V. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CLERK

In the meantime the watchman, whom we are not hkely to have
forgotten, bethought himself of the galoshes, which he had found and
taken with him to the hospital; he called there for them, but as neither the
lieutenant nor anybody else living in the street would own them, he took
them to the police station.

"They look exactly like my own galoshes!" said one of the clerks in
the office, looking at them and placing them beside his own. " It requires
more than a shoemaker's eye to know one pair from another ! "

A constable now came in with some papers for the clerk, who turned
round to talk to him; but when he had done with him and again looked
at the galoshes, he was quite uncertain whether it was the pair on the left
or on the right which belonged to him. " It must be the soiled ones that
are mine!" he thought; but he was mistaken, for they were the galoshes
of fortune ; besides, why should not the police be mistaken sometimes .?
He put on the galoshes, stuck some papers in his pocket and some others
under his arm; he had to take them home to read them through and copy
them. But it happened to be Sunday morning, and as the weather was
tine he thought that a walk as tar as Frederiksberg would do him good ;
and off he went.

No one could be a more steady and diligent person than this young
man. We hope he will enjoy his little walk; it will do him a great deal
of good after so much sitting. At tirst he only walked on without think-
ing of anything, and the galoshes had therefore no opportunity of showing
their magic power.

In the avenue he met an acquaintance, a young poet, who told him
that he was going to set out on his summer trip next day.

"So vou are off again!" said the clerk; "you are a lucky man to be
so free. Vou can i\y wherever you like, while we others are chained by
the foot!"

"But the foot is tixed to the tree that gives you bread," said the poet.
"You need not trouble for the morrow, and, when you grow old, you get
a pension.

"But you are best off," said the clerk; "to sit and write verses is a
pleasure. The whole world says pleasant things to you, and, besides, you
are your own master. You should try sitting in court and attending to
the trivial matters there."

The poet shook his head, and the clerk shook his also ; each of them
stuck to his own opinion, and so they parted. "They are a peculiar race
of people, these poets!" said the clerk; "I should like to enter into such
a nature, to become a poet myself. I am sure I should not write such
whimpering verses as the others do! This is truly a spring day tor a

72 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

poet ! The air is so wonderfully clear, the clouds are so magnificent, and
the trees and greensward smell so sweet. Ah ! I have not felt like this
for many years! "

We can already notice that he had become a poet; not that it was
noticeable in his appearance, for it is foolish to suppose that a poet is
different from other people, among whom you may find far more poetical
natures than in many of the great poets we recognize. The difference is
simply that the poet has a better intellectual memory ; he can retain the
idea and the feeling till they are clearly and plainly embodied in words,
which the others cannot do. But to be transformed from a commonplace
nature to a more highly gifted one is always a wonderful transition ; and
that is what happened to the clerk.

"What a delicious fragrance! " he said; "how it reminds me o( the
violets at Aunty Loue's ! Ah ! I was a little boy then ! Bless me, I have
not thought of that for many a day! The good old lady! She lived just
behind the Exchange. She always kept a twig or a couple of green
shoots in water, no matter how severe the winter was. The scent of the
violets pervaded the whole room, while I put hot copper pennies against
the frozen window-panes to make peep-holes.

" What an interesting view it was ! Out in the canal lay the ice-bound
ships, quite deserted by their crews; a screaming crow was the only living
creature on board. But when the spring came, a busy life began ; amid
singing and cheering the ice was sawed in pieces, the ships were tarred and
rigged, and set sail for foreign lands; but I remain here, and must always
remain sitting here in the police office, and see others taking out their
passports to go abroad. That 's my lot, alas, alas!" he sighed deeply, but
stopped suddenly. "Bless me, what is the matter with me? I have
never thought or felt like this before. It must be the spring air. I feel
both anxious and happy."

