Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/86

54 halberdiers with bows and cross-bows. The most important person in the procession was a man of clerical appearance. The councilor asked in astonishment what it all meant and who that person might be.

"The Bishop of Zealand!" was the answer.

"Good gracious, what can the bishop be up to?" said the councilor with a sigh, shaking his head. "Surely it could not be the bishop!" Pondering on thus, and without looking to the right or the left, he walked along Östergade and crossed Höibro-place. The bridge to the open place in front of the palace was not to be seen; he caught a glimpse of a low-lying bank of a river, and came finally to two men who were sitting in a boat.

"Does your honor want to be ferried across to the island?" they asked.

"Across to the island?" said the councilor, who did not know, of course, in what period he was now moving. "I have to get to Lille Torvegade, out at Christianshavn."

The men stared at him.

"Only tell me where the bridge is!" he said. "It is a disgrace that the lamps are not lighted here, and it is as dirty and muddy as if one were wading in a bog!"

The longer he talked to the boatmen, the more unintelligible they appeared to him.

"I can't understand your Bornholm jargon!" he said at last in an angry voice, and turned his back upon them. He could not find the bridge, and there was no sign of a railing. "It is a scandalous state of things!" he said. Never had he been so disappointed with his existence as this evening. "I think I 'll take a coach," he thought. But where were the coaches? Not one was to be seen. "I shall have to go back to Kongens Nytorv; there must be some coaches there, otherwise I shall never get out to Christianshavn!"

He then set off through Östergade and had almost got to the end of it, when the moon made her appearance.

"Good gracious! What scaffolding is that they have put up here?" he exclaimed when he saw the eastern gate, which at that time stood at the end of Östergade.

At last he found a wicket and through this he got out to what is now our Kongens Nytorv, but which at that time was a large field, with a few bushes here and there. A broad canal or stream flowed through the field, and on the opposite bank stood some miserable wooden huts used by the skippers from Halland in Sweden, after whom the place was called Hallandsaas.

"Either I see a Fata Morgana, as they call it, or I am tipsy!" wailed the councilor. "What can this be? What can this be?"

He turned back again, in the full belief that he was ill. When he