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"I tell you I was there, and you can conceive that I saw everything there was
to be seen. Had you come over there, you would not have been a man; but I
became so! And besides, I learned to know my inward nature, my innate
qualities, the relationship I had with Poesy. At the time I was with you, I
thought not of that, but always, you know it well, when the sun rose, and when
the sun went down, I became so strangely great; in the moonlight I was very
near being more distinct than yourself; at that time I did not understand my
nature; it was revealed to me in the antechamber! I became a man! I came out
matured; but you were no longer in the warm lands; as a man I was ashamed to
go as I did. I was in want of boots, of clothes, of the whole human varnish
that makes a man perceptible. I took my way, I tell it to you, but you will
not put it in any book, I took my way to the cake woman, I hid myself behind
her; the woman didn't think how much she concealed. I went out first in the
evening; I ran about the streets in the moonlight; I made myself long up the
walls, it tickles the back so delightfully! I ran up, and ran down, peeped
into the highest windows, into the saloons, and on the roofs, I peeped in
where no one could peep, and I saw what no one else saw, what no one else
should see! This is, in fact, a base world! I would not be a man if it were
not now once accepted and regarded as something to be so! I saw the most
unimaginable things with the women, with the men, with parents, and with the
sweet, matchless children; I saw," said the shadow, "what no human being must
know, but what they would all so willingly know, what is bad in their
neighbour. Had I written a newspaper, it would have been read! But I wrote
direct to the persons themselves, and there was consternation in all the
towns where I came. They were so afraid of me, and yet they were so
excessively fond of me. The professors made a professor of me; the tailors
gave me new clothes, I am well furnished; the master of the mint struck new
coin for me, and the women said I was so handsome! And so I became the man I
am. And I now bid you farewell. Here is my card, I live on the sunny side of
the street, and am always at home in rainy weather!" And so away went the
shadow. "That was most extraordinary!" said the learned man. Years and days
passed away, then the shadow came again. "How goes it?" said the shadow.
"Alas!" said the learned man. "I write about the true, and the good, and the
beautiful, but no one cares to hear such things; I am quite desperate, for I
take it so much to heart!"
"But I don't!" said the shadow. "I become fat, and it is that one wants to
become! You do not understand the world. You will become ill by it. You must
travel! I shall make a tour this summer; will you go with me? I should like to
have a travelling companion! Will you go with me, as shadow? It will be a
great pleasure for me to have you with me; I shall pay the travelling
expenses!"
"Nay, this is too much!" said the learned man.
"It is just as one takes it!" said the shadow. "It will do you much good to
travel! Will you be my shadow? You shall have everything free on the journey!"
"Nay, that is too bad!" said the learned man.
"But it is just so with the world!" said the shadow, "and so it will be!" and
away it went again.
The learned man was not at all in the most enviable state; grief and torment
followed him, and what he said about the true, and the good, and the
beautiful, was, to most persons, like roses for a cow! He was quite ill at
last.
"You really look like a shadow!" said his friends to him; and the learned man
trembled, for he thought of it.
"You must go to a watering-place!" said the shadow, who came and visited him.
"There is nothing else for it! I will take you with me for old acquaintance'
sake; I will pay the travelling expenses, and you write the
descriptions, and
if they are a little amusing for me on the way! I will go to a
watering-place, my beard does not grow out as it ought, that is also a
sickness, and one must have a beard! Now you be wise and accept the offer; we
shall travel as comrades!"
And so they travelled; the shadow was master, and the master was the shadow;
they drove with each other, they rode and walked together, side by side,
before and behind, just as the sun was; the shadow always took care to keep
itself in the master's place. Now the learned man didn't think much about
that; he was a very kind-hearted man, and particularly mild and friendly, and
so he said one day to the shadow: "As we have now become companions, and in
this way have grown up together from childhood, shall we not drink 'thou'
together, it is more familiar?"
"You are right," said the shadow, who was now the proper master. "It is said
in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man,
certainly know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey
paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of
glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I
feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see
that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say THOU to
me, but I will willingly say THOU to you, so it is half done!"
So the shadow said THOU to its former master.
"This is rather too bad," thought he, "that I must say YOU and he say THOU,"
but he was now obliged to put up with it.
So they came to a watering-place where there were many strangers, and amongst
them was a princess, who was troubled with seeing too well; and that was so
alarming!
She directly observed that the stranger who had just come was quite a
different sort of person to all the others; "He has come here in order to get
his beard to grow, they say, but I see the real cause, he cannot cast a
shadow."
She had become inquisitive; and so she entered into conversation directly with
the strange gentleman, on their promenades. As the daughter of a king, she
needed not to stand upon trifles, so she said, "Your complaint is, that you
cannot cast a shadow?"
