"g152v10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ebers Georg)

"'I know,' the Son of God interrupted him. 'Before we decide upon the
fate of this woman, let us hear what the child did with the rest of the
nuts, for we know that she did not eat them all. Now my little angel,
what became of the last of them? Speak on. Gladly will I listen to
you.'

"Hannele began anew: 'After they had buried mother, they sent me into the
country among the mountains, for they said it was not the duty of the
city to care for me, but that of the village parish, where my parents
were born. So I was taken there. The six nuts that I had saved I took
with me to play with. This I most enjoyed doing in the spring, alone on
the little strip of grass behind the Poor-house, in which I was the only
child. Besides me there were but three old women 'being fed to death,'
as the peasants used to say. Two of my companions were blind, and the
third was dull-witted and gazed ever straight before her. Not one of
them noticed anything that happened around them, but my heart used to
grow light when everything about me budded, and sprouted, and burst into
bloom. My body was always aching but my pains could not lessen my
enjoyment of the spring. Wherever I looked, men were sowing and
planting. It was the first time that I had ever seen it, and the wish
came over me to confide something to the good earth that would take root,
and sprout, and grow green and high for me.

"'So I stuck four of my nuts into the ground. I put them as far apart in
the small space as I could, so that if big trees came from my seeds they
might not stand in one another's way, but might all enjoy the air and the
sunshine that I was so thankful for. I saw my seeds sprout, but what
became of them afterwards I did not live to see. Two years after I sowed
them a famine fell upon us. The poor weavers who lived in the mountain
village had all they could do to nourish wife and child. There was
little left for the Poor-house. As I was already ill I could not stand
the misery, and I was the first to die of the dreadful fever caused by
hunger. Only one of the blind women, and the dull-witted one followed
the sack in which I was buried--for who would have paid for a coffin?
The last two nuts I divided with the old women. Each one of us had a
half, and how gladly we ate the little morsel, for even a taste of any
dainty seemed good to us, after we had lived on nothing but bread and
potatoes. From here I watched the other nuts grow to be trees. All four
had straight stems and thick crowns. Under one of them that stood near a
spring, which is now called the Fresh Spring, an old carpenter who came
to the Poor-house built a bench.'

"Here another angel interrupted the little narrator with the question:
'Do you mean the nut-tree in Dorbstadt?' and, receiving an answer in the
affirmative, he cried: 'I, Master, I am that old carpenter, and during my
last summers, I had no greater pleasure than to sit by the Fresh Spring
under the nut-tree, and while I smoked my pipe to think of my old wife,
whom I was soon to find again with you. In the autumn, too, many a dry
brown leaf found its way among the more expensive tobacco ones.'