Dame Mouserink left this scene of horror with her small following. Rage and despair filled her breast. The court rejoiced greatly; the queen was very anxious, because she knew Dame Mouserink’s character, and knew well that she would never allow the death of her sons and other relatives to go unavenged. And, in fact, one day when the queen was cooking a fricassee of sheep’s lights for the king (a dish to which he was exceedingly partial), Dame Mouserink suddenly made her appearance, and said: “My sons and my uncles, my cousins and my aunts, are now no more. Have a care, lady, lest the queen of the mice bites your little princess in two! Have a care!”
With which she vanished, and was no more seen. But the queen was so frightened that she dropped the fricassee into the fire; so this was the second time Dame Mouserink spoiled one of the king’s favorite dishes, at which he was very irate.
But this is enough for tonight; we’ll go on with the rest of it another time—said Drosselmeier.
Sorely as Marie—who had ideas of her own about this story—begged Godpapa Drosselmeier to go on with it, he would not be persuaded, but jumped up, saying, “Too much at a time wouldn’t be good for you; the rest tomorrow.”
Just as Drosselmeier was going out of the door, Fritz said: “ I say, Godpapa Drosselmeier, was it really you who invented mousetraps?”
“How can you ask such silly questions?” cried his mother. But Drosselmeier laughed oddly, and said, “Well, you know I’m a clever clockmaker. Mousetraps had to be invented some time or other.”
And now you know, children, said Godpapa Drosselmeier the next evening, why it was the queen took such precautions about her little Pirlipat. Had she not always the fear before her eyes of Dame Mouserink coming back and carrying out her threat of biting the princess to death? Drosselmeier’s ingenious machines were of no avail against the clever, crafty Dame Mouserink, and nobody save the court astronomer, who was also state astrologer and reader of the stars, knew that the family of the Cat Purr had the power to keep her at bay. This was the reason why each of the lady nurses was obliged to keep one of the sons of that family (each of whom was given the honorary rank and title of “privy councillor of legation”) in her lap, and render his onerous duty less irksome by gently scratching his back.
One night, just after midnight, one of the chief nurses stationed close to the cradle, woke suddenly from a profound sleep. Everything lay buried in slumber. Not a purr to be heard—deep, deathlike silence, so that the death-watch ticking in the wainscot sounded quite loud. What were the feelings of this principal nurse when she saw, close beside her, a great, hideous mouse, standing on its hind legs, with its horrid head laid on the princess’s face! She sprang up with a scream of terror. Everybody awoke; but then Dame Mouserink (for she was the great big mouse in Pirlipat’s cradle) ran quickly away into the corner of the room. The privy councillors of legation dashed after her, but too late! She was off and away through a chink in the floor. The noise awoke Pirlipat, who cried terribly. “Heaven be thanked, she is still alive!” cried all the nurses; but what was their horror when they looked at Pirlipat, and saw what the beautiful, delicate little thing had turned into. An enormous bloated head (instead of the pretty little golden-haired one) at the top of a diminutive, crumpled-up body, and green, wooden-looking eyes staring where the lovely azure-blue pair had been, whilst her mouth had stretched across from the one ear to the other.
Of course the queen nearly died of weeping and loud lamentation, and the walls of the king’s study had all to be hung with padded arras, because he kept on banging his head against them, crying:
“Oh! wretched king that I am! Oh, wretched king that I am!”
Of course he might have seen then, that it would have been much better to eat his puddings with no fat in them at all, and let Dame Mouserink and her folk stay on under the hearthstone. But Pirlipat’s royal father did not think of that. What he did was to lay all the blame on the court Clockmaker and Arcanist, Christian Elias Drosselmeier, of Nuremberg. Wherefore he promulgated a sapient edict to the effect that said Drosselmeier should within the space of four weeks restore Princess Pirlipat to her pristine condition—or, at least, indicate an unmistakable and reliable process whereby that might be accomplished—or else suffer a shameful death by the axe of the common headsman.