"Your Royal Highness must be improving considerably," said the shadow, "I know
your complaint is, that you see too clearly, but it has decreased, you are
cured. I just happen to have a very unusual shadow! Do you not see that person
who always goes with me? Other persons have a common shadow, but I do not like
what is common to all. We give our servants finer cloth for their livery than
we ourselves use, and so I had my shadow trimmed up into a man: yes, you see I
have even given him a shadow. It is somewhat expensive, but I like to have
something for myself!"
"What!" thought the princess. "Should I really be cured! These baths are the
first in the world! In our time water has wonderful powers. But I shall not
leave the place, for it now begins to be amusing here. I am extremely fond of
that stranger: would that his beard should not grow, for in that case he will
leave us!"
In the evening, the princess and the shadow danced together in the large
ball-room. She was light, but he was still lighter; she had never had such a
partner in the dance. She told him from what land she came, and he knew that
land; he had been there, but then she was not at home; he had peeped in at the
window, above and below, he had seen both the one and the other, and so he
could answer the princess, and make insinuations, so that she was quite
astonished; he must be the wisest man in the whole world! She felt such
respect for what he knew! So that when they again danced together she fell in
love with him; and that the shadow could remark, for she almost pierced him
through with her eyes. So they danced once more together; and she was about to
declare herself, but she was discreet; she thought of her country and kingdom,
and of the many persons she would have to reign over.
"He is a wise man," said she to herself, "It is well; and he dances
delightfully, that is also good; but has he solid knowledge? That is just as
important! He must be examined."
So she began, by degrees, to question him about the most difficult things she
could think of, and which she herself could not have answered; so that the
shadow made a strange face.
"You cannot answer these questions?" said the princess.
"They belong to my childhood's learning," said the shadow. "I really believe
my shadow, by the door there, can answer them!"
"Your shadow!" said the princess. "That would indeed be marvellous!"
"I will not say for a certainty that he can," said the shadow, "but I think
so; he has now followed me for so many years, and listened to my
conversation, I should think it possible. But your royal highness will permit
me to observe, that he is so proud of passing himself off for a man, that when
he is to be in a proper humour, and he must be so to answer well, he must be
treated quite like a man."
"Oh! I like that!" said the princess.
So she went to the learned man by the door, and she spoke to him about the sun
and the moon, and about persons out of and in the world, and he answered with
wisdom and prudence.
"What a man that must be who has so wise a shadow!" thought she. "It will be a
real blessing to my people and kingdom if I choose him for my
consort, I will
do it!"
They were soon agreed, both the princess and the shadow; but no one was to
know about it before she arrived in her own kingdom.
"No one, not even my shadow!" said the shadow, and he had his own thoughts
about it!
Now they were in the country where the princess reigned when she was at home.
"Listen, my good friend," said the shadow to the learned man. "I have now
become as happy and mighty as anyone can be; I will, therefore, do something
particular for thee! Thou shalt always live with me in the palace, drive with
me in my royal carriage, and have ten thousand pounds a year; but then thou
must submit to be called SHADOW by all and everyone; thou must not say that
thou hast ever been a man; and once a year, when I sit on the balcony in the
sunshine, thou must lie at my feet, as a shadow shall do! I must tell thee: I
am going to marry the king's daughter, and the nuptials are to take place this
evening!"
"Nay, this is going too far!" said the learned man. "I will not have it; I
will not do it! It is to deceive the whole country and the princess too! I
will tell everything! That I am a man, and that thou art a shadow,
thou art
only dressed up!"
"There is no one who will believe it!" said the shadow. "Be reasonable, or I
will call the guard!"
"I will go directly to the princess!" said the learned man.
"But I will go first!" said the shadow. "And thou wilt go to prison!" and
that he was obliged to do, for the sentinels obeyed him whom they knew the
king's daughter was to marry.
"You tremble!" said the princess, as the shadow came into her chamber. "Has
anything happened? You must not be unwell this evening, now that we are to
have our nuptials celebrated."
"I have lived to see the most cruel thing that anyone can live to see!" said
the shadow. "Only imagine, yes, it is true, such a poor shadow-skull cannot
bear much, only think, my shadow has become mad; he thinks that he is a man,
and that I, now only think, that I am his shadow!"
"It is terrible!" said the princess; "but he is confined, is he not?"
"That he is. I am afraid that he will never recover."
"Poor shadow!" said the princess. "He is very unfortunate; it would be a real
work of charity to deliver him from the little life he has, and, when I think
properly over the matter, I am of opinion that it will be necessary to do away
with him in all stillness!"
"It is certainly hard," said the shadow, "for he was a faithful servant!" and
then he gave a sort of sigh.
"You are a noble character!" said the princess.
The whole city was illuminated in the evening, and the cannons went off with a
bum! bum! and the soldiers presented arms. That was a marriage! The princess
and the shadow went out on the balcony to show themselves, and get another
hurrah!
The learned man heard nothing of all this, for they had deprived him of life.
The
Shadow Fairy Tale
A Fairy Story
by
Hans Christian Andersen |
