Mogens and Other Stories | Page 4

in him again,
and he ran after the face of the little girl. It did not enter his head that it
was a person he pursued. To him it was only the face of a little girl. He
ran, it rustled to the right, it rustled to the left, it rustled in front, it
rustled behind, he rustled, she rustled, and all these sounds and the
running itself excited him, and he cried: "Where are you? Say cuckoo!"
Nobody answered. When he heard his own voice, he felt just a little
uneasy, but he continued running; then a thought came to him, only a
single one, and he murmured as he kept on running: "What am I going
to say to her? What am I going to say to her?" He was approaching a
big bush, there she had hid herself, he could just see a corner of her
skirt. "What am I going to say to her? What am I going to say to her?"
he kept on murmuring while he ran. He was quite near the bush, then

turned abruptly, ran on still murmuring the same, came out upon the
open road, ran a distance, stopped abruptly and burst out laughing,
walked smiling quietly a few paces, then burst out laughing loudly
again, and did not cease laughing all the way along the hedge.
It was on a beautiful autumn day; the fall of the foliage was going on
apace and the path which led to the lake was quite covered with the
citron-yellow leaves from the elms and maples; here and there were
spots of a darker foliage. It was very pleasant, very clean to walk on
this tigerskin-carpet, and to watch the leaves fall down like snow; the
birch looked even lighter and more graceful with its branches almost
bare and the roan-tree was wonderful with its heavy scarlet cluster of
berries. And the sky was so blue, so blue, and the wood seemed so
much bigger, one could look so far between the trunks. And then of
course one could not help thinking that soon all this would be of the
past. Wood, field, sky, open air, and everything soon would have to
give way to the time of the lamps, the carpets, and the hyacinths. For
this reason the councilor from Cape Trafalgar and his daughter were
walking down to the lake, while their carriage stopped at the bailiff's.
The councilor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite
special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The
councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial;
gardens were nothing but nature spoiled; but gardens laid out in
elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in nature,
providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but natural. Nature
was that which was unrestrained, that which was unspoiled. But with
the fall of man civilization had come upon mankind; now civilization
had become a necessity; but it would have been better, if it had not
been thus. The state of nature was something quite different, quite
different. The councilor himself would have had no objection to
maintaining himself by going about in a coat of lamb-skin and shooting
hares and snipes and golden plovers and grouse and haunches of
venison and wild boars. No, the state of nature really was like a gem, a
perfect gem.
The councilor and his daughter walked down to the lake. For some time
already it had glimmered between the trees, but now when they turned
the corner where the big poplar stood, it lay quite open before them.
There it lay with large spaces of water clear as a mirror, with jagged

tongues of gray-blue rippled water, with streaks that were smooth and
streaks that were rippled, and the sunlight rested on the smooth places
and quivered in the ripples. It captured one's eye and drew it across its
surface, carried it along the shores, past slowly rounded curves, past
abruptly broken lines, and made it swing around the green tongues of
land; then it let go of one's glance and disappeared in large bays, but it
carried along the thought--Oh, to sail! Would it be possible to hire
boats here?
No, there were none, said a little fellow, who lived in the white
country-house near by, and stood at the shore skipping stones over the
surface of the water. Were there really no boats at all?
Yes, of course, there were some; there was the miller's, but it could not
be had; the miller would not permit it. Niels, the miller's son, had
nearly gotten a spanking when he had let it out the other day. It was
useless to think about it; but then there was the gentleman, who lived
with Nicolai, the forest-warden.