Drosselmeier was not a little alarmed; but he soon began to place confidence in his art, and in his luck; so he proceeded to execute the first operation which seemed to him to be expedient. He took Princess Pirlipat very carefully to pieces, screwed off her hands and feet, and examined her interior structure. Unfortunately, he found that the bigger she got the more deformed she would be, so that he didn’t see what was to be done at all. He put her carefully together again, and sank down beside her cradle—which he wasn’t allowed to go away from—in the deepest dejection.
The fourth week had come, and Wednesday of the fourth week, when the king came in with eyes gleaming with anger, made threatening gestures with his sceptre, and cried:
“Christian Elias Drosselmeier, restore the princess, or prepare for death!”
Drosselmeier began to weep bitterly. The little princess kept on cracking nuts, an occupation which seemed to afford her much quiet satisfaction. For the first time the Arcanist was struck by Pirlipat’s remarkable appetite for nuts, and the circumstance that she had been born with teeth. And the fact had been that immediately after her transformation she had begun to cry, and she had gone on crying till by chance she got hold of a nut. She at once cracked it, and ate the kernel, after which she was quite quiet. From that time her nurses found that nothing would do but to go on giving her nuts.
“Oh, holy instinct of nature—eternal, mysterious, inscrutable Interdependence of Things!” cried Drosselmeier, “thou pointest out to me the door of the secret. I will knock, and it shall be opened unto me.”
He at once begged for an interview with the Court Astronomer, and was conducted to him closely guarded. They embraced with many tears for they were great friends, and then retired into a private closet, where they referred to many books treating of sympathies, antipathies, and other mysterious subjects. Night came on. The Court Astronomer consulted the stars, and with the assistance of Drosselmeier (himself an adept in astrology) drew the princess’s horoscope. This was an exceedingly difficult operation, for the lines kept getting more and more entangled and confused for ever so long. But at last—oh what joy!—it lay plain before them that all the princess had to do to be delivered from the enchantment which made her so hideous and get back her former beauty was to eat the sweet kernel of the nut Crackatook.
Now this nut Crackatook had a shell so hard that you might have fired a forty-eight pounder at it without producing the slightest effect on it. Moreover, it was essential that this nut should be cracked, in the princess’s presence, by the teeth of a man whose beard had never known a razor, and who had never had on boots. This man had to hand the kernel to her with his eyes closed, and he might not open them till he had made seven steps backwards without a stumble.
Drosselmeier and the astronomer had been at work on this problem uninterruptedly for three days and three nights; and on the Saturday the king was sitting at dinner when Drosselmeier—who was to have been beheaded on the Sunday morning—burst in joyfully to announce that he had found out what had to be done to restore Princess Pirlipat to her pristine beauty. The king embraced him in a burst of rapture, and promised him a diamond sword, four decorations, and two Sunday suits.
“Set to work immediately after dinner,” the monarch cried, adding kindly, “Take care, dear Arcanist, that the young unshaven gentleman in shoes, with the nut Crackatook all ready in his hand, is on the spot; and be sure that he touches no liquor beforehand, so that he mayn’t trip up when he makes his seven backward steps like a crab. He can get as drunk as a lord afterwards, if he likes.”
Drosselmeier was dismayed at this utterance of the king’s, and stammered out, not without trembling and hesitation, that, though the remedy was discovered, bot
h the nut Crackatook and the young gentleman who was to crack it had still to be searched for, and that it was matter of doubt whether they ever would be found at all. The king, greatly incensed, whirled his sceptre round his crowned head, and shouted in the voice of a lion:
“Very well, then you must be beheaded!”
It was exceedingly fortunate for the wretched Drosselmeier that the king had thoroughly enjoyed his dinner that day, and was consequently in an admirable temper, and disposed to listen to the sensible advice which the queen, who was very sorry for Drosselmeier, did not hesitate to give him. Drosselmeier took heart and represented that he really had fulfilled the conditions, discovered the necessary measures, and gained his life, consequently. The king said this was all bosh and nonsense; but at length, after two or three glasses of liqueurs decreed that Drosselmeier and the astronomer should start off immediately, and not come back without the nut Crackatook in their pockets. The man who was to crack it (by the queen’s suggestion) might be heard of by means of advertisements in the local and foreign newspapers and gazettes.
