Page:Hans Andersen's fairy tales (Robinson).djvu/313

 THE LEAPING MATCH at him again, when lo! all at once he made a little side-long jump into the lap of the Princess, who was sitting on a low stool close by.



Then spoke the King: 'There is nothing higher than my daughter, therefore he who jumps up to her jumps highest; but only a person of good understanding would ever have thought of that, and thus the frog has shown us that he has understanding. He has brains in his head, that he has!'

And thus the frog won the Princess.

'I jumped highest for all that!' exclaimed the flea. 'But it's all the same to me; let her have the stiff-legged, slimy creature, if she like him! I jumped highest, but I am too light and airy for this stupid world; the people can neither see me nor catch me; dulness and heaviness win the day with them!'

And so the flea went into foreign service, where, it is said, he was killed.

And the grasshopper sat on a green bank, meditating on the world and its goings on, and at length he repeated the flea's last words—'Yes, dulness and heaviness win the day! dulness and heaviness win the day!' And then he again began singing his own peculiar, melancholy song, and it is from him that we have learnt this history; and yet, my friend, though you read it here in a printed book, it may not be perfectly true. 261