Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/234

194 TWENTY-NINTH EVENING

"I will give you one more picture from Sweden," said the moon. "Among gloomy forests near the melancholy shores of the Roxen, stands the old convent church of Wreta. My beams fell through a grating in the wall into a spacious vault, where kings slumber in their marble tombs. A royal crown glitters on the wall above them as an emblem of earthly glory; a royal crown, but it is made of painted wood, and kept in place by a wooden peg driven into the wall. Worms have gnawed through the gilded wood; the spider has spun its web from the crown to the coffin. It is a mourning banner, frail and transient as the grief of mortals. How calm their slumber! I remember them distinctly. I still see the confident smile around those lips which so authoritatively and decidedly uttered words of joy or grief.

"When the steamer comes up among the mountains like a bark from fairyland, many a stranger comes to the church and pays a visit to this burial vault. He asks the kings' names, and they echo with a dead and forgotten sound. He looks at the worm-eaten crown, and if he has a pious mind, there is sadness in his smile. Sleep on, ye Dead! The moon remembers you, the moon sends her cold beams in the night, into your silent kingdom, over which the wooden crown hangs."

THIRTIETH EVENING

"Close to the high-road," said the moon, "stands an inn, and immediately opposite to it is a great wagon shed, the roof of which was being thatched. I looked through the rafters, and through the open trap-door into the uncomfortable space below. A turkey cock was asleep on a beam, and a saddle was resting in an empty crib. A travelling carriage stood in the middle of the shed. Its owners slept in it as safely as possible, while the horses were being fed and watered.