Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/500

 lighting it up with a glare, while his sunken eyes looked out wildly from their cavernous depths, and appeared to grow larger and more prominent, as if they would burst from their sockets, ‘Lock at the alchymic glass,’ he cried; ‘something glows in the crucible, pure and heavy.’ He lifted it with a trembling hand, and exclaimed, in a voice of agitation, ‘Gold! gold!’ He was quite giddy, I could have blown him down,” said the Wind; “but I only fanned the glowing coals, and accompanied him through the door to the room where his daughters sat shivering. His coat was powdered with ashes, and there were ashes in his beard and in his tangled hair. He stood erect, and held high in the air the brittle glass that contained his costly treasure. ‘Found! found! Gold! gold!’ he shouted, again holding the glass aloft, that it might flash in the sunshine; but his hand trembled, and the alchymic glass fell from it, clattering to the ground, and broke in a thousand pieces. The last bubble of his happiness had burst, with a whiz and a whir, and I rushed away from the gold-maker’s house.”

“Late in the autumn, when the days were short, and the mist sprinkled cold drops on the berries and the leafless branches, I came back in fresh spirits, rushed through the air, swept the sky clear, and snapped off the dry twigs, which is certainly no great labour to do, yet it must be done. There was another kind of sweeping taking place at Waldemar Daa’s, in the castle of Borreby. His enemy, Owe Ramel, of Basnas, was there, with the mortgage of the house and everything it contained, in his pocket. I rattled the broken windows, beat against the old rotten doors, and whistled through cracks and crevices, so that Mr. Owe Ramel did not much like to remain there. Ida and Anna Dorothea wept bitterly, Joanna stood, pale and proud, biting ber lips till the blood came; but what could that avail? Owe Ramel offered Waldemar Daa permission to remain in the house till the end of his life. No one thanked him for the offer, and I saw the ruined old gentleman lift his head, and throw it back more proudly than ever. Then I rushed against the house and the old lime-trees with such force, that one of the thickest branches, a decayed one, was broken off, and the branch fell at the entrance, and remained there. It might have been used as a broom, if any one had wanted to sweep the place out, and a grand sweeping-out there really was; I thought it would be so. It was hard for any one to preserve composure on such a day; but these people had strong wills, as unbending as their hard fortune. There was nothing they could call their own, excepting the clothes they wore. Yes, there was one thing more, an alchymist’s glass, a new one, which had been lately bought, and filled with what could be gathered from the ground of the treasure which had promised so much, but failed in keeping its promise. Waldemar Daa hid the glass in his bosom, and, taking his stick in his hand, the once rich gentleman passed with his daughters out of the house of Borreby. I blew coldly upon his flushed cheeks, I stroked his grey beard and his long white hair, and I sang as well as I was able, ‘Whir-r-r, whir-r-r. Gone away! gone away!’ Ida walked on one side of the old man, and Anna Dorothea on the other; Joanna turned round as they left the entrance. Why? Fortune would not turn because she turned. She looked at the stone in the walls which had