Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Yes, so far so good,” answered the king; “but I must have my well, or look out for your ears!”

  All went then into the grand court-yard. The king placed himself on an elevated seat. The princess sat a little below, and looked with some anxiety at the little husband that Heaven seemed to have sent her. He was not the spouse she had dreamed of, certainly. Without troubling himself the least in the world, Thumbling now drew the magic pickaxe from his stout leather bag, calmly put it together, and then, laying it carefully on the ground in the proper place, he cried: —

  “Pick! Pick!! Pick!!!”

  And lo and behold! the pick began to burst the granite to splinters, and in less than a quarter of an hour had dug a well more than a hundred feet deep, in the solid rock.

  “Does your Majesty think,” asked Thumbling, bowing profoundly, “that the well is sufficiently deep?”

  “Certainly,” answered the king; “but where is the water to come from?”

  “If your Majesty will grant me a moment longer,” rejoined Thumbling, “your just impatience shall be satisfied.” So saying, he drew from his stout leather bag the nut-shell, all covered as it was with moss, and placed it on a magnificent fountain vase, where, not having any water, they had put a bouquet of flowers.

  “Gush! Gush!! Gush!!!” cried Thumbling.

  And lo and behold! the water began to burst out among the flowers, singing with a gentle murmur, and falling down in a charming cascade, that was so cold that it made everybody present shiver; and so abundant, that in a quarter of an hour the well was filled, and a deep trench had to be dug to take away the surplus water; otherwise the whole palace would have been overflowed.

  “Sire!” now said Thumbling, bending gracefully on one knee before the royal chair, “does your Majesty find that I have answered your conditions?”

  “Yes! my Lord Marquis Thumbling,” answered the king; “I am ready to give you the half of my kingdom, or to pay you the value of it, by means of a tax my loyal subjects will only be too happy to pay. As to giving you the princess, however, and calling you my son-in-law, that is another question; for that doesn’t depend upon me alone.”

  “And what must I do for that?” asked Thumbling proudly, ogling the princess at the same time.

  “You shall know to-morrow,” replied the king; “and meanwhile you are my guest, and the most magnificent apartment in the palace shall be prepared for you.”

  After the departure of the king and princess, Thumbling ran to find his two brothers, who, with their ears cut off, looked like cropped curs. “Ah! my boys,” said he, “do you think now I was wrong in being astonished at everything, as you said, and in trying to find out the why and wherefore of it?”

  “You have had the luck,” answered Paul coldly; “Fortune is blind, and doesn’t always choose the most worthy upon whom to bestow her favors.”

  But Peter said, “You have done well, brother; and with or without ears, I am delighted at your good fortune, and only wish our poor old father was here to see it also.”

  Thumbling took his two brothers along with him, and, as he was in high favor at court, that very day he secured them good situations.

  IV.

  Meanwhile, the king was tossing uneasily on his magnificent bed, and broad awake. Such a son-in-law as Thumbling didn’t please him overmuch, so he tried to see if he couldn’t think of some way of breaking his word, without seeming to do so. For people that call themselves honest, this is by no means an easy task. Put a thief between honor and interest, you won’t find him hesitate; but that is because he is a thief. In his perplexity, the king sent for Peter and Paul, since the two brothers were the only ones who could enlighten him on the birth, character, and disposition of our hero. Peter, who, as you remember, was good-natured, praised his brother warmly, which didn’t please the king overmuch; but Paul put the king more at his ease, by trying to prove to him that Thumbling was nothing but an adventurer, and that it would be ridiculous that so great a monarch should be under obligations to such a contemptible fellow.

  “The scamp is so vain,” continued the malicious Paul, “that he thinks he is stout enough to manage a giant; and you can use this vanity of his to get rid of him. In the neighboring country there is an ugly Troll, who is the terror of the whole neighborhood. He devours all the cattle for ten leagues about, and commits unheard-of devastation everywhere. Now Thumbling has said a great many times that, if he wanted to, he would make this giant his slave.”

  “We shall see about this,” said the king, who caught at the insinuation of the wicked brother, and thereupon sent the two brothers away, and slept tranquilly the rest of the night.

