The Little Mermaid (Chapter 3)

As soon as the eldest was fifteen, she was allowed to rise to the surface of the ocean. When she returned, she had a hundred wondrous, breathtaking sights to recount to her sisters.

“The most exquisite experience,” she remarked to her sisters, “was to lie in the moonlight and gaze on a town where the lights were twinkling like hundreds of stars. Having heard the voices and the bells from the churches, I pine for them.”

Listening to all these eager descriptions, the Little Mermaid fancied she could hear the hustle and bustle all the way down in the depths of the sea, she could hear.

In another year, the second sister was permitted to rise to the surface and swim about where she pleased.

Rising just as the sun was setting, she murmured upon her return, “That the most picturesque sight of all, because the whole sky resembled gold.”

The third sister’s turn followed. As the boldest of the princesses, she brazenly swam up a broad river that emptied out to sea on the banks. Hills were covered with delicate well-pruned vines and castles peeped out amid the proud trees of the forest. In a narrow creek, the third sister found a whole troop of human children cavorting in the water. When she tried to play with them, they fled in alarm. Then with a squat, a lively animal jumped into the water and barked at her so excited she became frightened.

More timorous, the fourth sister remained in the sea; she reported that the sky looked like a glass bell, the dolphins sported in the waves, and the great whales spouted water from its nostrils until it seemed like a hundred fountains were gushing.

Since the fifth sister’s birthday was in the winter, she beheld what the others did not when they toured the land. Immense icebergs were floating about. She informed them loftier than the churches built by men.