"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.