The Best Tales of Hoffmann

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  This bataillon d’élite would have wrested the victory from the enemy had not one of the mouse cavalry captains, pushing forward in a rash and foolhardy manner, made a charge upon one of the Chinese Emperors and bitten off his head. This Chinese Emperor, in his fall, knocked over and smothered a couple of Tungooses and a unicorn, and this created a gap through which the enemy effected a rush, which resulted in the whole battalion being bitten to death. But the enemy gained little advantage by this; for as soon as one of the mouse-cavalry soldiers bit one of these brave adversaries to death, he found that there was a small piece of printed paper sticking in his throat, of which he died in a moment. Still, this was of small advantage to Nutcracker’s army, which, having once commenced a retrograde movement, went on retreating farther and farther, suffering greater and greater loss. The unfortunate Nutcracker soon found himself driven back close to the front of the cupboard, with a very small remnant of his army.

  “Bring up the reserves! Pantaloon! Scaramouch! Drummer! where the devil have you got to?” shouted Nutcracker, who was still reckoning on reinforcements from the cupboard. And there did, in fact, advance a small contingent of brown gingerbread men and women, with gilt faces, hats, and helmets; but they laid about them so clumsily that they never hit any of the enemy, and soon knocked off the cap of their commander-in-chief, Nutcracker himself. And the enemy’s chasseurs soon bit their legs off, so that they tumbled topsy-turvy, and killed several of Nutcracker’s companions-in-arms into the bargain.

  Nutcracker was now hard pressed, and closely hemmed in by the enemy, and in a position of extreme peril. He tried to jump the bottom ledge of the cupboard, but his legs were not long enough. Clara and Gertrude had fainted; so they could give him no assistance. Hussars and heavy dragoons came charging up at him, and he shouted in wild despair:

  “A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

  At this moment two of the enemy’s riflemen seized him by his wooden cloak, and the king of the mice went rushing up to him, squeaking in triumph out of all his seven throats.

  Marie could contain herself no longer. “Oh! my poor Nutcracker!” she sobbed, took her left shoe off, without very distinctly knowing what she was about, and threw it as hard as she could into the thick of the enemy, straight at their king.

  Instantly everything vanished and disappeared. All was silence. Nothing was to be seen. But Marie felt a more stinging pain than before in her left arm, and fell on the floor insensible.

  THE INVALID

  When Marie awoke from a deathlike sleep she was lying in her little bed; and the sun was shining brightly in at the window, which was all covered with frost-flowers. There was a strange gentleman sitting beside her, whom she recognized as Dr. Wendelstern. “She’s awake,” he said softly, and her mother came and looked at her very scrutinizingly and anxiously.

  “Oh, mother! ” whispered Marie, “are all those horrid mice gone away, and is Nutcracker quite safe?”

  “Don’t talk such nonsense, Marie,” answered her mother. “What have the mice to do with Nutcracker? You’re a very naughty girl, and have caused us all a great deal of anxiety. See what comes of children not doing as they’re told! You were playing with your toys so late last night that you fell asleep. I don’t know whether or not some mouse jumped out and frightened you, though there are no mice here, generally. But you broke a pane of the glass cupboard with your elbow, and cut your arm so badly that Dr. Wendelstern (who has just taken a number of pieces of the glass out of your arm) thinks that if it had been a little higher up you might have had a stiff arm for life, or even have bled to death. Thank Heaven, I awoke about twelve o’clock and missed you; and I found you lying insensible in front of the glass cupboard, bleeding frightfully, with a number of Fritz’s lead soldiers scattered round you, and other toys, broken motto figures, and gingerbread men; and Nutcracker was lying on your bleeding arm, with your left shoe not far off.”

  “Oh, mother, mother,” said Marie, “these were the remains of the tremendous battle between the toys and the mice; and what frightened me so terribly was that the mice were going to take Nutcracker (who was the commander-in-chief of the toy army) prisoner. Then I threw my shoe in among the mice, and after that I know nothing more that happened.”

  Dr. Wendelstern gave a significant look at the mother, who said very gently to Marie:

  “Never mind, dear, keep yourself quiet. The mice are all gone away, and Nutcracker’s in the cupboard, quite safe and sound.”