  The next morning, when the whole court was called together, the king ordered Thumbling to be sent for; and presently he made his appearance, white as a lily, ruddy as a rose, and smiling as the morn.

  “My good son-in-law,” said the king, emphasizing these words, “a hero like yourself cannot marry a princess without giving her a present worthy of her exalted rank. Now there is in the neighboring woods a Troll, who, they say, is twenty feet high, and who eats a whole ox for his breakfast. This fine fellow, with his three-cornered hat, his golden epaulettes, his braided jacket, and his staff, fifteen feet long, would make a servant indeed worthy of a king. My daughter begs you to make her this trifling present, after which she will see about giving you her hand.”

  “That is not an easy task,” answered Thumbling; “but, if it please your Majesty, I will try.”

  So saying, he went down to the kitchen, took his stout leather bag, put in it the magic axe, a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a knife, and then, throwing all over his shoulder, started off for the woods. Peter whimpered, but Paul chuckled, thinking that, his brother once gone, he should never see him back again.

  Once fairly in the forest, Thumbling looked around to right and left; but the grass was so thick that he couldn’t see anything, so he began to sing at the top of his voice, —

  “Master Troll, Master Troll! I defy you to appear! I must have you, body and soul, Master Troll, Master Troll! Show yourself, for I AM HERE!”

  “And I am here!” cried the giant, with a terrible shout. “Wait a minute, and I will only make a mouthful of you!”

  “Don’t be in a hurry, my good fellow,” replied Thumbling, in a little squeaking voice, “I have a whole hour to give you.”

  When the Troll came to the place where Thumbling was, he looked around on every side, very much astonished at not seeing anything. At last, lowering his eyes to the ground, he discovered what appeared to be a little child, sitting on a fallen tree, with a stout leather bag between his knees.

  “Is it you, pigmy, who woke me up from my nap?” growled the Troll, rolling his great red eyes.

  “I am the very one,” replied Thumbling, “I have come to take you into my service.”

  “He! he!” laughed the giant, who was as stupid as he was big, “that is a good joke indeed. But I am going to pitch you into that raven’s nest I see up there, to teach you not to make a noise in my forest.”

  “Your forest!” laughed Thumbling. “It is as much mine as it is yours, and if you say a word more, I will cut it down in a quarter of an hour.”

  “Ha! ha!” shouted the giant, “and I should like to see you begin, my brave fellow.”

  Thumbling carefully placed the axe on the ground, and said, “Chop! chop!! chop!!!”

  And lo and behold! the axe begins to chop, hew, hack, now right, now left, and up and down, till the branches tumble on the Troll’s head like hail in autumn.

  “Enough, enough!” said the Troll, who began to be alarmed. “Don’t destroy my forest. But who the mischief are you?”

  “I am the famous sorcerer Thumbling,” answered our hero, in as gruff a voice as his little body was capable of; “and I have only to say a single word to chop your head off your shoulders. You don’t know yet with whom you have to do.”

  The giant hesitated, very much disturbed at what he saw. Meanwhile,
Thumbling, who began to be hungry, opened his stout leather bag, and took out his bread and cheese.

  “What is that white stuff?” asked the Troll, who had never seen any cheese before.

  “That is a stone,” answered Thumbling. He began to eat as eagerly as possible.

  “Do you eat stones?” asked the giant.

  “O yes,” replied Thumbling, “that is my ordinary food, and that is the reason I am not so big as you, who eat oxen; but it is also the reason why, little as I am, I am ten times as strong as you are. Now take me to your house.”

  The Troll was conquered; and, marching before Thumbling like a dog before a little child, he led him to his monstrous cabin.

  “Now listen,” said Thumbling to the giant, after they were fairly seated, “one of us has got to be the master, and the other the servant. Let us make this bargain: if I can’t do whatever you do, I am to be your slave; if you are not able to do whatever I do, you are to be mine.”

  “Agreed,” said the Troll; “I should admire to have such a little servant as you are. It is too much work for me to think, and you have wit enough for both; so begin with the trial. Here are my two buckets, — go and get the water to make the soup.”

