"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 into the storeroom. To-day and while on my
journey are the only times I have ever seen a kitchen. We were often
obliged to suffer hunger in the library, but 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 she herself
could not read, to be sure, but she had heard it read,--and in it were
written these words, 'Those who are poets can make soup of sausage
skewers.' She asked me if I was a poet. I told her 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 that 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 seem quite simple to you.'
"So I went forth into the world and turned my steps toward the west,
that I might become a poet. Understanding is the most important matter
of all. I was sure of that, for the other two qualifications are not
thought much of; so I went first to seek understanding. Where was I to
find it?
"'Go to the ant and learn wisdom,' said the great Jewish king. I learned
this from living in a library. So I went straight on till I came to the
first great ant hill. There 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.' This they truly do. They
are divided into clean and dirty ants, and their rank is indicated by a
number. The ant-queen is number ONE. Her opinion is the only correct one
on everything, and she seems to have in her the wisdom of the whole
world. This was just what I wished to acquire. She said a great deal
that was no doubt very clever--yet it sounded like nonsense to me. She
said the ant hill was the loftiest thing in the world, although close to
the mound stood a tall tree which no one could deny was loftier, much
loftier. Yet she made no mention 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, and condemned her to
wear a muzzle and 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
egg-shell 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 their burdens on their backs. Once I saw one of them, who
had dropped her load, try very hard to raise it again, but she did not
succeed. Two others came up and tried with all their strength to help
her, till they nearly dropped their own burdens. Then they were obliged
to stop a moment, for every one must think of himself first. 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 stand out prominently
among us, and my wisdom is greatest.' So saying, she raised herself on
her two hind legs, that no one else might be mistaken for her. I could
not, therefore, have made a mistake, so I ate her up. We are to go to
the ants to learn wisdom, and I had secured 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 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 friendly manner and begged her to take courage. At
last she took me up in her delicate hand, and I told her what had
brought me out into the world. She told me that perhaps on that very
evening she would be able to obtain for me one of the two treasures for
which I was seeking. She told me that Phantaesus, the genius of the
imagination, was her very dear friend; that he was as beautiful as the
god of love; that he rested many an hour with her under the leafy boughs
of the tree, which then rustled and waved more than ever. 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, which spread deep
into the earth, and the top, which rose high in the fresh air, knew the
value of the drifting 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. 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 until now, when 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, and it will be quite enough for you.'
"And when Phantaesus came the feather was plucked," said the little
mouse, "and 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 oneself 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 appears to be to attempt to 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, for 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. I then 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 headache and backache 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 in his mouth a white stick, by which he could make himself
and the stick invisible. I thought of sticks as hobbyhorses, staves of
music or rime, of breaking a stick over a man's back, and of Heaven
knows how many more phrases of the same sort, relating to sticks,
staves, and skewers. All my thoughts ran on skewers, sticks of wood, and
staves. As I am at last a poet and 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, the 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, for although she had traveled in a
baggage train, by railway, yet she had arrived almost too late. She
pressed forward, looking very much ruffled.
She had lost her sausage skewer but not her voice, and she began to
speak at once, as if they waited only for her and would hear her
only--as if nothing else in the world were 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. This is what she said.