  Here Marie’s father came in, and had a long consultation with Dr. Wendelstern. Then he felt Marie’s pulse, and she heard them talking about “wound-fever.” She had to stay in bed and take medicine for some days, although she didn’t feel at all ill, except that her arm was rather stiff and painful. She knew Nutcracker had got safe out of the battle, and she seemed to remember, as if in a dream, that he had said, quite distinctly, in a very melancholy tone:

  “Marie! dearest lady! I am most deeply indebted to you. But it is in your power to do even more for me.”

  She thought and thought what this could possibly be, but in vain; she couldn’t make it out. She wasn’t able to play on account of her arm; and when she tried to read, or look through the picture books, everything wavered before her eyes so strangely that she was obliged to stop. The days seemed very long to her, and she could scarcely pass the time till evening, when her mother came and sat at her bedside, telling and reading her all sorts of nice stories. She had just finished telling her the story of Prince Fakardin, when the door opened and in came Godpapa Drosselmeier, saying:

  “I’ve come to see with my own eyes how Marie’s getting on.”

  When Marie saw Godpapa Drosselmeier in his little yellow coat, the scene of the night when Nutcracker lost the battle with the mice came so vividly back to her that she couldn’t help crying out:

  “Oh! Godpapa Drosselmeier, how nasty you were! I saw you quite well when you were sitting on the clock, covering it all over with your wings to prevent it from striking and frightening the mice. I heard you quite well when you called the Mouse-King. Why didn’t you help Nutcracker? Why didn’t you help me, you nasty god-papa? It’s nobody’s fault but yours that I’m lying here with a bad arm.”

  Her mother, in much alarm, asked what she meant. But Drosselmeier began making extraordinary faces, and said, in a snarling voice, like a sort of chant in monotone:

  “Pendulums could only rattle—couldn’t tick, ne’er a click; all the clocks stopped their ticking: no more clicking; then they all struck loud, cling-clang. Dolls! Don’t your heads hang down! Hink and hank, and honk and hank. Doll-girls! don’t hang your heads! Cling and ring! The battle’s over—Nutcracker all safe in clover. Comes the owl, on downy wing—Scares away the mouses’ king. Pak and pik and pik and pook—clocks, bim-boom—grr-grr. Pendulums must click again. Tick and tack, grr and brr, prr and purr.”

  Marie fixed wide eyes of terror upon Godpapa Drosselmeier, because he was looking quite different and far more horrid than usual, and was jerking his right arm backwards and forwards as if he were some puppet moved by a handle. She was beginning to grow terribly frightened at him when her mother came in, and Fritz (who had arrived in the meantime) laughed heartily, crying, “Why, godpapa, you are going on funnily! You’re just like my old Jumping Jack that I threw away last month.”

  But the mother looked very grave, and said, “This is a most extraordinary way of going on, Mr. Drosselmeier. What can you mean by it?”

  “My goodness!” said Drosselmeier, laughing, “did you never hear my nice Watchmaker’s Song? I always sing it to little invalids like Marie.” Then he hastened to sit down beside Marie’s bed, and said to her, “Don’t be vexed with me because I didn’t gouge out all the Mouse-King’s fourteen eyes. That couldn’t be managed exactly; but to make up for it, here’s something which I know will please you greatly.”

  He dived into one of his pockets, and what he slowly, slowly brought out of it was—Nutcracker! whose teeth he had put in again
quite firmly, and set his broken jaw completely to rights. Marie shouted for joy, and her mother laughed and said, “Now you see for yourself how nice Godpapa Drosselmeier is to Nutcracker.”

