the same for Kunigunde. But the latter refused to take the
place. “I am not used to sitting at the same table with common people,”
she said.
“May I at least have the honor of drinking coffee in your lofty
society?” asked Aennchen, scornfully.
“Yes,” replied Kunigunde, condescendingly, pretending not to notice the
jeer.
This was too much for Aennchen. Seizing Kunigunde violently, she was
going to press her by force into the chair. The conceited doll made
herself perfectly rigid, and said in a defiant, rattling voice, “You
can break me, if you are strong enough, but you cannot compel me to sit
at the same table with these people.”
“We will not force our company upon the lady,” said the three modest
dolls, rising at the same moment.
“Oh, nonsense,” cried Aennchen, “stay quietly here, children, we won’t
trouble ourselves any further about this puffed-up creature.” Grasping
Kunigunde by the arm, she threw her into the corner so hard that she
bounced.
“I thank you for your courteous treatment,” Kunigunde’s voice was heard
saying, after she had recovered a little from the fall. “I beg you not
to feel under the slightest restraint, but to use my coffee set just as
if it belonged to you.”
This was strong, so strong that it almost took away the three modest
dolls’ breath. No doll had ever before ventured to speak to her
mistress in such a way. Aennchen could not allow such lack of respect.
She hastened to Kunigunde, screaming: “Now my patience is gone. Your
coffee set belongs to me, and you belong to me, and if you don’t keep
quiet at once, you’ll fly out of the window. Then you can hunt in the
gutter for society that is good enough for you.”
Kunigunde now remained silent, but though she did not speak, she shut
her eyes to show that she wished to have nothing to do with anything
that was going on around her. Aennchen did not take any notice of her
defiant sulking, left her lying in the corner, and entertained the
three modest dolls with coffee and cakes, which they enjoyed, while
Kunigunde received neither drop nor crumb.
Just at that time Aennchen’s foster sister, her old nurse’s daughter,
had been very ill and was beginning to recover. While the sickness was
serious, Aennchen had not been allowed to see her. Now, after several
weeks, she was permitted to go into the sick room for the first time.
The two little girls threw their arms around each other’s necks, and
rejoiced that they could be together again.
The foster sister had heard, from her mother, that Aennchen had had a
wonderful doll on her birthday, and she was very curious to see it.
Aennchen instantly ran to her room and, with some difficulty, dragged
Kunigunde to the bedside. At the sight of her, the foster sister
uttered a little cry, exclaiming: “Oh, she really is too beautiful! I
never thought there were such lovely dolls.”
“Do you admire her so much?” asked Aennchen.
“More than I can tell,” replied her foster sister, her eyes wandering
from Kunigunde’s velvet and lace hat to her satin cloak, and from her
silk gown to her necklace.
“Would you like to have her?” Aennchen went on.
The foster sister did not dare to answer.
“Say whether you want her,” Aennchen urged.
“Oh,” replied the child in the bed softly, “surely you are not in
earnest. She is too elegant for me. And your mother will not let you.”
“My mamma lets me do everything I ask her,” cried Aennchen, and ran off
as fast as she could go to her mother, to tell her that she wanted to
give Kunigunde to her foster sister for a present on her recovery.
She received permission and, highly delighted, returned to the little
girl to give her the beautiful doll for her very own.
“You know,” she said, “she can open and shut her eyes, and say Papa and
Mamma, and all sorts of other things.” And she wanted to show her the
doll’s skill. But Kunigunde kept her eyes obstinately shut, and did not
utter a sound.
“Have you suddenly grown deaf and dumb?” cried Aennchen, impatiently,
after she had vainly laid her down and sat her up again, shaken and
jerked her, squeezed and thumped her.
Kunigunde groaned under this rough treatment, and at last made up her
mind to utter the words, “I am not to be given to any servant’s child.”
This provoking answer made Aennchen furious. “I’ll teach you to insult
my foster sister,” she cried, and threw the haughty doll on the floor
with all her strength. There was a rattling sound, the child in bed
screamed, Kunigunde squeaked, “Mamma!” The worst had happened. The
doll’s head was broken; small pieces, to which her beautiful fair hair
still clung, were lying on the floor, and the back of Kunigunde’s head
showed a large, gaping hole.
Aennchen was obliged to tell her mother of the misfortune. Her mother
was very angry and scolded her little daughter for her quick temper. As
a punishment, she should have no dessert that evening. Aennchen cried,
and was still more enraged against Kunigunde, on whose account she was
now punished. Her mother spoke of sending the severely wounded doll to
a doll surgeon for treatment, and having a new head put on. But
Aennchen would not hear of it. “Throw her away,” she said; “I don’t
want to see her any more.”
“It will be better so,” muttered Kunigunde, who, though stunned, had
heard everything. “I have nothing to expect here except vulgar abuse.”
Aennchen perceived that even the hole in her head had not yet taught
Kunigunde modesty. Instead of answering, she took her up, stripped off
her ornaments, her hat, her rich garments, and her underclothes and,
when the doll lay perfectly naked, she called her nurse and said,
“Throw this thing into the garbage can.”
The nurse hesitated, but Aennchen stamped her feet and screamed, “Throw
her into the garbage can, I tell you.” Then the nurse yielded to her
foster child’s whim and carried the doll out of her sight.
