| Which
Treats of a Mirror
and of the Splinters Now then, let us begin. When we are at the end of
the story, we shall know more than we know now: but to begin.
Once upon a
time there was
a wicked sprite, indeed he was the most mischievous of all sprites. One
day he was in a very good humor, for he had made a mirror with the
power
of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected
therein,
to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked
ugly
was shown magnified and increased in ugliness. In this mirror the most
beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best persons
were
turned into frights, or appeared to stand on their heads; their faces
were
so distorted that they were not to be recognised; and if anyone had a
mole,
you might be sure that it would be magnified and spread over both nose
and mouth.
"That's
glorious fun!" said
the sprite. If a good thought passed through a man's mind, then a grin
was seen in the mirror, and the sprite laughed heartily at his clever
discovery.
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| All
the little sprites
who went to his school--for he kept a sprite school--told each other
that
a miracle had happened; and that now only, as they thought, it would be
possible to see how the world really looked.
They ran
about with the mirror;
and at last there was not a land or a person who was not represented
distorted
in the mirror. So then they thought they would fly up to the sky, and
have
a joke there. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly
it
grinned: they could hardly hold it fast. Higher and higher still they
flew,
nearer and nearer to the stars, when suddenly the mirror shook so
terribly
with grinning, that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth,
where
it was dashed in a hundred million and more pieces. And now it worked
much
more evil than before; for some of these pieces were hardly so large as
a grain of sand, and they flew about in the wide world, and when they
got
into people's eyes, there they stayed; and then people saw everything
perverted,
or only had an eye for that which was evil. This happened because the
very
smallest bit had the same power which the whole mirror had possessed.
Some
persons even got a splinter in their heart, and then it made one
shudder,
for their heart became like a lump of ice. Some of the broken pieces
were
so large that they were used for windowpanes, through which one could
not
see one's friends. Other pieces were put in spectacles; and that was a
sad affair when people put on their glasses to see well and rightly.
Then
the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled
his
fancy.
The fine
splinters still
flew about in the air: and now we shall hear what happened next.
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