Godpapa Drosselmeier interrupted his story at this point, and promised to finish it on the following evening.
Next evening, as soon as the lights were brought, Godpapa Drosselmeier duly arrived, and went on with his story as follows:—
Drosselmeier and the court astronomer had been journeying for fifteen long years without finding the slightest trace of the nut Crackatook. I might go on for more than four weeks telling you where all they had been and what extraordinary things they had seen. I shall not do so, however, but merely mention that Drosselmeier in his profound discouragement at last began to feel a most powerful longing to see his dear native town of Nuremberg once again. And he was more powerfully moved by this longing than usual one day, when he happened to be smoking a pipe of kanaster with his friend in the middle of a great forest in Asia, and he cried:
“Oh, Nuremberg, Nuremberg, dear native town—he who still knows thee not, place of renown—though far he has travelled, and great cities seen—as London, and Paris, and Peterwardein—knoweth not what it is happy to be—still must his longing heart languish for thee—for thee, 0 Nuremberg, exquisite town—where the houses have windows both upstairs and down!”
As Drosselmeier lamented dolefully, the astronomer, seized with compassionate sympathy, began to weep and howl so terribly that he was heard throughout the length and breadth of Asia. But he collected himself again, wiped the tears from his eyes, and said:
“After all, dearest colleague, why should we sit and weep and howl here? Why not go to Nuremberg? Does it matter a brass farthing, after all, where and how we search for this horrible nut Crackatook?”
“That’s true, too,” answered Drosselmeier, consoled. They both got up immediately, knocked the ashes out of their pipes, started off, and travelled straight on without stopping from that forest right in the centre of Asia till they came to Nuremberg. As soon as they got there, Drosselmeier went straight to his cousin the toymaker and doll-carver, and gilder and varnisher, whom he had not seen for a great many long years. To him he told all the tale of Princess Pirlipat, Dame Mouserink, and the nut Crackatook, so that he clapped his hands repeatedly and cried in amazement:
“Dear me, cousin, these things are really wonderful—very wonderful, indeed!”
Drosselmeier told him, further, some of the adventures he had met with on his long journey—how he had spent two years at the court of the King of Dates; how the Prince of Almonds had expelled him with ignominy from his territory; how he had applied in vain to the Natural History Society at Squirreltown—in short, how he had been everywhere utterly unsuccessful in discovering the faintest trace of the nut Crackatook. During this narrative, Christoph Zacharias had kept frequently snapping his fingers, twisting himself round on one foot, smacking with his tongue, etc.; then he cried:
“Ey—aye—oh!—that really would be the very deuce and all.”
At last he threw. his hat and wig in the air, warmly embraced his cousin, and cried:
“Cousin, cousin, you’re a made man—a made man you are—for either I am much deceived, or I have the nut Crackatook myself!”
He immediately produced a little cardboard box, out of which he took a gilded nut of medium size.
“Look there!” he said, showing this nut to his cousin; “the state of matters as regards this nut is this. Several years ago at Christmas time a stranger came here with a sack of nuts, which he offered for sale. Just in front of my shop he got into a quarrel, and put the sack down the better to defend himself from the nutsellers of the place, who attacked him. Just then a heavily loaded wagon drove over the sack, and all the nuts were smashed but one. The stranger, with an odd smile, offered to sell me this nut for a twenty-kreuzer piece of the year 1796. This struck me as strange. I found just such a coin in my pocket, so I bought the nut, and I gilt it, though I didn’t know why I took the trouble, or should have given so much for it.”
All question as to its being really the long-sought nut Crackatook was dispelled when the Court Astronomer carefully scraped away the gilding, and found the word “Crackatook” graven on the shell in Chinese characters.
The joy of the exiles was great, as you may imagine; and the cousin was even happier, for Drosselmeier assured him that he was a made man too, as he was sure of a good pension, and all the gold leaf he would want for the rest of his life for his gilding, free, gratis, for nothing.