  “But you must admit, Marie,” said her godpapa, “that Nutcracker is far from being what you might call a handsome fellow, and you can’t say he has a pretty face. If you like, I’ll tell you how it was that the ugliness came into his family, and has been handed down in it from one generation to another. Did ever you hear about the Princess Pirlipat, the witch Mouserink, and the clever Clockmaker? ”

  “I say, Godpapa Drosselmeier,” interrupted Fritz at this juncture, “you’ve put Nutcracker’s teeth in again all right, and his jaw isn’t wobbly as it was; but what’s become of his sword? Why haven’t you given him a sword ? ”

  “Oh,” cried Drosselmeier, annoyed, “you must always be bothering and finding fault with something or other, boy. What have I to do with Nutcracker’s sword? I’ve put his mouth to rights for him; he must look out for a sword for himself.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Fritz, “so he must, of course, if he’s a right sort of fellow.”

  “So tell me, Marie,” continued Drosselmeier, “if you know the story of Princess Pirlipat?”

  “Oh no,” said Marie. “Tell it me, please—do tell it me!”

  “I hope it won’t be as strange and terrible as your stories generally are,” said her mother.

  “Oh no, nothing of the kind,” said Drosselmeier. “On the contrary, it’s quite a funny story which I’m going to have the honour of telling this time.”

  “Go on then—do tell it to us,” cried the children; and Drosselmeier commenced as follows:—

  THE STORY OF THE HARD NUT

  Pirlipat’s mother was a king’s wife, so that, of course, she was a queen; and Pirlipat herself was a princess by birth as soon as ever she was born. The king was quite beside himself with joy over his beautiful little daughter as she lay in her cradle, and he danced round and round upon one leg, crying again and again.

  “Hurrah! hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah! Did anybody ever see anything so lovely as my little Pirlipat?”

  And all the ministers of state, and the generals, the presidents, and the officers of the staff, danced about on one leg, as the king did, and cried as loud as they could, “No, no—never!”

  Indeed, there was no denying that a lovelier baby than Princess Pirlipat was never born since the world began. Her little face looked as if it were woven of the most delicate white and rose-coloured silk; her eyes were of sparkling azure, and her hair all in little curls like threads of gold. Moreover, she had come into the world with two rows of little pearly teeth, with which, two hours after her birth, she bit the Lord High Chancellor in the fingers when he was making a careful examination of her features, so that he cried, “Oh! Gemini!” quite loudly.

  There are persons who assert that “Oh Lord” was the expression he employed, and opinions are still considerably divided on this point. At all events, she bit him in the fingers; and the realm learned, with much gratification, that both intelligence and discrimination dwelt within her angelical little frame.

  All was joy and gladness, as I have said, save that the queen was very anxious and uneasy, nobody could tell why. One remarkable circumstance was that she had Pirlipat’s cradle most scrupulously guarded. Not only were there always guards at the doors of the nursery, but—over and above the two head nurses close to the cradle

  —there always had to be six other nurses all around the room at night. And what seemed rather a funny thing, which nobody could understand, was that each of these six nurses always had to have a cat in her lap, and to keep on stroking it all night long, so that it would never stop purring.

  It is impossible that you, my reader, should know the reason of all these precautions; but I do, and shall proceed to tell you at once.

  Once upon a time, many great kings and very grand princes were assembled at Pirlipat’s father’s court, and very great doings were afoot. Tournaments, theatricals, and state balls were going on on the grandest scale, and the king, to show that he had no lack of gold and silver, made up his mind to make a good hole in the crown revenues for once, and launch out regardless of expense. Wherefore (having previously ascertained privately from the state head master cook that the court astronomer had indicated a propitious hour for pork-butchering), he resolved to give a grand pudding-and-sausage banquet. He jumped into a state carriage, and personally invited all the kings and the princes—to a basin of soup, merely—that he might enjoy their astonishment at the magnificence of the entertainment. Then he said to the queen, very graciously, “My darling, you know exactly how I like my puddings and sausages! ”

  The queen quite understood what this meant. It meant that she should undertake the important duty of making the puddings and the sausages herself, which was a thing she had done on one or two previous occasions. So the chancellor of the exchequer was ordered to issue out of store the great golden sausage kettle, and the silver casseroles. A great fire of sandalwood was kindled, the queen put on her damask kitchen apron, and soon the most delicious aroma of pudding broth rose steaming out of the kettle. This sweet smell penetrated into the very council chamber. The king could not control himself.

