الفصل الفصل 3 · The Watchman's Adventure

“Why, there is a pair of galoshes, as sure as I'm alive!” said the

watchman, awaking from a gentle slumber. “They belong no doubt to the

lieutenant who lives over the way. They lie close to the door.”

The worthy man was inclined to ring and deliver them at the house, for

there was still a light in the window; but he did not like disturbing

the other people in their beds, and so very considerately he left the

matter alone.

“Such a pair of shoes must be very warm and comfortable,” said he; “the

leather is so soft and supple.” They fitted his feet as though they

had been made for him. “'Tis a curious world we live in,” continued he,

soliloquizing. “There is the lieutenant, now, who might go quietly to

bed if he chose, where no doubt he could stretch himself at his ease;

but does he do it? No; he saunters up and down his room, because,

probably, he has enjoyed too many of the good things of this world at

his dinner. That's a happy fellow! He has neither an infirm mother, nor

a whole troop of everlastingly hungry children to torment him. Every

evening he goes to a party, where his nice supper costs him nothing:

would to Heaven I could but change with him! How happy should I be!”

While expressing his wish, the charm of the shoes, which he had put on,

began to work; the watchman entered into the being and nature of the

lieutenant. He stood in the handsomely furnished apartment, and held

between his fingers a small sheet of rose-colored paper, on which some

verses were written--written indeed by the officer himself; for who has

not, at least once in his life, had a lyrical moment? And if one then

marks down one's thoughts, poetry is produced. But here was written:

OH, WERE I RICH!

“Oh, were I rich! Such was my wish, yea such

When hardly three feet high, I longed for much.

Oh, were I rich! an officer were I,

With sword, and uniform, and plume so high.

And the time came, and officer was I!

But yet I grew not rich. Alas, poor me!

Have pity, Thou, who all man's wants dost see.

“I sat one evening sunk in dreams of bliss,

A maid of seven years old gave me a kiss,

I at that time was rich in poesy

And tales of old, though poor as poor could be;

But all she asked for was this poesy.

Then was I rich, but not in gold, poor me!

As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.

“Oh, were I rich! Oft asked I for this boon.

The child grew up to womanhood full soon.

She is so pretty, clever, and so kind

Oh, did she know what's hidden in my mind--

A tale of old. Would she to me were kind!

But I'm condemned to silence! oh, poor me!

As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.

“Oh, were I rich in calm and peace of mind,

My grief you then would not here written find!

O thou, to whom I do my heart devote,

Oh read this page of glad days now remote,

A dark, dark tale, which I tonight devote!

Dark is the future now. Alas, poor me!

Have pity Thou, who all men's pains dost see.”

Such verses as these people write when they are in love! But no man

in his senses ever thinks of printing them. Here one of the sorrows of

life, in which there is real poetry, gave itself vent; not that

barren grief which the poet may only hint at, but never depict in its

detail--misery and want: that animal necessity, in short, to snatch

at least at a fallen leaf of the bread-fruit tree, if not at the fruit

itself. The higher the position in which one finds oneself transplanted,

the greater is the suffering. Everyday necessity is the stagnant pool of

life--no lovely picture reflects itself therein. Lieutenant, love, and

lack of money--that is a symbolic triangle, or much the same as the

half of the shattered die of Fortune. This the lieutenant felt most

poignantly, and this was the reason he leant his head against the

window, and sighed so deeply.

“The poor watchman out there in the street is far happier than I. He

knows not what I term privation. He has a home, a wife, and children,

who weep with him over his sorrows, who rejoice with him when he is

glad. Oh, far happier were I, could I exchange with him my being--with

his desires and with his hopes perform the weary pilgrimage of life! Oh,

he is a hundred times happier than I!”

In the same moment the watchman was again watchman. It was the shoes

that caused the metamorphosis by means of which, unknown to himself, he

took upon him the thoughts and feelings of the officer; but, as we have

just seen, he felt himself in his new situation much less contented,

and now preferred the very thing which but some minutes before he had

rejected. So then the watchman was again watchman.

“That was an unpleasant dream,” said he; “but 'twas droll enough

altogether. I fancied that I was the lieutenant over there: and yet

the thing was not very much to my taste after all. I missed my good old

mother and the dear little ones; who almost tear me to pieces for sheer

love.”

He seated himself once more and nodded: the dream continued to haunt

him, for he still had the shoes on his feet. A falling star shone in the

dark firmament.

“There falls another star,” said he: “but what does it matter; there

are always enough left. I should not much mind examining the little

glimmering things somewhat nearer, especially the moon; for that would

not slip so easily through a man's fingers. When we die--so at least

says the student, for whom my wife does the washing--we shall fly about

as light as a feather from one such a star to the other. That's, of

course, not true: but 'twould be pretty enough if it were so. If I could

but once take a leap up there, my body might stay here on the steps for

what I care.”

Behold--there are certain things in the world to which one ought never

to give utterance except with the greatest caution; but doubly careful

must one be when we have the Shoes of Fortune on our feet. Now just

listen to what happened to the watchman.

As to ourselves, we all know the speed produced by the employment of

steam; we have experienced it either on railroads, or in boats when

crossing the sea; but such a flight is like the travelling of a sloth in

comparison with the velocity with which light moves. It flies nineteen

million times faster than the best race-horse; and yet electricity is

quicker still. Death is an electric shock which our heart receives; the

freed soul soars upwards on the wings of electricity. The sun's light

wants eight minutes and some seconds to perform a journey of more than

twenty million of our Danish [*] miles; borne by electricity, the soul

wants even some minutes less to accomplish the same flight. To it the

space between the heavenly bodies is not greater than the distance

between the homes of our friends in town is for us, even if they live a

short way from each other; such an electric shock in the heart, however,

costs us the use of the body here below; unless, like the watchman of

East Street, we happen to have on the Shoes of Fortune.

