“Come, little sister,” encouraged the other princesses.
Eagerly they entwined their arms and led her near the prince’s palace, shining with fulgent yellow stone, long flights of marble steps, and gilded cupolas. Knowing where her prince lived, the Little Mermaid spent many evenings in the water near the palace. She would swim much nearer the shore than any of the others ventured to do. Indeed, one time she swam unflaggingly up the narrow channel, under the marble balcony, which threw a broad shadow on the water. In this spot, she would watch the young prince which thought him quite alone in the bright moonlight. On many a night, too, when the fishermen with their torches were out at sea, she heard them relate so many exemplary doings of the young prince that she was thankful she had saved his life. Recalling how she had saved him, she realized ruefully that he knew nothing of that and could not even dream of her.
Increasingly, she marveled at humans and longed to be able to wander with those whose world seemed so much larger than her own. Because there was so much she wanted to know, she finally applied to her old grandmother, who knew all about the enchanting upper world which they rightly called lands above the sea.
“If human beings don’t drown,” asked the Little Mermaid, “can they live forever? Do they ever die as we do here in the sea?”
“No. They must also die,” replied the old lady. “and their term of life is even more transitory than ours. Although we sometimes live three hundred years, after death we merge with the foam on the surface of the water at the bottom of the sea. We have not even a watery sepulcher for those whom we love. We do not possess eternal souls but as the pullulating seaweed, after it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. By contrast, human beings have a soul that lives eternally. Their souls raise up high through the pure, limpid air beyond the remotest stars. As we raise out of the water and behold the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown glorious regions, which we shall never witness.”
Comments