  Thumbling looked at the buckets. They were two enormous hogsheads, ten feet high and six broad. It would have been much easier for him to drown himself in them than to move them.

  “O, ho!” shouted the giant, as he saw his hesitation; “and so you are stuck at the first thing, my boy! Do what I do, you know, and get the water.”

  “What is the good of that?” replied Thumbling, calmly; “I will go and get the spring itself, and put that in the pot.”

  “No! no!” said the Troll; “that won’t do. You have already half spoiled my forest, and I don’t want you to take my spring away, lest to-morrow I shall go dry. You may attend to the fire, and I will go and get the water.”

  After having hung up the kettle, the giant put into it an ox cut into pieces, fifty cabbages, and a wagon-load of carrots. He then skimmed the broth with a frying-pan, tasting it every now and then, to see if it was done. When all was ready, he turned to Thumbling, and said: —

  “Now to the table. We’ll see if you can do what I can there. I feel like eating the whole ox, and you into the bargain. I think I will serve you for dessert.”

  “All right,” said Thumbling; but before sitting down to the table, he slipped under his jacket his stout leather bag, which reached down to his feet.

  The two champions now set to work. The Troll ate and ate, and Thumbling wasn’t idle; only he pitched everything, beef, cabbage, carrots, and all, into his bag, when the giant wasn’t looking.

  “Ouf!” at last grunted the Troll; “I can’t do much more; I have got to unbutton the lower button of my waistcoat.”

  “Eat away, starveling!” cried Thumbling, sticking the half of a cabbage into his bag.

  “Ouf!” groaned the giant; “I have got to unbutton another button. But what sort of an ostrich’s stomach have you got, my son? I should think you were used to eating stones!”

  “Eat away, lazy-bones!” said Thumbling, sticking a huge junk of beef into his bag.

  “Ouf!” sighed the giant, for the third time; “I have got to unbutton the third button. I am almost suffocated; and how is it with you, sorcerer?”

  “Bah!” answered Thumbling; “it is the easiest thing in the world to relieve yourself; and so saying he took his knife, and slit his jacket and the bag under it the whole length of his stomach.

  “It is your turn now,” he said to the giant; “do as I do, you know, if you can.”

  “Your humble servant,” replied the Troll; “pray excuse me! I had rather be your servant than do that; my stomach don’t digest steel!”

  No sooner said than done; the giant kissed Thumbling’s hand in token of submission, and taking his little master on one shoulder, and a huge bag of gold on the other, he started off for the king’s palace.

  V.

  They were having a great feast at the palace, and thinking no more of Thumbling than if the giant had eaten him up a week before; when, all of a sudden, they heard a terrible noise that shook the palace to its very foundations. It was the Troll, who, finding the great gateway too low for him to enter, had overturned it with a single kick of his foot. Everybody ran to the windows, the king among the rest, and there saw Thumbling quietly seated on the shoulder of his terrible servant.

  Our adventurer sprang lightly to the balcony of the second story, where he saw his betrothed, and, bending gracefully on one knee, he said: —

  “Princess, you asked me for a slave; I present you two.”

  This gallant speech was published the next morning in the Court Gazette; but at the moment it was said it was quite embarrassing to the poor king; and as he didn’t know how to reply to it, he drew the princess one side, and thus addressed her: —

  “My child, I have now no possible excuse for refusing your hand to this daring young man; sacrifice yourself, my darling, to your country; remember that princesses do not marry to please themselves.”

  “Pardon me, father,” answered the princess, courtesying; “princess or not, every woman likes to marry according to her taste. Let me defend my rights as I think best.”

  “Thumbling,” added she, aloud, “you are brave and lucky; but that is not enough alone to please women.”

  “I know that,” answered Thumbling; “it is necessary besides to do their pleasure, and submit to their caprices.”

  “You are a witty fellow,” said the princess; “and since you understand me so well, I am going to propose another trial to you. You need not be alarmed, for this time you will only have me for an antagonist. Let us try and see who will be the sharpest and quickest, and my hand shall be the prize of the battle.”

