Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/32

 a book of fairy tales, and the boy's whole spiritual life is awakened by the vistas these open for him in every direction. He finds two simple and direct parables, which he reads over and over again to his parents, and their hearts, too, are humanized and melted. Finally, a little dark bird, like the Emperor of China's nightingale, is presented to him, and in a supreme nervous effort to save its life the cripple regains the use of his own limbs. In this story Andersen intended to sum up the defense of fairy tales and of their teller. It was to be a sort of apologia for his whole poetical career, and he told me that it would be the latest of his writings. In this matter his mind afterward changed, for later in the same year, 1872, he composed " Auntie Toothache," inspired by his own sufferings, and it is with this story that the long series of his fairy tales ultimately closed with the original.

He gradually realized that his work was done. In a most pathetic letter to me, on New Year's Day, 1875, he admitted that we must look for nothing more, that his bag of magic was emptied. After a long illness, however, his physical health seemed in large measure restored, and at the completion of his seventieth year, great festivities were arranged at Copenhagen and at Odense. The whole nation, from the Royal family down to the peasants in the country villages, kept Andersen's birthday as a holiday, and this attention soothed and pleased him. But his vital energy was now fast ebbing. He began to suffer great torture from an obscure complaint which puzzled the doctors. It was interesting that when he was dying Andersen expressed a curiosity to study the ancient Indian fables which are identified with the mythical name of Bidpai, and the death-bed of the greatest modern fabulist was strewn with translations and commentaries of his earliest fellow-craftsman of Hindustan. At last, on the 4th of August, 1875, he fell asleep in the room at Rolighed, where we were sitting when he read me "The Cripple" three years before. And out of that peaceful slumber he never woke again. His laborious and beautiful life had been the most enchanting of his fairy tales. It closed at last in honor and serenity. It will probably be centuries before Europe sees again a man in whom the same peculiar qualities of imagination are blended. She can never see one more blameless in his life, or inspired by an aim more delicate and guileless.

Rh