He felt in his pocket for his papers. "These will give me something
else to think about," he said, and let his eyes wander over the first page.
" ' Sigbrith, an Original Tragedy in Five Acts,' " he read. " What 's this ? —
and it's in my own handwriting! Have I written this tragedy? 'The
Intrigue on the Ramparts, or the Day of Prayer' — a vaudeville. Where
can I have got this from ? Somebody must have put it in my pocket !
Why — here 's a letter!" It was from the manager of the theater; the
plays were rejected, and the letter was not at all politely worded. " H'm,
h'm ! " said the clerk, and sat down on a bench ; his imagination was all
alive, and his heart was quite tender ; unconsciously he seized hold of one
of the nearest flowers ; it was a simple little daisy ; the flower told him in a
minute what would take a botanist many lectures to explain. It told him
about the myth of its birth, about the power of the sunlight, which
expanded its delicate leaves and made it so fragrant. He then thought of
the struggles of life, which likewise awaken feelings in our hearts. Ligbt

t'HE UPPER VVUNDOW IS OPEN," bAIlJ IHK CANAk\ . ■■Kl.vi KLV AWAV!"

THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE 75

and air courted the flower, but light was the favored one;, it leaned toward
the light ; if this vanished the flower rolled its leaves together, and went to
sleep embraced by the air. "It is the light which adorns me," said the
flower; "but the air gives you the breath of life!" whispered the voice ot
the poet.

Close by stood a boy, striking with his stick into the muddy ditch ; the
drops of water spurted up amongst the green branches, and the clerk
thought of the millions of invisible animalcules in the drops which were
cast so high in the air, that in proportion to their size it would be the
same as if we were whirled up high above the clouds.

As the clerk thought of this, and the great change that had taken
place in him, he smiled and said : " I must be asleep and dreaming. It is
most remarkable in any case. How naturally one can dream, and at the
same time know it is only a dream ! I wish I could remember it to-mor-
row, when I wake up; just now I seem to be quite unusually fit for
anything. I can see everything so clearly, and feel so wide awake and
bright, but I am sure that if I recollect anything of it to-morrow, it will
only be nonsense; I have experienced it before. It is just the same with
all the wise and splendid things one learns and says in dreams, as with the
gold of supernatural beings, when you receive it, it is bright and sparkling,
but by daylight it is only stones and withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed,
quite sadly, looking at the birds that were singing and hopping from
branch to branch, "they are far better ofl' than I. To fly — that must be
a splendid gift of nature — happy is he who is born with it! Yes, if I
were to wish to change into anything, it would be into a little lark."

At the same moment the tails and sleeves of his coat grew into wings,
his clothes turned into feathers, and the galoshes into claws. He noticed
this quite plainly, and laughed to himself: "Well, now I can see I am
dreaming. But never have I dreamed anything so foolish before"; and he
flew up among the green branches and began to sing; but there was no
poetry in his song, for the poetical nature was gone. The galoshes, like
every one who does his business thoroughly, could only do one thing at a
time; he wanted to be a poet, and he became one; now he wanted to be
a little bird, but on changing into this his former characteristics disap-
peared.

"This is very funny indeed!" said he. "In the daytime I sit in the
police office among the most voluminous documents, and at night I dream
I am flying about as a lark in Frederiksberg Garden ; one could write quite
a comedy about it."

He then flew down into the grass, turned his head from one side to
the other, and struck his beak at the pliant blades of grass, which, in
proportion to his present size, appeared to him as large as the branches of
the North-African palms.

The next moment everything around him became as black as the

76 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

darkest night; it seemed to him as if some enormous object had been
thrown over him. It was a large cap which a boy from Nyboder had
thrown over the bird; a hand was pushed in under the cap, and the clerk
was seized round the back and wings so that he squeaked. In his first
fright he cried aloud : " You impudent whelp ! I am a clerk in the police
office!" But to the boy it only sounded like "tweet, tweet!" He gave
the bird a tap on its beak and walked off with it.

In the avenue he met a couple of school-boys of the better class, that is
to say, as far as their station in life was concerned, but as regards intellect,
they belonged to the lowest class in the school. They bought the bird
for fourpence, and in this way the clerk was brought back to Copenhagen
to a family which lived in Gothers Street.

"It is a good thing that I am dreaming," said the clerk, "otherwise I
should become quite angry. First I was a poet, now I am a lark. Ah !
it was that poetical spirit in me that transformed me into this little
creature. It is a wretched state of affairs, especially when one falls into the
hands of boys. I should like to know how all this is going to end."

