By Hans christen Andersen
in the midst of a garden grew a rose-tree; upon it were many, many roses; in one of them, the most beautiful of all, lived an elf. He was so very small that no human eye could perceive him. Behind every petal of the rose he had a bedroom. No child could have been more beautifully formed than he was; he had wings that reached from his shoulders down to his feet. All his rooms were so sweet and fragrant, the walls were so bright and beautiful, for they consisted of the pink rose-petals.
All day long the elf enjoyed himself in the warm sunshine, flying from flower to flower, and dancing on the wings of the fluttering butterfly. One day he measured how many steps he would have to take in order to pass through all the roads and paths which were on a single leaf of the lime-tree. These were
what we call the veins of the leaf; to him they seemed to be endless roads.
Before he had finished the sun set; he had begun his task too late. It became very cold, dew fell and the wind was blowing; at this time he would have been best at home. He hastened as much as he could, but his rose was closed up, he could not enter, and not a single rose was open. The poor little elf was very frightened. He had never before been out of doors at night; as he had always sweetly slumbered behind the warm rose-petals, this would mean certain death to him!
The elf knew that at the other end of the garden stood a summer-house, covered all over with beautiful honeysuckle; the blossoms looked like large painted horns; in one of them, he thought, he might enter and sleep until the next morning. Thither he flew.
But hush! Two people were sitting in the summer-house: a handsome young man and a beautiful girl. They sat side by side and wished that they need never part. They loved one another so much-much more indeed than the best child would love his father or mother.
“Alas! we must part,” said the young man. “Your brother dislikes me, and
that is why he sends me on an errand so far away over mountains and seas.
Farewell, my own dear love, for that you will always be to me.”
Then they kissed each other, and the girl cried and gave him a rose.
But before she gave it to him she so ardently pressed it to her lips that the flower opened.
Now the little elf flew into it and rested his head against the fine fragrant walls; there he could hear very well how they bade farewell to each other! He felt that the young man placed the rose on his breast. Oh, how his heart was beating! The little elf could not fall asleep, it throbbed so much.
The rose did not long remain undisturbed on his breast. The young man, while walking alone through the dark forest, took it out, and kissed it so often and so passionately that the little elf was almost crushed. He could feel through the leaf how hot the young man’s lips were; and the rose had opened its petals as if the strongest midday sun were shining upon it.
Then came another man, sullen and wicked; he was the malicious brother of the beautiful girl. He drew out a dagger, and while the other fondly kissed the rose, stabbed him to death; then he cut off the head from the body, and buried both in the soft ground under a lime-tree.
“Now he’s gone and forgotten,” thought the murderer; “he will never return again. He was to set out on a long journey, over mountains and across the sea; on such an expedition a man might easily lose his life, and he has lost it. He will never come back, and my sister dare not ask me what has become of him.”
Thus thinking, he scraped dry leaves together with his foot, heaped them on the soft mold, and went home in the darkness of the night. But he was not alone, as he imagined, for the little elf was with him. He had seated himself in a dry, rolled-up leaf of the lime-tree, which had fallen on the wicked man’s hair while he was digging the grave. He had put his hat on now; it was very dark inside the hat, and the elf was trembling with horror and indignation at the evil deed.
In the dawn of the morning the murderer reached home; he took off his hat, and entered his sister’s bedroom. There the beautiful girl, with rosy cheeks, was sleeping and dreaming of him whom she loved so dearly, and whom she supposed now to travel over mountains and across the sea.
The unnatural brother bent over the girl, and laughed hideously, as only evil demons can laugh. The dry leaf dropped out of his hair on her counter-pane, but he did not notice it, and went out of the room to have a little sleep in the early morning hours. The elf left his resting-place and slipped into the ear of the sleeping girl, and told her, as in a dream, the horrible deed; he described the spot where her lover was stabbed and where his body was interred; he told her of the blooming lime-tree standing close by, and said: “That you should not think all I told you is only a dream, you will find on your bed on awaking a dry leaf.” And when she awoke she really found it. Then she cried bitterly.
The window was open all day long; the little elf might easily have returned to the roses and to the other flowers in the garden, but he had not the heart to leave the unfortunate girl.