  Thumbling assented, with a low bow, and followed the court into the great hall of audience, where the trial was to take place. There, to the affright of all, the Troll was found, sprawling on the floor; for, as the hall was only fifteen feet high, the poor fellow couldn’t get up. On a sign of his young master, he crawled humbly to him, happy and proud to obey. It was Force itself, in the service of Wit.

  “Now,” said the princess, “let us begin with some nonsense. It is an old story that women are not afraid to lie; and we will see which of us will stand the biggest story without objection. The first one who says, ‘That is too much,’ will be beaten.”

  “I am always at the service of your Royal Highness,” answered Thumbling; “whether to lie in sport, or to tell the truth in sober earnest.”

  “I am sure,” began the princess, “that you haven’t got a farm half as beautiful as ours; and it is so large, that, when two shepherds are blowing their horns at each end of it, neither can hear the other.”

  “That is nothing at all,” said Thumbling; “my father’s farm is so large, that, if a heifer two months old goes in at the gate on one side of it, when she goes out at the other she takes a calf of her own with her.”

  “That don’t surprise me,” continued the princess; “but you haven’t got a bull half as big as ours; a man can sit on each of his horns, and the two can’t touch each other with a twenty-foot pole.”

  “That is nothing at all,” replied Thumbling; “my father’s bull is so large, that a servant sitting on one of his horns can’t see the servant sitting on the other.”

  “That don’t surprise me,” said the princess; “but you haven’t got half so much milk at your farm as we have; for we fill, every day, twenty hogsheads, a hundred feet high; and every week, we make a pile of cheese as high as the big pyramid of Egypt.”

  “That is nothing at all,” said Thumbling. “In my father’s dairy they make such big cheeses, that once, when my father’s mare fell into the press, we only found her after travelling seven days, and she was so much injured that her back was broken. So to mend that I made her a backbone of a pine-tree, that answered splendidly; till one fine morning the tree took it into its head to grow, and it
grew and grew until it was so high that I climbed up to Heaven on it. There I looked down, and saw a lady in a white gown spinning sea-foam to make gossamer with. I went to take hold of it, and snap! the thread broke, and I fell into a rat-hole. There I saw your father and my mother spinning; and as your father was clumsy, lo and behold, my mother gave him such a box on the ear, that it made his old wig shake — —”

  “That is too much!” interrupted the princess. “My father never suffered such an insult in all his life.”

  “She said it! she said it!” shouted the giant “Now, master, the princess is ours!”

  VI.

  But the princess said, blushing: “Not quite yet. I have three riddles to give you, Thumbling; guess them, and I will obey my father, and become your wife without any more objections. Tell me, first, what that is which is always falling, and is never broken?”

  “Oh!” answered Thumbling, “my mother told me that a long time ago; it is a waterfall.”

  “That is so,” interrupted the giant; “but who would have thought of that.”

  “Tell me, next,” continued the princess, with a slight trembling in her voice, “what is that that every day goes the same journey, and yet never returns on its steps?”

  “Oh!” answered Thumbling, “my mother told me that a long time ago; it is the sun.”

  “You are right,” said the princess, pale with emotion. “And now for my last question, which you will never guess. What is that that you think, and that I don’t think? What is that we both think, and what is that we neither of us think?”

  Thumbling bent his head, and seemed embarrassed; and the Troll whispered to him: “Master, don’t be disturbed. If you can’t guess it, just make a sign to me, and I will carry off the princess, and make an end of the matter at once.”

  “Be silent, slave!” answered Thumbling. “Force alone can do nothing, my poor friend, and no one ought to know it better than you. Let me have my own way.”

  “Madame,” said he then to the princess, in the midst of a profound silence, “I hardly dare guess; and yet in this riddle I plainly perceive my own happiness. I dared to think that your questions would have no difficulty for me, while you thought the contrary; you have the goodness to believe that I am not unworthy to please you, while I have hardly the boldness to think so; finally,” added he, smilingly, “what we both think is, that there are bigger fools in the world than you and I; and what we neither of us think is, that the king, your august father, and this poor giant have as much—”