II. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COUNCILOR

It was late. Councilor Knap, deep in meditation on the times of
King Hans, was on his way home, but fate had so ordained it that instead
of his own galoshes, he had put on the galoshes of fortune, in which he
now stepped out into Ostergade. By the magic power of the galoshes,
however, he was now put back to the days of King Hans, and his feet
went right into the mire and mud of the street, for in those days the
streets were not paved.

['Hi; COUNCILOR bAW A LARGK FIELD BEKOKE HIM, WITH A FEW BUSHES HERE AND THERE,
AND A BROAD STREAM FLOWING THROUGH IT.

"How terribly dirty the street is!" said the councilor. "The whole
pavement has vanished and all the lamps are out!"

The moon had not yet risen high in the sky, and the weather was
somewhat misty, so that everything around him was buried in the dark-
ness. At the next corner, however, hung a lantern in front of an image
of the Madonna, but it gave hardly any light; the councilor only dis-
covered it when he stood just under it, and his eyes fell upon the painted
picture of the Mother and the Child.

"That 's probably some traveling show," he thought, "where they
have forgotten to take in the sign."

A couple of men in the dress of the period passed him by.

" What curious clothes they wear ! They must be coming home from
a masquerade."

Suddenly there came the sound of hfes and drums, and flaming torches
threw a bright light around; the councilor stopped and saw a wonderful
procession coming toward him. First of all came a band of drummers,
who were beating their drums right merrily, and after them followed

54 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

halberdiers with bows and cross-bows. The most important person in the
procession was a man of clerical appearance. The councilor asked in
astonishment what it all meant and who that person might he.

"The Bishop of Zealand!" was the answer.

"Good gracious, what can the bishop be up tor" said the councilor
with a sigh, shaking his head. "Surely it could not be the bishop!"
Pondering on thus, and without looking to the right or the left, he walked
along Ostergade and crossed Hoibro-place. The bridge to the open place
in front of the palace was not to be seen; he caught a glimpse of a low-
lying bank of a river, and came finally to two men who were sitting in
a boat.

"Does your honor want to be ferried across to the island?" thev
asked.

"Across to the island.?" said the councilor, who did not know, of
course, in what period he was now moving. "I have to get to Lille
Torvegade, out at Christianshavn."

The men stared at him.

"Only tell me where the bridge is!" he said. "It is a disgrace that
the lamps are not lighted here, and it is as dirtv and muddy as it one were
wading in a bog ! "

The longer he talked to the boatmen, the more unintelligible they
appeared to him.

"I can't understand your Bornholni jargon!" he said at last in an an-
gry voice, and turned his back upon them. He could not find the bridge,
and there was no sign of a railing. "It is a scandalous state of things!"
he said. Never had he been so disappointed with his existence as this
evening. "I think I '11 take a coach," he thought. But where were the
coaches? Not one was to be seen. "I shall have to go back to Kongens
Nytorv; there must be some coaches there, otherwise I shall never get out
to Christianshavn ! "

He then set off through Ostergade and had almost got to the end of
it, when the moon made her appearance.

"Good gracious I What scaffolding is that thev have put up here?"
he exclaimed when he saw the eastern gate, which at that time stood at
the end of Ostergade.

At last he found a wicket and through this he got out to what is now
our Kongens Nytorv, but which at that time was a large field, with a few
bushes here and there. A broad canal or stream Howed through the field,
and on the opposite bank stood some miserable wooden huts used by the
vskippers from Halland in Sweden, after whom the place was called
Hallandsaas.

"Either I see a Fata Morgana, as they call it, (.>r I am tipsy!" wailed
the councilor. "What can this be? What can this be?"

He turned back again, in the full belief that he was ill. When he

W \s (iNh OF THE l\\Fk\s (II
SKIPPERS. CITI/FNS, AND

IHOSF I)A\s A NUMHFR Oh IKiPIt, LONSlSTING OF
EARNED PFRsON'VGES WERE SITTING THFRF

THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE 57

got into the street he looked more closely at the houses; most of them
were built of timber and plaster, and many had only thatched roofs.

"No, I am not at all well!" he sighed, "and I drank only one glass
of toddy, but it does not agree with me. Besides, it was very wrong to
give us toddy and hot salmon; I shall just mention it to Madame. I
wonder if I should go back and tell them how I feel? Hut it would look
so bad, and they may have gone to bed."

He began looking for the house, but it was not to be found.

"This is really terrible! I cannot recognize Ostergade. There is not
a shop to he seen. Only old, miserable shanties, just as if I were in
Roskilde or Ringsted. Alas, I am ill ! It 's no use being timid. But
where in all the world is the house? It is no longer the same. But the
people are still up. Oh, I must be quite ill!"

He then pushed against a half-open door, through which the light
shone out. It was one of the taverns of those days, a kind of beer-house.
The room had the appearance of the Holstein parlors, and a number of
people, consisting of skippers, Copenhagen citizens, and a couple of learned
personages, were sitting there in deep discourse over their mugs, and paid
little attention to the councilor who came in.

"I beg your pardon," said the councilor to the landlady, who came
toward him; "I have been taken very ill. Can you get me a coach to
Christianshavn?"

The woman looked at him and shook her head, whereupon she spoke
to him in the German language. The councilor thought she did not
understand Danish, and therefore repeated his request in German; this and
his dress confirmed the woman in her belief that he was a foreigner. She
soon understood that he was ill, and gave him a jug of water, which was
brought from the well and was somewhat brackish in taste.

The councilor rested his head on his hand, drew a deep breath, and
wondered at all the strange things around him.

" Is that this evening's 'Daily News'?" he asked for the sake of saying
something, as he saw the woman move a large sheet of paper.

