第12章
作者:安徒生[丹麦]    更新:2021-11-25 12:17
  He wished to go a little way past the sand-hills, outinto the dunes, and at last he did: four happy days, the brightestof his childhood, fell to his lot, and the whole beauty andsplendour of Jutland, all the happiness and sunshine of his home, wereconcentrated in these. He went to a festival, but it was a burialfeast.
  A rich relation of the fisherman's family had died; the farm wassituated far eastward in the country and a little towards the north.Jurgen's foster parents went there, and he also went with them fromthe dunes, over heath and moor, where the Skjaerumaa takes itscourse through green meadows and contains many eels; mother eelslive there with their daughters, who are caught and eaten up by wickedpeople. But do not men sometimes act quite as cruelly towards theirown fellow-men? Was not the knight Sir Bugge murdered by wickedpeople? And though he was well spoken of, did he not also wish to killthe architect who built the castle for him, with its thick walls andtower, at the point where the Skjaerumaa falls into the bay? Jurgenand his parents now stood there; the wall and the ramparts stillremained, and red crumbling fragments lay scattered around. Here itwas that Sir Bugge, after the architect had left him, said to one ofhis men, "Go after him and say, 'Master, the tower shakes.' If heturns round, kill him and take away the money I paid him, but if hedoes not turn round let him go in peace." The man did as he wastold; the architect did not turn round, but called back "The towerdoes not shake in the least, but one day a man will come from the westin a blue cloak- he will cause it to shake!" And so indeed it happeneda hundred years later, for the North Sea broke in and cast down thetower; but Predbjorn Gyldenstjerne, the man who then possessed thecastle, built a new castle higher up at the end of the meadow, andthat one is standing to this day, and is called Norre-Vosborg.
  Jurgen and his foster parents went past this castle. They had toldhim its story during the long winter evenings, and now he saw thestately edifice, with its double moat, and trees and bushes; the wall,covered with ferns, rose within the moat, but the lofty lime-treeswere the most beautiful of all; they grew up to the highest windows,and the air was full of their sweet fragrance. In a north-westcorner of the garden stood a great bush full of blossom, like wintersnow amid the summer's green; it was a juniper bush, the first thatJurgen had ever seen in bloom. He never forgot it, nor the lime-trees;the child's soul treasured up these memories of beauty and fragranceto gladden the old man.
  From Norre-Vosborg, where the juniper blossomed, the journeybecame more pleasant, for they met some other people who were alsogoing to the funeral and were riding in waggons. Our travellers had tosit all together on a little box at the back of the waggon, but eventhis, they thought, was better than walking. So they continued theirjourney across the rugged heath. The oxen which drew the waggonstopped every now and then, where a patch of fresh grass appeared amidthe heather. The sun shone with considerable heat, and it waswonderful to behold how in the far distance something like smokeseemed to be rising; yet this smoke was clearer than the air; it wastransparent, and looked like rays of light rolling and dancing afarover the heath.
  "That is Lokeman driving his sheep," said some one.
  And this was enough to excite Jurgen's imagination. He felt asif they were now about to enter fairyland, though everything was stillreal. How quiet it was!