  “Excuse me for a few minutes, my lords and gentlemen,” he cried, rushed to the kitchen, embraced the queen, stirred in the kettle a little with his golden sceptre, and then went back easier in his mind to the council chamber.

  The important moment had now arrived when the fat had to be cut up into little square pieces, and browned on silver spits. The ladies-in-waiting retired, because the queen, from motives of love and duty to her royal consort, thought it proper to perform this important task in solitude. But when the fat began to brown, a delicate little whispering voice made itself audible, saying, “Give me some of that, sister! I want some of it, too; I am a queen as well as yourself; give me some.”

  The queen knew well who was speaking. It was Dame Mouserink, who had been established in the palace for many years. She claimed relationship to the royal family, and she was queen of the realm of Mousolia herself, and lived with a considerable retinue of her own under the kitchen hearth. The queen was a kind-hearted, benevolent woman; and, although she didn’t exactly care to recognize Dame Mouserink as a sister and a queen, she was willing, at this festive season, to spare her the tidbits she had a mind to. So she said, “Come out, then, Dame Mouserink; of course you shall taste my browned fat.”

  So Dame Mouserink came running out as fast as she could, held up her pretty little paws, and took morsel after morsel of the browned fat as the queen held them out to her. But then all Dame Mouserink’s uncles, and her cousins, and her aunts, came jumping out too; and her seven sons (who were terrible ne’er-do-wells) into the bargain; and they all set to at the browned fat, and the queen was too frightened to keep them at bay. Most fortunately the mistress of the robes came in, and drove these importunate visitors away, so that a little of the browned fat was left; and then, when the court mathematician (an ex-senior wrangler of his university) was called in (which he had to be, on purpose), it was found possible, by means of skillfully devised apparatus provided with special micrometer screws, and so forth, to apportion and distribute the fat among the whole of the sausages, etc., under construction.

  The kettledrums and the trumpets summoned all the great princes and potentates to the feast. They assembled in their robes of state; some of them on white palfreys, some in crystal coaches. The king received them with much gracious ceremony, and took his seat at the head of the table, with his crown on, and his sceptre in his hand. Even during the serving of the white pudding course, it was observed that he turned pale, and raised his eyes to heaven; sighs heaved his bosom; some terrible inward pain was clearly raging within him. But when the black puddings were handed round, he fell back in his seat, loudly sobbing and groaning.

  Everyone rose from the table, and the court physician tried in vain to feel his pulse. Ultimate
ly, after the administration of most powerful remedies—burnt feathers, and the like—His Majesty seemed to recover his senses to some extent, and stammered, scarce audibly, the words: “Too little fat!”

  The queen cast herself down at his feet in despair, and cried, in a voice broken by sobs, “Oh, my poor unfortunate royal consort! Ah, what tortures you are doomed to endure! But see the culprit here at your feet. Punish her severely! Alas! Dame Mouserink, her uncles, her seven sons, her cousins and her aunts, came and ate up nearly all the fat—and—”

  Here the queen fell back insensible.

  But the king jumped up, all anger, and cried in a terrible voice, “Mistress of the robes, what is the meaning of this?”

  The mistress of the robes told all she knew, and the king resolved to take revenge on Dame Mouserink and her family for eating up the fat which ought to have been in the sausages. The privy council was summoned, and it was resolved that Dame Mouserink should be tried for her life, and all her property confiscated. But as His Majesty was of opinion that she might go on consuming the fat, which was his appanage, the whole matter was referred to the court Clockmaker and Arcanist—whose name was the same as mine—Christian Elias Drosselmeier, and he undertook to expel Dame Mouserink and all her relations from the palace precincts forever, by means of a certain politico-diplomatic procedure. He invented certain ingenious little machines, into which pieces of browned fat were inserted; and he placed these machines down all about the dwelling of Dame Mouserink. Now she herself was much too knowing not to see through Drosselmeier’s artifice; but all her remonstrances and warnings to her relations were unavailing. Enticed by the fragrant odour of the browned fat, all her seven sons, and a great many of her uncles, cousins and aunts, walked into Drosselmeier’s little machines and were immediately taken prisoners by the fall of a small grating, after which they met with a shameful death in the kitchen.