“Yes,”replied the old lady,“they must also die,and their term of life is even shorter than ours.We sometimes live to three hundred years,but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water,and we have not even a grave down here of those we love.We have not immortal souls,we shall never live again;but,like the green sea-weed,when once it has been cut off,we can never flourish more.Human beings,on the contrary,have a soul which lives forever,lives after the body has been turned to dust.It rises up through the clear,pure air beyond the glittering stars.As we rise out of the water,and behold all the land of the earth,so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see.”
“Why have not we an immortal soul?”asked the little mermaid mournfully;“I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live,to be a human being only for one day,and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars.”
“You must not think of that,”said the old woman;“we feel ourselves to be much happier and much better off than human beings.”
“So I shall die,”said the little mermaid,“and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves,or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun.Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?”
“No,”said the old woman,“unless a man were to love you so much that you were more to him than his father or mother;and if all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you,and the priest placed his right hand in yours,and he promised to be true to you here and hereafter,then his soul would glide into your body and you would obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind.He would give a soul to you and retain his own as well;but this can never happen.Your fish's tail,which amongst us is considered so beautiful,is thought on earth to be quite ugly;they do not know any better,and they think it necessary to have two stout props,which they call legs,in order to be handsome.”
Then the little mermaid sighed,and looked sorrowfully at her fish's tail.“Let us be happy,”said the old lady,“and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live,which is really quite long enough;after that we can rest ourselves all the better.This evening we are going to have a court ball.”
It is one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth.The walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of thick,but transparent crystal.May hundreds of colossal shells,some of a deep red,others of a grass green,stood on each side in rows,with blue fire in them,which lighted up the whole saloon,and shone through the walls,so that the sea was also illuminated.Innumerable fishes,great and small,swam past the crystal walls;on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliancy,and on others they shone like silver and gold.Through the halls flowed a broad stream,and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music of their own sweet singing.No one on earth has such a lovely voice as theirs.The little mermaid sang more sweetly than them all.The whole court applauded her with hands and tails;and for a moment her heart felt quite gay,for she knew she had the loveliest voice of any on earth or in the sea.But she soon thought again of the world above her,for she could not forget the charming prince,nor her sorrow that she had not an immortal soul like his;therefore she crept away silently out of her father's palace,and while everything within was gladness and song,she sat in her own little garden sorrowful and alone.Then she heard the bugle sounding through the water,and thought—“He is certainly sailing above,he on whom my wishes depend,and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life.I will venture all for him,and to win an immortal soul,while my sisters are dancing in my father's palace,I will go to the sea witch,of whom I have always been so much afraid,but she can give me counsel and help.”
