Chapter 2

WHAT THE FIRST LITTLE MOUSE HAD SEEN AND LEARNT ON HER JOURNEY.

"When I first went forth into the wide world," said the little mouse, "I thought, as so many of my age do, that I had swallowed all the wisdom of the earth; but that was not the case—it required a year and a day for that to come to pass. I went at once to sea, on board a ship which was bound for the north. I had heard that cooks at sea were pretty well acquainted with their business; but there is little to do when one has plenty of sides of bacon, barrels of salt meat, and musty meal at hand. One lives delicately on these nice things; but one learns nothing like making soup of a sausage-stick. We sailed for many days and nights, and a stormy and wet time we had of it. When we reached our destination I left the vessel: this was far away up in the north.

"One has a strange feeling on leaving one's own mouse-hole at home, being carried away in a ship, which becomes a home for the time, and suddenly finding one's self, at the distance of more than a hundred miles, standing alone in a foreign land. I saw myself amidst a large tangled wood full of pine and birch trees. Their scent was so strong! It is not at all my taste; but the perfume from the wild plants was so spicy that I was quite charmed, and thought of the sausage and the seasoning for the soup. There were lakes amidst the forest, the water was beautifully clear close at hand, but looking in the distance as black as ink. There were white swans upon the lake. I mistook them at first for foam, they lay so still; but when I saw them fly I recognised them. They, however, belong to the race of geese. No one can deny his kindred. I like mine, and I hastened to seek the field mice, who, truth to tell, know very little except what concerns their food; and it was just that on account of which I had travelled to a foreign country. That any one should think of making soup out of a sausage-stick seemed to them so extraordinary an idea, that it was speedily circulated through the whole wood; but that the problem should be solved they considered an impossibility. Little did I think then that the very same night I should be initiated into the process.

"It was midsummer; therefore it was that the woods scented so strongly, they said; therefore were the plants so aromatic in their perfume, the lake so clear, and yet so dark with the white swans upon them. On the borders of the forest, amidst three or four houses, was erected a pole as high as a mainmast, and around it hung wreaths and ribbons. This was the Maypole. Girls and young men danced round it, and sang to the accompaniment of the fiddler's violin. All went on merrily till after the sun had set, and the moon had risen, but I took no part in the festivity; for what had a little mouse to do with a forest ball? I sat down amidst the soft moss, and held fast my sausage-stick. The moon shone brightly on a place where there was a solitary tree surrounded by moss so fine—yes, I venture to say as fine as the Mice-King's skin—but it had a green tint, and its colour was very soothing to the eye. All at once I saw approaching a set of the most beautiful little people, so little that they would only have reached to my knee; they looked like men and women, but they were better proportioned. They called themselves Elves, and their garments were composed of the leaves of flowers, trimmed with the wings of gnats and flies—not at all ugly. They seemed as if they were searching for something—what I did not know; but when they came a little nearer to me their leader tapped my sausage-stick, and said, 'This is what we want; it is all ready, all prepared;' and he became more and more joyful as he gazed upon my walking-stick.

"'You may borrow it, but not keep it,' said I.

"'Not keep it!' they all exclaimed together, as they seized my sausage-stick, and, dancing away to the green mossy spot, placed the sausage-stick there in the centre of it. They determined also on having a Maypole; and the stick they had just captured seeming quite suited to their purpose, it was soon ornamented.

"Small spiders spun gold threads around it—hung up waving veils and flags so finely worked, shining so snow-white under the moonbeams, that my eyes were quite dazzled. They took the colours from the wings of the butterflies, and sprinkled them on the white webs, till they seemed to be laden with flowers and diamonds. I did not know my own sausage-stick—it had become such a magnificent Maypole, that certainly had not its equal in the world. And now came tripping forwards the great mass of the elves, most of them very slightly clad; but what they did wear was of the finest materials. I looked on, of course, but in the background, for I was too big for them.

"Then what a game commenced! It was as if a thousand glass bells were ringing, the sound was so clear and full. I fancied the swans were singing, and I also thought I heard cuckoos and thrushes. At length it seemed as if the whole wood was filled with music. There were the sweet voices of children, the ringing of bells, and the songs of birds; and all these melodious sounds seemed to proceed from the elves' Maypole—an orchestra in itself—and that was my sausage-stick. I never would have believed that so much could have come from it; but much, of course, depended on what hands it fell into. I became very much agitated, and I wept, as a little mouse can weep, from sheer pleasure.

"The night was all too short; but, at this time of the year, the nights are not long up yonder. At the dawn of day there arose a fresh breeze; the surface of the lake became ruffled; all the delicately fine veils and flags disappeared in the air; the swinging kiosks of cobwebs, the suspension bridges and balustrades, or whatever they are called, which were constructed from leaf to leaf, vanished into nothing; six elves brought me my sausage-stick, and at the same time asked if I had any wish they could fulfil; whereupon I begged them to tell me how soup could be made from a sausage-stick.

"'What we can do,' said the foremost, laughing, 'you have just seen. You could scarcely have recognised your sausage-stick.'

"'You mean as you transformed it,' said I; and then I told them the cause of my journey, and what was expected at home from it. 'Of what use,' I asked, 'will it be to the King of the Mice and all our large community that I have seen this beautiful sight? I cannot shake the sausage-stick and say, You see here the stick—now comes the soup! That would be like a hoax.'

"Then the elf dipped its little finger into a blue violet, and said to me,—

"'Look! I spread a charm over your walking-stick, and when you return to the palace of the King of the Mice make it touch the king's warm breast, and violets will spring from every part of the staff, even in the coldest winter weather. See! you have now something worth taking home, and perhaps a little more.'"

But before the little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, in order that the smell of the singed hair should overpower the odour from the flowers, which was very offensive.

"But what was 'the little more' you spoke of?" asked the King of the Mice.

"Oh!" said the little mouse, "it is what is called an effect;" and so she turned her sausage-stick. And behold, there were no more flowers visible! She held only the naked stick, and she moved it like a stick for beating time.

"The violets are for sight, smell, and touch, the elf told me; but there are still wanting hearing and taste."

She beat time, and there was music—not such, however, as sounded in the wood at the elfin fete; no, such as is heard at times in the kitchen. It came suddenly, like the wind whistling down the chimney. The pots and the pans boiled over, and the shovel thundered against the large brass kettle. It stopped as suddenly as it had commenced; and then was only to be heard the smothered song of the tea-kettle, which was so strange with its tones rising and falling, and the little pot and the large pot boiling, the one not troubling itself about the other, as if neither could think. Then the little mouse moved her time-stick faster and faster; the pots bubbled up and boiled over; the wind roared in the chimney; the commotion was so great that the little mouse herself got frightened, and dropped the stick.

"It was hard work to make that soup," cried the old king; "but where is the result—the dish?"

"That is all," said the little mouse, courtesying.

"All! Then let us hear what the next has to tell," said the king.