Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/411

 audience roared, and shouted, ‘Bravo, bravissimo!’ and Punchinello was actually called to appear before the curtain. He was pronounced inimitable. But at night the ugly little fellow went out of the town quite alone to the deserted churchyard. The wreath of flowers on columbine’s grave was already faded. He seated himself on the grave. As he sat there in his clown’s dress, with his chin resting on his hands, and his eyes turned up towards me, he was a study for a painter. He looked like a grotesque monument, a Punch on a grave, singular and whimsical. If the people could have seen their favourite then, they would have cried, as usual, ‘Bravo, Punchinello! bravo, bravissimo!’”

 

tell you a story that was told me when I was a little boy. Every time I thought of this story, it seemed to me more and more charming; for it is with stories as it is with many people—they become better as they grow older.

I have no doubt that you have been in the country, and seen a very old farmhouse, with a thatched roof, and mosses and small plants growing wild upon it. There is a stork’s nest on the ridge of the gable, for we cannot do without the stork. The walls of the house are sloping, and the windows are low, and only one of the latter is made to open. The baking-oven sticks out of the wall like a great knob. An elder-tree hangs over the palings; and beneath its branches, at the foot of the paling, is a pool of water, in which a few ducks are disporting themselves. There is a yard-dog too, who barks at all comers. Just such a farmhouse as this stood in a country lane; and in it dwelt an old couple, a peasant and his wife. Small as their possessions were, they had one article they could not do without, and that was a horse, which contrived to live upon the grass which it found by the side of the high-road. The old peasant rode into the town upon this horse, and his neighbours often borrowed it of him, and paid for the loan of it by rendering some service to the old couple. After a time they thought it would be as well to sell the horse, or exchange it for something which might be more useful to them. But what might this something be?

“You’ll know best, old man,” said the wife. “It is fair-day to day; so ride into town, and get rid of the horse for money, or make a good exchange; whichever you do will be right to me, so ride to the fair.”

And she fastened his neckerchief for him; for she could do that better than he could, and she could also tie it very prettily in a double bow. She