On the window-sill stood a little bunch of monthly roses in a flower-pot; in one of its blooms the elf sat down and looked at the poor girl. Her brother came several times into the room, and in spite of his crime seemed quite cheerful, and she had not the courage to say a word about her grief.
No sooner had the night come than she stole out of the house and went into the wood, to the spot where the lime-tree stood; she removed the dry leaves from the ground, turned the earth up and found her murdered sweet-heart. And she wept bitterly. She prayed God that she might also die.
She would have gladly taken the body home with her, but that was impos-sible. So she took up the pale-faced head with the closed eyes, kissed the cold lips and shook the earth out of the beautiful curls. “I will at least keep this,” she said. When she had replaced the mold and the dry leaves on the body, she took the head and a little bough of a jasmine-bush growing near the spot where the body was buried, and returned home. Upon reaching her room she took the largest flower-pot she could find, put the head into it, covered it over with mold, and planted therein the jasmine-bough.
“Farewell, farewell,” whispered the little elf, being unable to witness any longer her grief and pain. He then returned to his rose in the garden; but the rose was faded, only a few withered petals were still clinging to the green stalk.
“Oh, how soon all that is beautiful and good vanishes,” sighed the little elf.
At last he found a new rose and made it his home; under the shelter of its tender and fragrant petals he could abide in satety. Every morning he flew to the window of the poor girl, and every morning he found her crying by the flower-pot. Her tears fell upon the jasmine-bough, and day by day, in the same measure as she grew paler, the bough became fresher and greener; one shoot after another sprang up; many little white buds burst forth, and she kissed them. The heartless brother scolded her and asked her if she had lost her senses; for he did not like to see her crying over the flower-pot, and he could not make out why she did it. He had no idea whose closed eyes, whose red lips were decaying in the flower-pot.
One day the little rose-elf found her slumbering and resting with her head on the flower-pot. He slipped again into her ear, and told her of the evening in the summer-house, of the sweet smell of the rose, and of the love of rose-elves.
She dreamed so sweetly, and with her dream her life passed away; she died a calm and peaceful death. She had gone to Heaven to him whom she loved.
And the jasmine unfolded its buds into large white flowers, and filled the air with its peculiarly sweet fragrance, it could not otherwise give vent to its grief for the dead girl.
The wicked brother took the beautiful jasmine bush as his inheritance, carried it into his bedroom and placed it close by his bed; for it was delightful to look at, and its fragrance was very pleasant. The little rose-elf followed; he flew from flower to flower-for in each of them lived a little elf-and told them of the murdered young man whose head was decaying beneath the mold, and of the wicked brother and the poor sister.
“We know all about it,” replied the little elves, “we know it, for have we not sprung forth from the eyes and lips of the dead man’s face? We know,” they repeated, nodding their heads in a strange manner.
The rose-elf could not understand why they remained so calm; he flew out to the bees, which were gathering honey, and told them the story of the wicked brother. The bees told their queen, and the queen ordered that they should all go on the next morning to kill the murderer. But when it was night—the first night after his sister’s death—while the brother was sleeping close by the fragrant jasmine-bush in his bed, all its flowers opened and all the little invisible elves came out, armed with venomous spears, and seated themselves in his ears and told him terrible dreams; then they flew on to his
lips and stabbed his tongue with their poisonous weapons. “Now we have avenged the dead,” they said, and returned to their white flowers.
When, on the next morning, the window of the bedroom was opened, the rose-elf and the whole swarm of the bees with their queen entered to carry out their revenge. But he was already dead. People standing around the bed, said:
“The smell of the jasmine has killed him.”
The rose-elf understood the revenge of the flowers and told the queen of the bees about it, who with her whole swarm was humming round the flower-pot. The bees could not be driven away from it, and when at last a man took up the pot a bee stung him in the hand, so that he dropped it, and it broke to pieces. Then all saw the bleached skull and understood that the dead man in the bed was a murderer.
The queen of the bees hummed and sang of the revenge of the flowers and of the rose-elf, and said that behind the smallest leaf dwells one who can disclose evil deeds and revenge them.
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