When Kunigunde again opened her eyes, which until then she had
obstinately kept closed, she found herself in a corner of the kitchen,
in the deep garbage can, among bones, refuse, and sweepings. This
humiliation gave her more pain than the hole in her head, and filled
her with great bitterness. She was certain that sharp injustice, a
terrible wrong, had been done her. She had been severely injured,
robbed of all her property, and thrown into the dirt. And why? Because
she would not give up her self-respect. “Very well,” she murmured, “you
can commit every violence and every crime upon me, for you are stronger
than I; but you have not yet been able to force me to associate with
people who are beneath me in rank.”
The next morning, before the garbage wagon drove by, the rag-picker and
his wife came, as usual, to rummage in the can. “Look here!” he
exclaimed, when he saw the big doll; “she is dirty and broken, it is
true, but the dealer will give something for her.”
His wife turned Kunigunde round, and then said: “What we can get for
her isn’t worth talking about. We’ll take the thing to our little one.”
They did so. Kunigunde was quickly thrown into the sack which the woman
carried on her back, and taken to the rag-picker’s hut. The bag, as
usual, was emptied on the floor, and the little daughter peeped
curiously at the contents. Kunigunde, it is true, felt the deepest
aversion to the people who had picked her out of the garbage can, the
horribly dirty hut in which she found herself, and the ragged, greasy
child, to whom she was now to be given; yet in her conceit she imagined
that the little girl would be so astonished and delighted at the sight
of her that she would not dare to come near her, and this thought
flattered her. So she was deeply offended and humbled, when she was
soon forced to see that she made no impression on the rag-picker’s
child at all. The little girl picked her up, turned her over and over,
noticed the hole in her head and the sweepings in the tangled hair
which still remained, and only said contemptuously, “I don’t care,”
when her mother asked if she would like to have the doll.
The child owned one doll, which she had made herself, certainly a very
odd one. It was a long cork from a claret bottle, which the little girl
had dressed in several pieces of cotton rags and scraps of newspaper,
tied on with a bit of string. On the piece which appeared above the
paper and the rags she had marked, with a lead pencil, two eyes, a
nose, and a mouth. This little monster she loved and petted, talked
tenderly to it, and pressed it to her heart. When she retired with
Kunigunde to a corner of the hut, she laid her on the floor, took out
her own cork-stopper doll, kissed it, and said: “Look at this long
string of a doll! How much prettier you are! I love you far, far
better. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give her to you for a servant. She is
big and strong. She shall carry you out to walk, and do everything that
you order her.”
She put Kunigunde down, and laid the little scarecrow in her arms. But
now it did not suit her that her darling’s servant should be naked, and
she prepared to dress her. She searched for rags and paper, but all the
scraps she found were far too small for the huge Kunigunde. After she
had worked in vain for a long time, she grew impatient and cried,
“There’s nothing to be done with the stupid thing.” As she spoke, she
struck her so violently against the wall that she broke both of her
legs. The child stared at her a moment, then she said: “Now she is
dead. We will bury her.”
Kunigunde thought that her last hour had come, and she was glad. “I
would rather lie under the ground than to be the maid of a horrible
cork-stopper,” she said to herself. She closed her eyes, that she might
not see the dirt and wretchedness surrounding her, and sought
consolation for her terrible fate in the remembrance of her former
beauty, the wealth of which she had been robbed, and her aristocratic
origin, which had really destined her to be the playmate of a princess.
Meantime, the rag-picker’s cruel child was preparing to dig a hole in a
heap of rubbish behind the hut with the sharp edge of an old sardine
box. Her older brother found her busy at this work, and when, in reply
to his question, he learned that she was making a grave for the
ill-treated doll, which lay with closed eyes and broken limbs, he said:
“You can’t dig so large a grave as this big creature needs. Come, we’ll
throw the ugly wretch into the water.”
They at once set off together for the bridge which crossed the river
near by. “One, two, three,” cried the boy, and flung Kunigunde far over
the railing. The little girl looked after her, pressed her cork-stopper
doll to her heart, and said lovingly, “I don’t want any doll except
you.”
Kunigunde had considered it a last happiness that she was not to be
buried alive, but drowned, for this seemed to her a quicker and
painless end. “Now all will be over. These good-for-nothing human
beings were not worthy to possess so noble a creature as I,” she
thought, as she fell into the water and sank nearly to the bottom.
But all was not over. She did not drown, but was borne to the surface
again and floated gently down the stream. She opened her eyes and, in
spite of the hole in her head, in spite of her broken limbs, in spite
of her beggary, her courage revived. Then she suddenly felt sharp teeth
seize her. A large water rat caught her by one foot and dragged her to
its nest, which was on the shore, close beside the water. In it was a
litter of young rats, who wanted to play with the doll drifting in the
river. They all came out of the hole and swarmed around the doll which
their mother had brought. The thought darted through Kunigunde’s broken
head, “I would not play with a servant’s child, and now I must serve
these vermin for a toy!” This thought gave her such anguish that she
grew unconscious and died.
Death came at the right time to spare her the worst suffering. The
young rats wanted to drag her into their hole, the entrance was too
small, and when the horrible animals had pulled her to and fro a long
time in vain, they grew angry and began to tear her to pieces with
their teeth. They ate all the parts of her which were made of kid and
filled with bran, and the china portions found their last resting place
on the bottom of the river.
This was the sorrowful end of the proud Kunigunde. Aennchen’s three
modest dolls, on the contrary, fared well with their friend. They
stayed with her until Aennchen became a tall, beautiful young lady, and
when she married and had a little girl herself, she gave her her three
faithful playmates, that they might afford the child as much pleasure
as they had the mother.