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_The Elf of the Rose_ was written by Hans Christian
Andersen (1805-1875), and was translated from the Danish by
M. R. James (1862-1936) as part of his _Hans Andersen Forty-Two
Stories_ (1930).

Title: Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories -- The Elf of the Rose
Author: Andersen, Hans Christian (1805-1875)
Translator: James, Montague Rhodes (1862-1936)
Date of first publication: 1930
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber and Faber, 1953
Date first posted: 16 December 2008
Date last updated: 16 December 2008
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #216

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




The Elf of the Rose

by

Hans Christian Andersen

(from _Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_ [1930],
translated by M. R. James)


In the middle of a garden there grew a rose tree which was quite full
of blossoms, and in one of these, the prettiest of them all, lived an
Elf: he was such a little tiny thing that no human eye could see him.
Behind every petal in the rose he had a bedroom. He was as well shaped
and as handsome as any child could be, and had wings reaching from his
shoulders right down to his feet. Oh! what a sweet smell there was in
his room! And how bright and pretty were the walls of it! They were
the pale pink, delicate rose leaves.

All day he enjoyed himself in the hot sunshine, flying from flower to
flower, dancing on the wings of the butterfly as it flew, and
measuring how many steps it took to go over all the roads and paths on
a single lime-leaf. It was what we call the veins of the leaf that he
reckoned as roads and paths: an enormous distance he had to go, and
before he had finished, the sun set. He had begun very late for
another thing.

It got very cold, the dew fell, the wind blew. It would be best to go
home. He made all the haste he could, but the rose was shut, and he
could not get in, not a single rose was open. The poor little Elf was
terribly frightened: he had never spent the night out of doors before,
but had always slept sweetly, snug among the rose leaves. Oh dear! It
would be the death of him for certain!

At the other end of the garden, he knew, there was a summer-house
with beautiful honeysuckle on it, whose flowers looked like large
coloured horns: he would get into one of them and sleep till morning.
Thither he flew. Hush! There were two people inside, a handsome young
man and the prettiest of girls. Side by side they sat, and wished they
might never be parted, so fond they were of each other, far fonder
than the best of children can be of its father and mother.

"Yet we must part," said the young man; "your brother wishes us no
good: that is why he is sending me on a mission far away beyond
mountains and lakes. Farewell, my sweetest bride, for my bride you
are!"

They kissed one another: the young girl wept and gave him a rose, but
before she put it in his hand she printed a kiss on it so fond and
tender that the flower opened, and into it the little Elf flew and
nestled his head against the delicate fragrant walls. But he could
plainly hear "Farewell, farewell!" said, and feel that the rose was
placed in the young man's bosom. Oh how the heart in it beat! The
little Elf could not get to sleep, so fast it beat. Not long did the
rose lie quiet on his heart: the young man drew it out, and as he went
alone through the dark wood he kissed it so often and so hard that the
little Elf was in danger of being squeezed to death. Through the leaf
he could feel how the man's lips burned: the very rose had opened
itself as under the hottest sun of noonday.

There came another man, gloomy and passionate, the fair girl's evil
brother. He drew a long sharp knife, and while the other kissed his
rose the wicked man stabbed him to death, cut off his head, and buried
it, with the body, in the soft earth under a lime tree.

"He's gone and forgotten now," said the wicked brother; "he will come
back no more. A long journey he was to go, over mountains and lakes,
where a man can easily lose his life; and he's lost his. He won't come
back, and my sister will never dare ask me about him." With that he
spread the dead leaves over the disturbed earth with his foot, and
went home in the dark night, but not alone, as he supposed. The little
Elf kept him company, sitting in a withered rolled-up lime-leaf that
had fallen on the bad man's hair as he dug the grave. His hat was over
it now, and very dark it was in there, and the Elf quivered with
horror and wrath at the foul deed.

The bad man got home at dawn. He took off his hat and went into his
sister's bedroom. There she lay, the pretty young maid, dreaming of
him whom she held so dear, who now, she thought, was travelling over
hills and through forests: and the wicked brother stooped over her and
laughed horribly, as a devil might laugh. The withered leaf fell from
his hair upon the counterpane, but he did not notice it; he went out
to sleep--he too--for a little in the early morning. But the Elf stole
out of the withered leaf, crept into the ear of the sleeping girl, and
told her, as in a dream, of the frightful murder; described to her
the place where her brother had killed him and laid his body, told of
the flowering lime tree hard by, and said: "That you may see this is
no dream that I have told you, you will find a withered leaf on your
bed." And so she did when she awoke.