The Arcanist and the Astronomer both had on their nightcaps, and were going to turn into bed, when the astronomer said:
“I tell you what it is, my dear colleague, one piece of good fortune never comes alone. I feel convinced that we’ve not only found the nut, but the young gentleman who is to crack it, and hand the beauty-restoring kernel to the princess, into the bargain. I mean none other than your cousin’s son here, and I don’t intend to close an eye this night till I’ve drawn that youngster’s horoscope.”
With which he threw away his nightcap, and at once set to work to consult the stars. The cousin’s son was a nice-looking, well-grown young fellow, had never been shaved, and had never worn boots. True, he had been a Jumping Jack for a Christmas or two in his earlier days, but there was scarcely any trace of this discoverable about him, his appearance had been so altered by his father’s care. He had appeared last Christmas in a beautiful red coat with gold trimmings, a sword by his side, his hat under his arm, and a fine wig with a pigtail. Thus apparelled, he stood in his father’s shop exceedingly lovely to behold, and from his native galanterie he occupied himself in cracking nuts for the young ladies, who called him “the handsome nutcracker.”
Next morning the Astronomer fell, with much emotion, into the Arcanist’s arms, crying:
“This is the very man!—we have him!—he is found! Only, dearest colleague, two things we must keep carefully in view. In the first place, we must construct a most substantial pigtail for this precious nephew of yours, which shall be connected with his lower jaw in such sort that it shall be capable of communicating a very powerful pull to it. And next, when we get back to the Residenz, we must carefully conceal the fact that we have brought the young gentleman who is to shiver the nut back with us. He must not make his appearance for a considerable time after us. I read in the horoscope that if two or three others bite at the nut unsuccessfully to begin with, the king will promise the man who breaks it—and as a consequence, restores her good looks to the princess—the princess’s hand and the succession to the crown.”
The doll-maker cousin was immensely delighted with the idea of his son’s marrying Princess Pirlipat and being a prince and king, so he gave him wholly over to the envoys to do what they liked with him. The pigtail which Drosselmeier attached to him proved to be a very powerful and efficient instrument, as he exemplified by cracking the hardest of peach-stones with the utmost ease.
Drosselmeier and the Astronomer, having at once sent news to the Residenz of the discovery of the nut Crackatook, the necessary advertiseme
nts were at once put in the newspapers, and by the time that our travellers got there, several nice young gentlemen had arrived, among whom there were even princes, who had sufficient confidence in their teeth to try to disenchant the princess. The ambassadors were horrified when they saw poor Pirlipat again. The diminutive body with tiny hands and feet was not big enough to support the great shapeless head. The hideousness of the face was enhanced by a beard like white cotton, which had grown about the mouth and chin. Everything had turned out as the court astronomer had read it in the horoscope. One milksop in shoes after another bit his teeth and his jaws into agonies over the nut without doing the princess the slightest good in the world. And then, when he was carried out on the verge of insensibility by the dentists who were in attendance on purpose, he would sigh:
“Ah dear, that was a hard nut.”
Now when the king, in the anguish of his soul, had promised to him who should disenchant the princess his daughter and the kingdom, the charming, gentle young Drosselmeier made his appearance, and begged to be allowed to make an attempt. None of the previous ones had pleased the princess so much. She pressed her little hands to her heart and sighed:
“Ah, I hope it will be he who will crack the nut and be my husband. ”
When he had politely saluted the king, the queen, and the Princess Pirlipat, he received the nut Crackatook from the hands of the Clerk of the Closet, put it between his teeth, made a strong effort with his head, and—crack—crack—the shell was shattered into a number of pieces. He neatly cleared the kernel from the pieces of husk which were sticking to it, and making a leg presented it courteously to the princess, after which he closed his eyes and began his backward steps. The princess swallowed the kernel, and—oh marvel!—the monstrosity vanished, and in its place there stood a wonderfully beautiful lady with a face which seemed woven of delicate lily-white and rose-red silk, eyes of sparkling azure, and hair all in little curls like threads of gold.
The Best Tales of Hoffmann Page 25