She did not understand what he meant, but handed him the paper; it
was a wood-cut, representing a Fata Morgana seen in the ancient city of
Cologne.

"It is very old," said the councilor, and he became quite cheerful at
coming across such an ancient print. " How did you become possessed of
this rare copy ? It is very interesting, although it is altogether a fable. We
explain such aerial visions as being Northern lights which they have seen ;
probably they are produced by electricity."

Those who sat nearest to him and heard his remarks, looked at him in
surprise, and one of them rose to his feet, took off his hat respectfully, and
said, with the most serious expression : " You are surely a very learned man,
monsieur! "

58 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

"Oh, no," answered the councilor; "I can only discuss things in
general, as one ought to do."

'' Modestia'is, a great virtue," said the iiian, "otherwise I must say to
your speech mihi secus videtur, yet will I here willingly suspend my
judiciutn."

"May I ask whom I have the pleasure of speaking with?" asked the
councilor.

"I am a baccalaureus in the Holy Writ!" answered the man.

This answer was sufficient for the councilor; the title corresponded to
the dress in this case. "He must be an old village schoolmaster," he
thought, "a quaint old fellow, such as one can still find over in Jutland."

"This is no locus docetidi," the man began, "yet I would ask you to
condescend to speak. You are, no doubt, deeply versed in the classics?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the councilor; "I like to read old instructive
books, but I also like the modern ones, except ' Every-day Stories,' of which
we have enough in real life."

"'Every-day Stories?'" asked our baccalaureus.

"Yes, I mean the new romances we have."

"Ah!" said the man, with a smile, "they are very entertaining, and
are read much at court ; the king is especially fond of the romance of ' Sir
Iffven and Sir Gaudian,' which treats of King Arthur and the Knights ot
the Round Table; he has had many pleasantries over it with his noble
lords." ^

"I have not yet read that," said the councilor, "it must be quite a
new book, which Heiberg has published."

"No," said the man, "it is not published by Heiberg, but by Ciodtred
von Ghemen ! "

"Oh, is that the author?" said the councilor; "it is a very old name.
Why, it is that of the first printer Denmark ever had!"

"Yes, he is our first printer," replied the man; and so the conversation
went on fairly well. One of the good citizens then spoke about the ter-
rible plague which had raged a couple of years before, referring, of course,
to the plague of 1484; the councilor thought they spoke about the
cholera,- and so the discourse went on quite satisfactorily. The freebooter
expedition of 1490 was of such recent date, that they could not help refer-
ring to it; the English freebooters had seized the ships in the roadstead,
they said, and the councilor, who had made a special study of the events
of 1801,^ joined in quite appropriately with his denunciations of the Eng-

1 Holberg tells in his " History of Denmark" such kings as King Arthur, there would also be many

that King Hans, one day when he had been reading knights like Sir Iffven and Sir Gaudian."
the romance of King Arthur, was jesting with the 2 Copenhagen was visiled by a terrible outburst

well-known Ove Rud, of \vhom he was very fond. of cholera in 1 8 3 i .

'• Sir IfR'en and Sir Gaudian, of whom I read in this 3 When the English fleet under Sir Hyde Parker,

book," said he, " must have been remarkable knights. Lord Nelson, and others, defeated the Danish fleet

Such knights we do not have any more nowadays ! " in the roadstead ot Copenhagen.
To this Ove Rud answered : "If there were many

THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

59

lish. The rest of the conversation, however, did not proceed so w^ell;
every moment it gave rise to misunderstandings on both sides; the old
baccalaureus was very ignorant, and the simplest observations of the coun-
cilor appeared to him too bold and too fantastic. They stared at each
other, and when matters became too complicated, the baccalaureus spoke in
Latin, thinking he would be better understood, but it was of no use.

"How do you feel now.?" asked the landlady, pulling the councilor
by the sleeve. He now came back to his senses, for while he had been
talking he had forgotton what had taken place before.

BLESS me!" said THE COUNCILOR, "HAVE I BEE>
STREET, DREAMING ? "

LYING HERE IN THE

"Gracious goodness! where am I.?" he exclaimed, feeling quite giddy
at the thought of it.

"We '11 have some claret! And some mead and some Bremen beer!"
cried one of the guests, "and you shall drink with us!"

Two girls came into the room ; one of them had on a cap of two
colors. They poured out the drink and courtesied ; the councilor felt a
cold shudder down his back.

"What does this mean? What does this mean?" he asked; but he
had to drink with them. The men paid every attention to the good
councilor, who was in despair, and when one of them told him that he
was tipsy, he did not at all doubt the man's words; he only asked them
to get him a droshky, and then they thought he spoke Russian.

Never before had he been in such rough and vulgar company. "One
would think the country had gone back to heathen times," he said to
himself; "this is the most terrible moment of my life!" Just then it
struck him that he would stoop down under the table and creep across to
the door and try to get away, but just as he had got to the door the others
discovered what he was about ; they seized him by the legs, when luckily
for him the galoshes came off, and — -with that the whole spell was broken.

The councilor saw quite plainly a lamp burning brightly just in front

60 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

of him, and behind it a large house. He recognized it as well as the
house next door to it. It was Ostergade, such as we all know it ; he was
lying with his feet toward a gateway and opposite to him sat the night
watchman asleep.

"Bless me ! Have I been lying here in the street, dreaming ?" he said.
"Yes, this is Ostergade! How delightfully light and bright ! It is terrible
to think how one glass of toddy could have affected me ! "

Two minutes afterward he sat in a carriage, which drove him to
Christianshavn, thinking of the anxiety and anguish he had gone through,
and praised with all his heart the happy reality — our own times — which,
with all their shortcomings, were far better than the period of which he had
just had a glimpse; and that, I think, was very sensible of the councilor.