Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/55

 balcony. He rubbed his eyes, and then put on his spectacles. “Why, it’s the ladies-in-waiting, who are after some trick, I’ll be bound. I must go down and see.” So he drew up his slippers, for they were shoes down at heel.

My goodness! what haste he did make!

As soon as he had reached the yard, he walked very softly, and the ladies-in-waiting were so busy counting the kisses, that there might be no cheating, that they did not perceive the emperor. He stood on tiptoe.

“What’s the meaning of this?” cried he, on seeing them kissing away at such a rate, and he flung his slipper at their heads just as the swineherd had received the eighty-sixth kiss.

“Get out of my sight,” said the emperor, who was very angry; and both the princess and the swineherd were turned out of his empire.

There she stood and wept, while the swineherd grumbled, and the rain fell in torrents.

“What a miserable creature I am!” sobbed the princess. “Would that I had married the handsome prince! Oh, how unhappy am I!”

The swineherd then went behind a tree, and rubbed the black and brown paint off his face, and threw off his shabby clothes, and appeared in his princely garb, and looking so handsome, that the princess involuntarily curtseyed to him.

“I have now learned to despise you,” said he. “You refused an honourable prince—you could not appreciate a rose or a nightingale—but you could stoop to kiss a swineherd to obtain a toy. You must now suffer the punishment.”

So saying, he went back into his kingdom, and shut the door in her face; and she was left outside to sing—

 

HERE is no one in the world who knows so many stories as Olé Luk-Oie, and nobody can tell them so prettily.

Towards evening when the children are sitting round the table, or upon their stools, in steals Olé Luk-Oie. He comes upstairs very softly, for he walks about in his socks, and then opens the doors so gently—and, heigh presto! he squirts dust into the children’s eyes, in very, very small quantities, yet sufficient to prevent their keeping their eyes open, and that’s why they can’t ever see him. He slinks behind them, and breathes softly over their necks, and then their heads begin to feel heavy. But don’t think he hurts them. Oh, no! Olé Luk-Oie means kindly towards all children—he only wants them to be quiet, and that they never are till they have been put to bed; and he merely wishes them to be quiet in order that he may tell them pretty stories.

So, when the children have fallen to sleep, Ole Luk-Oie sits upon their bed. He is very well dressed, for his coat is made of some silk stuff, though it is impossible to tell its colour, for it changes from green to red or to blue, according to which side he turns. He carries an umbrella under each arm, and he spreads one of these, all lined with pretty pictures, over the heads of good children, which makes them dream of amusing stories all night long; but as for the other umbrella, which is completely blank, he spreads that over naughty children, who then sleep so heavily that next morning when they wake they find they have dreamed nothing at all. 