Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/464

 a man would have been placed among the sages of the land; in the Middle Ages they would have burnt him at the stake.

“All night long I could not sleep; and the next evening, when I gave another performance and the lecturer was present, I was in one of my best moods.”

“I once heard of an actor, who, when he had to act the part of a lover, always thought of one particular lady in the audience; he only played for her, and forgot all the rest of the house, and now the Polytechnic lecturer was my she, my only auditor, for whom alone I played.”

“When the performance was over, and the puppets removed behind the curtain, the Polytechnic lecturer invited me into his room to take a glass of wine. He talked of my comedies, and I of his science, and I believe we were both equally pleased. But I had the best of it, for there was much in what he did that he could not always explain to me. For instance, why a piece of iron which is rubbed on a cylinder, should become magnetic. How does this happen? The magnetic spark comes to it,—but how? It is the same with people in the world; they are rubbed about on this spherical globe till the electric spark comes upon them, and then we have a Napoleon, or a Luther, or some one of the kind.”

“‘The whole world is a series of miracles,’ said the lecturer, ‘but we are so accustomed to them that we call them everyday matters.’ And he went on explaining things to me till my skull seemed lifted from my brain, and I declared that were I not such an old fellow, I would at once become a member of the Polytechnic Institution, that I might learn to look at the bright side of everything, although I was one of the happiest of men.”

“‘One of the happiest!’ said the lecturer, as if the idea pleased him; ‘are you really happy?’”

“‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘for I am welcomed in every town, when I arrive with my company; but I certainly have one wish which sometimes weighs upon my cheerful temper like a mountain of lead. I should like to become the manager of a real theatre, and the director of a real troupe of men and women.’”

“‘I understand,’ he said; ‘you would like to have life breathed into your puppets, so that they might be living actors, and you their director, And would you then be quite happy?’”

“I said I believed so. But he did not; and we talked it over in all manner of ways, yet could not agree on the subject. However, the wine was excellent, and we clanked our glasses together as we drank. There must have been magic in it, or I should most certainly have become tipsy; but that did not happen, for my mind seemed quite clear; and, indeed, a kind of sunshine filled the room, and beamed from the eyes of the Polytechnic lecturer. It made me think of the old stories of when the gods, in their mortal youth, wandered upon this earth, and paid visits to mankind. I said so to him, and he smiled; and I could have sworn he was one of these ancient deities in disguise, or, at all events, that he belonged to the race of the gods. The results seemed to prove I was right in my suspicions; for it was arranged that my highest wish should be granted, that my puppets were