Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/90

58 "Oh, no," answered the councilor; "I can only discuss things in general, as one ought to do."

Modestia is, a great virtue," said the man, "otherwise I must say to your speech mihi secus videtur, yet will I here willingly suspend my judicium."

"May I ask whom I have the pleasure of speaking with?" asked the councilor.

"I am a baccalaureus in the Holy Writ!" answered the man.

This answer was sufficient for the councilor; the title corresponded to the dress in this case. "He must be an old village schoolmaster," he thought, "a quaint old fellow, such as one can still find over in Jutland."

"This is no locus docendi," the man began, "yet I would ask you to condescend to speak. You are, no doubt, deeply versed in the classics?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the councilor; "I like to read old instructive books, but I also like the modern ones, except 'Every-day Stories,' of which we have enough in real life."

"'Every-day Stories?'" asked our baccalaureus.

"Yes, I mean the new romances we have."

"Ah!" said the man, with a smile, "they are very entertaining, and are read much at court; the king is especially fond of the romance of 'Sir Iffven and Sir Gaudian,' which treats of King Arthur and the Knights ot the Round Table; he has had many pleasantries over it with his noble lords."

"I have not yet read that," said the councilor, "it must be quite a new book, which Heiberg has published."

"No," said the man, "it is not published by Heiberg, but by Godfred von Ghemen!"

"Oh, is that the author?" said the councilor; "it is a very old name. Why, it is that of the first printer Denmark ever had!"

"Yes, he is our first printer," replied the man; and so the conversation went on fairly well. One of the good citizens then spoke about the terrible plague which had raged a couple of years before, referring, of course, to the plague of 1484; the councilor thought they spoke about the cholera, and so the discourse went on quite satisfactorily. The freebooter expedition of 1490 was of such recent date, that they could not help referring to it; the English freebooters had seized the ships in the roadstead, they said, and the councilor, who had made a special study of the events of 1801, joined in quite appropriately with his denunciations of the