* A Danish mile is nearly 4 3/4 English.

In a few seconds the watchman had done the fifty-two thousand of our

miles up to the moon, which, as everyone knows, was formed out of

matter much lighter than our earth; and is, so we should say, as soft

as newly-fallen snow. He found himself on one of the many circumjacent

mountain-ridges with which we are acquainted by means of Dr. Madler's

“Map of the Moon.” Within, down it sunk perpendicularly into a caldron,

about a Danish mile in depth; while below lay a town, whose appearance

we can, in some measure, realize to ourselves by beating the white of

an egg in a glass of water. The matter of which it was built was just as

soft, and formed similar towers, and domes, and pillars, transparent and

rocking in the thin air; while above his head our earth was rolling like

a large fiery ball.

He perceived immediately a quantity of beings who were certainly what

we call “men”; yet they looked different to us. A far more correct

imagination than that of the pseudo-Herschel* had created them; and

if they had been placed in rank and file, and copied by some skilful

painter's hand, one would, without doubt, have exclaimed involuntarily,

“What a beautiful arabesque!”

*This relates to a book published some years ago in Germany, and said

to be by Herschel, which contained a description of the moon and its

inhabitants, written with such a semblance of truth that many were

deceived by the imposture.

Probably a translation of the celebrated Moon hoax, written by Richard

A. Locke, and originally published in New York.

They had a language too; but surely nobody can expect that the soul of

the watchman should understand it. Be that as it may, it did comprehend

it; for in our souls there germinate far greater powers than we poor

mortals, despite all our cleverness, have any notion of. Does she

not show us--she the queen in the land of enchantment--her astounding

dramatic talent in all our dreams? There every acquaintance appears and

speaks upon the stage, so entirely in character, and with the same tone

of voice, that none of us, when awake, were able to imitate it. How

well can she recall persons to our mind, of whom we have not thought for

years; when suddenly they step forth “every inch a man,” resembling the

real personages, even to the finest features, and become the heroes

or heroines of our world of dreams. In reality, such remembrances are

rather unpleasant: every sin, every evil thought, may, like a clock with

alarm or chimes, be repeated at pleasure; then the question is if we can

trust ourselves to give an account of every unbecoming word in our heart

and on our lips.

The watchman's spirit understood the language of the inhabitants of the

moon pretty well. The Selenites* disputed variously about our earth,

and expressed their doubts if it could be inhabited: the air, they said,

must certainly be too dense to allow any rational dweller in the moon

the necessary free respiration. They considered the moon alone to

be inhabited: they imagined it was the real heart of the universe or

planetary system, on which the genuine Cosmopolites, or citizens of the

world, dwelt. What strange things men--no, what strange things Selenites

sometimes take into their heads!

* Dwellers in the moon.

About politics they had a good deal to say. But little Denmark must

take care what it is about, and not run counter to the moon; that

great realm, that might in an ill-humor bestir itself, and dash down a

hail-storm in our faces, or force the Baltic to overflow the sides of

its gigantic basin.

We will, therefore, not listen to what was spoken, and on no condition

run in the possibility of telling tales out of school; but we will

rather proceed, like good quiet citizens, to East Street, and observe

what happened meanwhile to the body of the watchman.

He sat lifeless on the steps: the morning-star,* that is to say, the

heavy wooden staff, headed with iron spikes, and which had nothing else

in common with its sparkling brother in the sky, had glided from his

hand; while his eyes were fixed with glassy stare on the moon, looking

for the good old fellow of a spirit which still haunted it.

*The watchmen in Germany, had formerly, and in some places they still

carry with them, on their rounds at night, a sort of mace or club, known

in ancient times by the above denomination.

“What's the hour, watchman?” asked a passer-by. But when the watchman

gave no reply, the merry roysterer, who was now returning home from a

noisy drinking bout, took it into his head to try what a tweak of the

nose would do, on which the supposed sleeper lost his balance, the body

lay motionless, stretched out on the pavement: the man was dead. When

the patrol came up, all his comrades, who comprehended nothing of the

whole affair, were seized with a dreadful fright, for dead he was,

and he remained so. The proper authorities were informed of the

circumstance, people talked a good deal about it, and in the morning the

body was carried to the hospital.

Now that would be a very pretty joke, if the spirit when it came back

and looked for the body in East Street, were not to find one. No doubt

it would, in its anxiety, run off to the police, and then to the

“Hue and Cry” office, to announce that “the finder will be handsomely

rewarded,” and at last away to the hospital; yet we may boldly assert

that the soul is shrewdest when it shakes off every fetter, and every

sort of leading-string--the body only makes it stupid.

The seemingly dead body of the watchman wandered, as we have said, to

the hospital, where it was brought into the general viewing-room:

and the first thing that was done here was naturally to pull off the

galoshes--when the spirit, that was merely gone out on adventures, must

have returned with the quickness of lightning to its earthly tenement.

It took its direction towards the body in a straight line; and a few

seconds after, life began to show itself in the man. He asserted that

the preceding night had been the worst that ever the malice of fate had

allotted him; he would not for two silver marks again go through what he

had endured while moon-stricken; but now, however, it was over.

The same day he was discharged from the hospital as perfectly cured; but

the Shoes meanwhile remained behind.