Fairy Tales

time was at the end of East Street.

He finally found a gate and by going through it, he came out on our New Market, but at that time it was just a big meadow. There was a bush here and there and through the middle of the meadow was a wide channel or creek. On the opposite bank there were some wretched wooden shacks where the Dutch seamen lived, and so the place was called Holland Meadow.

“Either I am seeing fata morgana, a mirage, as it’s called, or I’m drunk,” groaned the councilman. “What is this? What’s going on?”

He turned around again in the firm belief that he was sick. As he came back to the street, he looked a little closer at the houses: most of them were of half-timbered construction, and many had only straw roofs.

“No, I am not at all well,” he sighed. “I only drank one glass of punch, but I can’t tolerate it. It was also very wrong of them to serve punch with poached salmon! I am going to tell the representative’s wife that, too. Should I go back and tell them I’m sick? But it’s so embarrassing. And maybe they’ve already gone to bed.”

He looked for the house, but couldn’t find it.

“This is terrible! I can’t even recognize East Street. Where are the shops? I only see old, miserable hovels as if I were in Roskilde or Ringsted! Oh, I’m sick. There’s no sense in being shy. But where in the world is the Representative’s house? It doesn’t look right, but there are clearly people up in there. Oh, I’m really awfully sick.”

Then he came across a half-opened door with light coming through the crack. It was an inn of that time, a kind of pub, quite country-like. The good folks inside were seamen, citizens of the town, and a few scholars who were in deep conversation over their cups and didn’t pay much attention to him when he came in.

“Excuse me,” the councilman said to the hostess who approached him. “I’m in bad shape. Can you get me a cab out to Christian’s Harbor?”

The woman looked at him, shook her head, and then spoke to him in German. The councilman thought that maybe she couldn’t speak Danish so he repeated his request in German. This, along with his clothing, confirmed for the woman that he was a foreigner. She soon realized that he was ill and gave him a glass of water, admittedly a little brackish since it came from the creek.

The councilman rested his head on his hand, took a deep breath, and pondered his strange surroundings.

“Is that this evening’s Daily?” he asked just to say something when he saw the woman move a big paper.

She didn’t understand what he meant, but handed him the paper. It was a woodcut that showed a vision in the sky above the city of Cologne.

“It’s very old,” the judge said. He was quite excited to run across such an old item. “Where in the world have you gotten this rare print? It’s very interesting, although it’s all a myth. These sky visions are explained by northern lights that people have seen. Most likely they come from electricity.”

Those who were sitting close by and heard him speak looked at him in wonder. One of them got up, took off his hat respectfully, and said, “You are evidently a very highly educated man, Monsieur!”

“Oh no!” The councilman answered. “I can discuss this and that, as one is expected to be able to do.”

“Modesty is a lovely virtue,” the man said, “for that matter, I’ll say that your remarks seem different to me, but I’ll suspend my judicium here!” He spoke mostly in Latin.

“May I ask with whom I have the pleasure of speaking?” asked the councilman.

“I have a Bachelor’s in Theology,” the man continued.

This answer was enough for the councilman. The title matched the outfit: “Must be an old country school teacher,” he thought, “an eccentric fellow, such as those you can still meet up in Jutland.”

“I guess it’s not the place for a lecture,” the man began in Latin, “but I would ask you to continue speaking since it’s clear that you have read a lot of the classics.”

“Yes, I certainly have,” said the judge. “I really like reading useful old writings, but I also enjoy the newer ones. Not Everyday Stories5 though. There are enough of those in reality.”

“Everyday Stories?” asked our scholar.

“Yes, I mean those new fangled novels.”

“Oh,” smiled the man, “but they are very entertaining, and they read them at court. The King is especially fond of the one about Sir Yvain and Sir Gawain. It’s about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He was joking about it with his courtiers.”⁶

“I haven’t read that one yet,” said the councilman. “It must be a pretty new one put out by Heiberg.”⁷

“No,” the man answered. “It was not published by Heiberg, but by Godfred von Gehmen.”⁸

“So that’s the author,” the judge said. “That’s a very old name. The first printer in Denmark had that name.”

“Yes, he’s first among our book publishers,” the man said. So the conversation went pretty well. One of the citizens talked about the terrible pestilence that had raged a couple of years before, meaning the one in 1484. The councilman thought he was talking about the cholera epidemic⁹ so the discussion went swimmingly. The Freebooters War of 1490 was so recent that it had to be mentioned. The English buccaneers had taken ships right in the harbor, they said, and the councilman, who was well versed on the events of 1801, blasted the English with relish. But the rest of the conversation didn’t go as well. There was very often a mutual incomprehensibility. The good scholar was much too ignorant, and the councilman’s most simple utterances struck him as being too audacious and fantastic. They looked at each other, and if it got too bad, the scholar spoke Latin because he thought he would be better understood, but it didn’t help at all.

“How are you doing?” asked the hostess, who pulled at the councilman’s arm. Then he came to his senses because, when he was talking, he had forgotten everything that had happened before.