Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/269

 That evening there was to be a declamatory performance in an amateur theatre, situated m a distant street The house was crowded, and amongst the spectators was the assistant from the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten the preceding evening's adventure. He had on the goloshes, which had not been fetched away; and as the streets were dirty, he thought they might do him good service. A new poem, entitled "My Cousin's Spectacles," was recited. These spectacles, it was pretended, if put on when one sat facing a large assembly, made all the people present look like cards, from which one could foretell all that was to happen to them in the following year.

This idea struck him forcibly, that he would like to have had such a pair of spectacles. Perhaps, if used properly, they might enable one to see into the hearts of those present, which was far more interesting, he thought, than to see what would happen to them next year, for that one would learn in the end, while the other remained a sealed book. "I can fancy myself peeping into the hearts of the gentlemen and ladies on the first row of benches," said he to himself. "It would be like looking into a kind of shop; and how my eyes would rove all over it! I am sure I should find a large millinery establishment in yonder lady's heart; that other lady's shop is empty, but it would be all the better for a little cleaning. But perhaps there may be some better shops amongst the rest? Indeed there are!" sighed he. "I know one in which everything is solid, only there is a shopman in it already, and that is its only fault! From many others, the words, 'Pray come in,' would be sure to be heard. I wish I could step in like a little, tiny thought, and glide through the hearts of those now present."

This was the cue for the goloshes. The assistant shrank up, and set out on a most unusual journey through the hearts of the front row of spectators. The first heart he entered was a lady's, but at first he fancied he had got into an orthopædic institution, where plaster casts of deformed limbs were hanging on the walls, only with this difference, that in the institution the casts were taken when the patient comes in, while in this heart the casts had been taken and preserved after the worthy owners had left the place. They were casts of female friends, and their physical and moral defects were here carefully treasured up.

A moment after he was in another female heart. Only this one appeared to him like a spacious, holy church, where the white dove of innocence was hovering over the high altar. He would willingly have sunk on his knees, but he was obliged to slip into the neighbouring heart. Yet he still heard the tones of the organ, and he fancied himself a newer and better man. He felt himself not unworthy to enter the next sanctuary, which showed him a shabby garret, with a sick mother. But God's warm sunshine streamed through the window, lovely roses were nodding their heads in the little wooden box on the roof, and two azure birds sang of childlike joys, while the sick mother called down blessings on her daughter's head.

He now crept on all fours through an over-loaded butcher's shop. He stumbled over meat, and nothing but meat. This was the heart of a wealthy and respectable man, whose name stands, beyond a doubt, in the directory.

He now entered the heart of the rich man's wife, which was an old tumble-down dovecot. Her husband's portrait served as a weather-cock, and it was combined with the doors, so that they opened and shut just as the husband veered about.

He next entered a cabinet lined with looking-glasses, like the one in the Rosenburg palace; only the glasses magnified everything to an extraordinary degree. In the middle of the floor, like a Delhi Lama, sat the insignificant self of the owner, lost in the contemplation of his own greatness.

He now thought himself transported into a narrow needle-case, full of sharp needles. So he thought: "This must be the heart of some old maid." It was not, however, the case, it was that of