"I was born in the library, at a castle," said the second mouse.
"Very few members of our family ever had the good fortune to get
into the dining-room, much less the store-room. On my journey, and
here to-day, are the only times I have ever seen a kitchen. We were
often obliged to suffer hunger in the library, but then we gained a
great deal of knowledge. The rumor reached us of the royal prize
offered to those who should be able to make soup from a sausage
skewer. Then my old grandmother sought out a manuscript which,
however, she could not read, but had heard it read, and in it was
written, 'Those who are poets can make soup of sausage skewers.' She
then asked me if I was a poet. I felt myself quite innocent of any
such pretensions. Then she said I must go out and make myself a
poet. I asked again what I should be required to do, for it seemed
to me quite as difficult as to find out how to make soup of a
sausage skewer. My grandmother had heard a great deal of reading in
her day, and she told me three principal qualifications were
necessary--understanding, imagination, and feeling. 'If you can manage
to acquire these three, you will be a poet, and the sausage-skewer
soup will be quite easy to you.'
"So I went forth into the world, and turned my steps towards the
west, that I might become a poet. Understanding is the most
important matter in everything. I knew that, for the two other
qualifications are not thought much of; so I went first to seek for
understanding. Where was I to find it? 'Go to the ant and learn
wisdom,' said the great Jewish king. I knew that from living in a
library. So I went straight on till I came to the first great
ant-hill, and then I set myself to watch, that I might become wise.
The ants are a very respectable people, they are wisdom itself. All
they do is like the working of a sum in arithmetic, which comes right.
'To work and to lay eggs,' say they, and to provide for posterity,
is to live out your time properly;' and that they truly do. They are
divided into the clean and the dirty ants, their rank is pointed out
by a number, and the ant-queen is number ONE; and her opinion is the
only correct one on everything; she seems to have the whole wisdom
of the world in her, which was just the important matter I wished to
acquire. She said a great deal which was no doubt very clever; yet
to me it sounded like nonsense. She said the ant-hill was the loftiest
thing in the world, and yet close to the mound stood a tall tree,
which no one could deny was loftier, much loftier, but no mention
was made of the tree. One evening an ant lost herself on this tree;
she had crept up the stem, not nearly to the top, but higher than
any ant had ever ventured; and when at last she returned home she said
that she had found something in her travels much higher than the
ant-hill. The rest of the ants considered this an insult to the
whole community; so she was condemned to wear a muzzle and to live
in perpetual solitude. A short time afterwards another ant got on
the tree, and made the same journey and the same discovery, but she
spoke of it cautiously and indefinitely, and as she was one of the
superior ants and very much respected, they believed her, and when she
died they erected an eggshell as a monument to her memory, for they
cultivated a great respect for science. I saw," said the little mouse,
"that the ants were always running to and fro with her burdens on
their backs. Once I saw one of them drop her load; she gave herself
a great deal of trouble in trying to raise it again, but she could not
succeed. Then two others came up and tried with all their strength
to help her, till they nearly dropped their own burdens in doing so;
then they were obliged to stop for a moment in their help, for every
one must think of himself first. And the ant-queen remarked that their
conduct that day showed that they possessed kind hearts and good
understanding. 'These two qualities,' she continued, 'place us ants in
the highest degree above all other reasonable beings. Understanding
must therefore be seen among us in the most prominent manner, and my
wisdom is greater than all.' And so saying she raised herself on her
two hind legs, that no one else might be mistaken for her. I could not
therefore make an error, so I ate her up. We are to go to the ants
to learn wisdom, and I had got the queen.
"I now turned and went nearer to the lofty tree already mentioned,
which was an oak. It had a tall trunk with a wide-spreading top, and
was very old. I knew that a living being dwelt here, a dryad as she is
called, who is born with the tree and dies with it. I had heard this
in the library, and here was just such a tree, and in it an
oak-maiden. She uttered a terrible scream when she caught sight of
me so near to her; like many women, she was very much afraid of
mice. And she had more real cause for fear than they have, for I might
have gnawed through the tree on which her life depended. I spoke to
her in a kind and friendly manner, and begged her to take courage.
