Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/260

 who could see neither to the right nor to the left, went through East Street, and across the Habro Platz. The bridge leading to the square in front of the palace was not to be found, and he perceived he was near the bank of a shallow sheet of water, and at length met two people in a boat.

"Does his honour wish to be ferried over to the Holme?" asked they.

"To the Holme!" echoed the councillor of justice, not knowing the age he was in. "I want to go to Christianshaven, and to Little Market Street."

The people stared at him.

"Tell me where the bridge is," said he. "It is really shameful that the lamps are not lighted hereabouts; and, besides, it is as dirty as if one were wading through a swamp."

The more he talked with the boatmen, the more incomprehensible they appeared to him.

"I don't understand your gibberish," said he, at last, in a pet, and turned his back upon them



He could not find the bridge, and there was no parapet. "It is scandalous what a state the place is in!" said he. And the age he lived in had never appeared more pitiful than it did this evening. "I think the best thing I could do would be to have a droschka," thought he. But where were the droschkas? Not one was to be seen. "I must go back to the stand in the King's New Market, and find a coach, or else I shall never reach Christianshaven."

He now went to East Street, and was nearly through it, when the moon emerged from a cloud.

"Good gracious! what is this scaffold put up here for?" said he, on seeing the East Gate, which in those days stood at the end of East Street.

He managed, however, to find an opening, which led him to our New Market, but which was then a large meadow. A few bushes stood around, and a wide canal or stream crossed right through the meadow. A few miserable wooden booths, for the convenience of Dutch ships, stood on the opposite shore.

"Either I am deceived by a fata morgana, or I must be tipsy!" said the councillor. "What's this? What's this?"

He turned back, in the full persuasion that he must be ill; and, on again retracing his steps through the street, he looked more attentively at the houses. They were mostly built of boards, and had only thatched roofs.

"I am ill, to a certainty!" sighed he; "and yet I only drank one glass of punch. But I never can stand it; and, moreover, it was quite monstrous to give us punch and hot salmon. I must mention it to the lady. Suppose I went back, and said how I feel? Only it looks so ridiculous; and then it is a question, after all, whether they are still up."

He looked for the house, but it was not to be found.