Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/199

Rh at me there through the willows in the marshes. I kissed my hand to him, and he shone straight into my room and promised to look in at me every evening he was out. This promise he has faithfully kept, and it is only a pity that he stays so short a time. Every time he comes he tells me something or another which he has seen the night before.

"Now paint what I tell you!" said he, "and you will have a very fine picture book." I have done as he said for many evenings, and in my own way I could give a new rendering of the "Thousand and One Nights," but that would be too many. Those I give here are not selected, but they come in the order in which I heard them. A highly gifted painter, a poet or a musician might perhaps make more of them; what I have given here are only hasty sketches, with my own thoughts occasionally interspersed, for the moon did not come every night; there were some evenings when he was hidden by the clouds.

FIRST EVENING

"Last evening," to give the moon's own words, "as I was gliding through the clear atmosphere of India, and reflecting myself in the Ganges, I tried to pierce the thick groves of plantain trees the leaves of which overlap each other as tightly as the horny plates on the back of the turtle. From out of the thicket came a Hindu maiden; she was as light as a gazelle, and as beautiful as Eve. There was such an airy grace about her, and yet such firmness of purpose in this daughter of India; I could read her intention in coming. The thorny creepers tore her sandals, but she stepped rapidly onward. The deer coming up from the river where they had quenched their thirst, bounded shyly past her, for the girl held in her hand a burning lamp. I could see the blood coursing in her delicate fingers as she bent them round the flame to form a shelter for it. She approached the river and placed the lamp upon the face of the waters, and it floated away on the stream.