At last she took me up in her delicate hand, and then I told her
what had brought me out into the world, and she promised me that
perhaps on that very evening she should be able to obtain for me one
of the two treasures for which I was seeking. She told me that
Phantaesus was her very dear friend, that he was as beautiful as the
god of love, that he remained often for many hours with her under
the leafy boughs of the tree which then rustled and waved more than
ever over them both. He called her his dryad, she said, and the tree
his tree; for the grand old oak, with its gnarled trunk, was just to
his taste. The root, spreading deep into the earth, the top rising
high in the fresh air, knew the value of the drifted snow, the keen
wind, and the warm sunshine, as it ought to be known. 'Yes,' continued
the dryad, 'the birds sing up above in the branches, and talk to
each other about the beautiful fields they have visited in foreign
lands; and on one of the withered boughs a stork has built his
nest,--it is beautifully arranged, and besides it is pleasant to
hear a little about the land of the pyramids. All this pleases
Phantaesus, but it is not enough for him; I am obliged to relate to
him of my life in the woods; and to go back to my childhood, when I
was little, and the tree so small and delicate that a stinging-nettle
could overshadow it, and I have to tell everything that has happened
since then till now that the tree is so large and strong. Sit you
down now under the green bindwood and pay attention, when Phantaesus
comes I will find an opportunity to lay hold of his wing and to pull
out one of the little feathers. That feather you shall have; a
better was never given to any poet, it will be quite enough for you.'
"And when Phantaesus came the feather was plucked, and," said
the little mouse, "I seized and put it in water, and kept it there
till it was quite soft. It was very heavy and indigestible, but I
managed to nibble it up at last. It is not so easy to nibble one's
self into a poet, there are so many things to get through. Now,
however, I had two of them, understanding and imagination; and through
these I knew that the third was to be found in the library. A great
man has said and written that there are novels whose sole and only use
appeared to be that they might relieve mankind of overflowing tears--a
kind of sponge, in fact, for sucking up feelings and emotions. I
remembered a few of these books, they had always appeared tempting
to the appetite; they had been much read, and were so greasy, that
they must have absorbed no end of emotions in themselves. I retraced
my steps to the library, and literally devoured a whole novel, that
is, properly speaking, the interior or soft part of it; the crust,
or binding, I left. When I had digested not only this, but a second, I
felt a stirring within me; then I ate a small piece of a third
romance, and felt myself a poet. I said it to myself, and told
others the same. I had head-ache and back-ache, and I cannot tell what
aches besides. I thought over all the stories that may be said to be
connected with sausage pegs, and all that has ever been written
about skewers, and sticks, and staves, and splinters came to my
thoughts; the ant-queen must have had a wonderfully clear
understanding. I remembered the man who placed a white stick in his
mouth by which he could make himself and the stick invisible. I
thought of sticks as hobby-horses, staves of music or rhyme, of
breaking a stick over a man's back, and heaven knows how many more
phrases of the same sort relating to sticks, staves, and skewers.
All my thoughts rein on skewers, sticks of wood, and staves; and as
I am, at last, a poet, and I have worked terribly hard to make
myself one, I can of course make poetry on anything. I shall therefore
be able to wait upon you every day in the week with a poetical history
of a skewer. And that is my soup."
"In that case," said the mouse-king, "we will hear what the
third mouse has to say."
"Squeak, squeak," cried a little mouse at the kitchen door; it was
the fourth, and not the third, of the four who were contending for the
prize, one whom the rest supposed to be dead. She shot in like an
arrow, and overturned the sausage peg that had been covered with
crape. She had been running day and night. She had watched an
opportunity to get into a goods train, and had travelled by the
railway; and yet she had arrived almost too late. She pressed forward,
looking very much ruffled. She had lost her sausage skewer, but not
her voice; for she began to speak at once as if they only waited for
her, and would hear her only, and as if nothing else in the world
was of the least consequence. She spoke out so clearly and plainly,
and she had come in so suddenly, that no one had time to stop her or
to say a word while she was speaking. And now let us hear what she
said.