Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/111

Rh The student walked up and down the path; it was only six o'clock; he heard the horn of the mail coach in the street.

"Ah, to travel! to travel!" he exclaimed, "after all, that is the most delightful thing in the world! That is the highest goal of my ambition! Then all this restlessness which I feel would subside. But I must go far, far away! I should like to see beautiful Switzerland, to travel in Italy, and—"

It was a good thing that the galoshes began to apply their magic power at once, or else he would have gone too far away altogether, both for his own convenience and ours. He was now on his travels, in the midst of Switzerland, packed together with eight other people inside a diligence, his head ached, he felt a weary pain in his neck, and his feet, which were swollen and pressed by his boots, had gone to sleep. He was in a half-sleeping, half-waking condition. In his right-hand pocket he had his letter of credit, and in his left-hand pocket his passport, and in a small leather bag, which he wore on his breast, some louis d'or were sewed up; every time he dozed off, he thought that one or the other of these valuable things had been lost, and would therefore awake with a feverish start, and the first movement his hand would make was a triangular one from the right to the left and up to his breast, to feel if he had them still in his possession. Umbrellas, sticks, and hats were swinging to and fro in the net above, and to a certain extent shut out the view, which was highly impressive; he just glanced at it while his heart sang what at least one poet whom we know, has sung in Switzerland, but which has not as yet been printed:—

The scenery around was grand, impressive, and gloomy; the pine forests looked like the tops of heather on the lofty rocks, the summit of which was hidden in clouds of mist. It began to snow and the wind blew cold.

"Ugh!" he sighed, "I wish we were on the other side of the Alps! Then we should have summer, and I should have drawn out the money for my letter of credit. I am so anxious about this money, that I do not enjoy Switzerland! Oh, that I were on the other side!"

And he was on the other side, far down into Italy, between Florence and Rome.

The lake of Thrasimene lay like a sheet of flaming gold in the sunset between dark-blue mountains; here, where Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the vines now grew peacefully, clutching each other by their green fingers; and pretty, half-naked children were tending a herd of coal-black swine