for it in vain,” said he. “I went into the conservatory, and round about the
flower-garden.”
“No, it is not there!” said the gardener. “It is nothing else than a common
flower from the kitchen-garden, but do you not find it beautiful? It looks as
if it was the blue cactus, and yet it is only a kitchen-herb. It is the flower of
the artichoke!”
“You should have told us that at the time!” said the master. “We supposed
of course that it was a strange and rare flower. You have made us ridiculous
in the eyes of the young princess! She saw the flower in our house and
thought it beautiful. She did not know the flower, and she is versed in
botany, too, but then that has nothing to do with kitchen-herbs. How could
you take it into your head, my good Larsen, to put such a flower up in our
drawing-room? It makes us ridiculous.”
And the magnificent blue flower from the kitchen-garden was turned out
of the drawing-room, which was not at all the place for it. The master made
his apology to the princess, telling her that it was only a kitchen-herb which
the gardener had taken into his head to exhibit, but that he had been well
reprimanded for it.
“That was a pity,” said the princess, “for he has really opened our eyes to
see the beauty of a flower in a place where we should not have thought of
looking for it. Our gardener shall every day, as long as the artichoke is in
bloom, bring one of them up into the drawing-room.”
Then the master told his gardener that he might again bring them a fresh
artichoke-flower. “It is, after all, a very nice flower,” said he, “and a truly
remarkable one.” And so the gardener was praised again. “Larsen likes
that,” said the master; “he is a spoiled child.”
In the autumn there came up a great gale, which increased so violently in
the night that. several large trees in the outskirts of the wood were torn up
by the roots; and to the great grief of the household, but to the gardener’s
delight, the two big trees blew down, with all their birds’-nests on them. In