Oh what bitter tears she wept! Yet to no one dared she confide her
trouble. The window stood open all day, and the little Elf might
easily have gone out into the garden to the roses and all the other
flowers, but he cared not to leave her in her sorrow. In the window
stood a tree of monthly roses, and in one of these he sat and watched
the poor girl. Several times her brother came into the room: he was in
high spirits, and unkind--but she dared not say a word of her great
sorrow. As soon as night came she stole out of the house and into the
wood to the place where the lime tree stood: she cleared the leaves
away from the soil, dug down into it and found the murdered man. Oh,
how she wept and prayed God that she might die soon! She longed to
bear the body home with her, but that she could not. So she took the
pale head with the closed eyes, kissed the cold mouth and shook the
earth from the fair hair. "This shall be mine!" said she. So when she
had laid earth and leaves over the dead body she took the head home
with her, and a little branch of jessamine which was flowering in the
wood where he was killed. As soon as she was in her room again, she
fetched the largest flower-pot she could find, and in it she laid the
dead man's head, put earth over it, and planted the sprig of
jessamine.

"Farewell! farewell!" whispered the little Elf; he could not bear to
look on all this sorrow any longer, and flew out into the garden, to
his rose. But it had faded; only a few pale petals hung to the green
fruit. "Ah, how quickly passes all that is fair and good!" sighed he.
At last he found another rose, which became his house; among its
delicate scented leaves he could live and make his home.

Every morning he would fly to the poor girl's window, where she would
always be standing by her flower-pot, weeping. The salt tears fell on
the sprig of jessamine, but day by day as she grew paler and paler,
the sprig grew yet more fresh and green; one twig after another was
put forth, and little white buds came and turned to flowers, and she
would kiss them. But her wicked brother reviled her and asked if she
were going crazy: he could not bear it, and could not understand why
she was always weeping over the flower-pot. He little knew what closed
eyes, what red lips, had turned to earth there: and she would bow her
head over the flower-pot, and there the little Elf found her
slumbering. Into her ear he crept, and told her of the evening in the
summer-house, and of the sweet smell of the roses and the loving
kindness of the Elves, and she slept sweetly, and while she slept her
life faded: a quiet death was hers, and now she was in heaven with him
whom she loved.

The jessamine flowers opened their great white bells and gave forth a
perfume of wonderful sweetness: it was the only way they had to mourn
over the dead.

But the wicked brother looked at the beautiful flowering shrub and
took it for himself as a legacy, and put it in his room, near the bed,
for it was pleasant to look at, and the smell was sweet and fresh. The
little Elf went there too, and flew from one flower to another--in
each of them dwelt a little soul--and to them he told the story of the
murdered youth whose head was now earth in earth, and of the wicked
brother and the wretched sister. "We know it!" said each of the souls
in the flowers. "We know it! Did we not grow out of the slain man's
eyes and lips? We know! We know!" and they nodded their heads in a
strange fashion. The Rose Elf could not understand how they could be
so calm, and he flew out to the bees, who were gathering honey, and
told them the story of the wicked brother; and the bees told their
Queen, who gave orders that next morning they should join and kill the
murderer.

But the night before--that is, the first night after the death of his
sister, as the wicked brother slept in his bed close by the
sweet-smelling jessamine--every flower cup opened, and, unseen, but
each one bearing a poisoned spear, the flower souls came forth: and
first they settled at his ear and told him dreadful dreams, and then
they flew to his lips and pricked his tongue with the poisoned spears.
"Now we have avenged the dead!" they said, and home they went into the
white bells of the jessamine. When morning came and the window was all
at once thrown open, the Rose Elf hastened in with the Queen Bee and
all the swarm to kill him. But he was dead already, and people were
standing about him saying: "The smell of the jessamine has killed
him." Then the Rose Elf understood the vengeance of the flowers and
told it to the Queen of the Bees, and she hummed about the flower-pot
with all her swarm. And as the bees could not be driven away, a man
took the flower-pot, and one of the bees stung him on the hand, and he
let the pot fall and it broke.

Then they saw the white skull; and they knew that he who lay dead in
the bed was a murderer.

And the Queen Bee hummed in the fresh air and sang of the vengeance of
the flowers and the Elf of the Rose, and how behind every least petal
dwells one who can tell of evil deeds and avenge them.




[End of _The Elf of the Rose_ by Hans Christian Andersen, from _Hans
Andersen Forty-Two Stories_, translated by M. R. James]