That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony, on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of better days. It is true, every word of it.
"Uff," said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and complained--it was a sorrowful end it had come to.
"The beautiful is past!" so it sighed; so it said, or it might have said so.
We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm sunshine, and the song of birds--past! past!" So it said, and so it creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh, so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush, and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf grows out of his head--that is his feather: he is the only male person of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.
"Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of the trees fall off!--it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!--The birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the swine are lords in the forest!"
They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the bough and croaked nevertheless: "brah, brah!" The raven and the crow sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said: "brah, brah! caw, caw!" and the majority is always right.
There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small--they found the place so excellent. "Oui! oui!" said they, for they knew no more French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so fat, and altogether lords in the forest.
The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the contrary, were so brisk--busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig had a curly tail--that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always rooted there; but now there came a little one--for it is always the young ones that come with news--and he asserted that the acorns fell down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations, and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their heads together. "Uff," said the swine, "uff! the finery is past! the twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be eaten is good, and we eat everything!"
"Oui! oui!" said they altogether.
But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.
"One must not, however, forget the beautiful!" said she.
"Caw! caw!" screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed nightingale: one there should be--and so the crow was directly appointed.
"Past! past!" sighed the Rose King, "all the beautiful is past!"
It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?--past! past!
A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be paramount.
But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather, and sighed:
"Past! past!"
And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at her little pig, and his curly tail.
"There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!" said the mother sow.
[The end]
Hans Christian Andersen's essay: Swine