The boy took him into a very elegant room; a stout smiling lady
received them, but she was not at all pleased at the common field-bird,
as she called the lark, being brought into the house; still she would allow
it just for one day, but they would have to put the bird into the empty
cage over by the window. "Perhaps it will please Polly," she said, smil-
ing at a large green parrot which was swinging majestically on her ring in
the pretty brass cage. "It 's Polly's birthday," she said, in her foolish,
naive way, "and the little field-bird has come to congratulate her."

Polly did not answer a single word, but went on swinging to and fro
in her majestic way; but a pretty canary, which had been brought there
last summer from his warm, balmy home, began to sing loudly.

"You squealing thing! " said the lady, and threw a white handkerchief
over the cage.

"Tweet, tweet!" sighed the bird, "what a terrible snowstorm!" and
settled down in silence with a sigh.

The clerk, or the field-bird, as the lady of the house called him, was
put in a little cage close to the canary and not far from the parrot. The
only sentence which Polly could scream out, and which often came in
most comically, was : "Come, let us be human!" Everything else she
screamed v/as as unintelligible as the twittering of the canary; but not to
the clerk, who was now himself a bird; he understood his comrades very
well.

" I used to fly under the green palms and the blossoming almond-tree ! "
sang the canary. "I used to fly with my brothers and sisters over the
gorgeous flowers and over the crystal lake, where the plants waved to and
fro. I also saw many beautiful parrots who told me the funniest stories,
ever so long and ever so many."

THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

77

"But thev were wild birds!" answered the parrot, "they had no
education. No, come, let us be human ! Why don't you laugh ? If our
mistress and all the strangers can laugh at it, why don't you do so as
well? No, come, let us be human!"

THE NEXT MOMENT HE WAS THE CLERK ONCE MORE, BUT HE FOUND HIMSELF
sriTINC, OX THE TABLE IN HIS ROOM.

' Do you remember the pretty girls, who danced under the awning
near the blossoming trees? Do yoii remember the sweet fruits and the
cooling juice of the wild plants?"

"Oh, yes!" said the parrot, "but I am much better otf here ! I have
good food, and am treated in the most friendly way; I know I have a
good head, and want for nothing more. Come, let us be human ! You
have the soul of a poet, as they call it; I have sound knowledge and wit.
You possess genuis, but no discretion; you indulge in those high natural
tones of vours, and therefore' they cover you up ! They dare not treat

78 THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE

me like that! Oh, no, I cost them a good deal more! I impress them
with my beak and can crack a joke. Wit ! wit ! wit ! Come, let us be
human ! "

"Oh, for the warm and balmy land of my birth ! " sang the canary. " I
will sing about your dark, green trees, about your calm bays, where the
branches kiss the bright surface of the water; I will sing about the joys of
my resplendent brothers and sisters, where the cactus grows."

"Do stop those whimpering tones!" said the parrot. "Say something
that '11 make one laugh. Laughter is a sign of the highest intellectual de-
velopment. Can a dog or a horse laugh .? No, they can weep, but it is
only given to man to laugh. Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the parrot, adding his
witty saying: "Come, let us be human!"

"You little gray Danish bird," said the canary, "you, too, are a prisoner!
It must be cold in your forests, but you have liberty there, at any rate!
Fly away! They have forgotten to close your cage, and the upper window-
is open. Fly! Flyaway!"

And the clerk did so, and the next moment he was out of the cage;
just then the half-open door, leading to the next room, creaked, and the cat
with its green, glistening eyes crept stealthily into the room and started in
pursuit of him. The canary fluttered in its cage and the parrot flapped its
wings and screamed: "Come, let us be human." The clerk was in a
terrible fright, and flew away through the window and over the houses and
streets, till at last he was obliged to rest a little.

The house opposite seemed familiar to him; the window stood open, he
flew in. It was his own room. He perched on the table. " Come, let
us be human!" he said, mimicking the parrot without thinking of what
he said ; and the next moment he was the clerk once more, but he
found himself sitting on the table.

"Good gracious!" he said, "how did I get up here and fall asleep in
this way! That was an uneasy dream I had! W hat a lot of silly nonsense
it was."