after that we can rest ourselves all the better. This evening we are going to
have a court ball.”
It is one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The
walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of thick, but transparent
crystal. May hundreds of colossal shells, some of a deep red, others of a
grass green, stood on each side in rows, with blue fire in them, which
lighted up the whole saloon, and shone through the walls, so that the sea
was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past the
crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliancy,
and on others they shone like silver and gold. Through the halls flowed a
broad stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music
of their own sweet singing. No one on earth has such a lovely voice as
theirs. The little mermaid sang more sweetly than them all. The whole court
applauded her with hands and tails; and for a moment her heart felt quite
gay, for she knew she had the loveliest voice of any on earth or in the sea.
But she soon thought again of the world above her, for she could not forget
the charming prince, nor her sorrow that she had not an immortal soul like
his; therefore she crept away silently out of her father’s palace, and while
everything within was gladness and song, she sat in her own little garden
sorrowful and alone. Then she heard the bugle sounding through the water,
and thought-”He is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes depend,
and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life. I will
venture all for him, and to win an immortal soul, while my sisters are
dancing in my father’s palace, I will go to the sea witch, of whom I have
always been so much afraid, but she can give me counsel and help.”
And then the little mermaid went out from her garden, and took the road
to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress lived. She had never
been that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there; nothing but
bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the water,
like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round everything that it seized, and cast
it into the fathomless deep. Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools
the little mermaid was obliged to pass, to reach the dominions of the sea
