Child Life in Prose

by Unknown

Karine gathered flowers, and then went into the hay-field to work; still, it often happened that she and her little brother went supperless to bed. But then their father played on the violin, and made them forget that they were hungry, and its tones lulled them to sleep.

One day, when Karine was passing by the nettles, she stopped, rejoiced to see them again. She saw that the nettles were a little bent down, and, upon examination, found a number of small green caterpillars, resembling those which we call cabbage-grubs, and they seemed to enjoy eating the nettle leaves as much as the old countess did her nettle soup. She saw that they covered the exact spot where she had made a mark, and that the leaf was nearly eaten up by the caterpillars, and Karine immediately thought that they must be the butterfly's children. And so they were, for they had come from its eggs.

"Ah!" thought Karine, "if my little brother and I, who sometimes can eat more than our father and mother can give us, could become butterflies, and find something to eat as easily as these do, would it not be pleasant?" She broke off the nettle on which the butterfly had laid its eggs,—but this time she carefully wound her handkerchief round her hand,—and carried it home.

On her arrival there, she found all the little grubs had crawled away, with the exception of one, which was still eating and enjoying itself. Karine put the nettle into a glass of water, and every day a fresh leaf appeared. The caterpillar quickly increased in size, and seemed to thrive wonderfully well. The child took great pleasure in it, and wondered within herself how large it would be at last, and when its wings would come.

But one morning it appeared very quiet and sleepy, and would not eat, and became every moment more weary, and seemed ill. "O," said Karine, "it is certainly going to die, and there will be no butterfly from it; what a pity!"

It was evening, and the next morning Karine found with astonishment that the caterpillar had spun round itself a sort of web, in which it lay, no longer a living green grub, but a stiff brown chrysalis. She took it out of the cocoon; it was as if enclosed in a shell. "It is dead," said the child, "and is now lying in its coffin! But I will still keep it, for it has been so long with us, and at any rate it will be something belonging to my old favorite." Karine then laid it on the earth in a little flower-pot which stood in the window, in which there was a balsam growing.

The long winter came, and much, very much snow. Karine and her little brother had to run barefooted through it all. The boy got a cough. He became paler and paler, would not eat anything, and lay tired and weary, just like the grub of the caterpillar shortly before it became a chrysalis.

The snow melted, the April sun reappeared, but the little boy played out of doors no more. His sister went out again to gather nettles and blue anemones, but no longer with a merry heart. When she came home, she would place the anemones on her little brother's sick-bed. And as time went on, one day he lay there stiff and cold, with eyes fast closed. In a word, he was dead. They placed him in a coffin, took him to the churchyard, and laid him in the ground, and the priest threw three handfuls of earth over the coffin. Karine's heart was so heavy that she did not heed the blessed words which were spoken of the resurrection unto everlasting life.

Karine only knew that her brother was dead, that she had no longer any little brother whom she could play with, and love, and be loved by in return. She wept bitterly when she thought how gentle and good he was. She went crying into the meadows, gathered all the flowers and young leaves she could find, and strewed them on her brother's grave, and sat there weeping for many hours.

One day she took the pot with the balsam in it, and also the chrysalis, and said, "I will plant the balsam on the grave, and bury the butterfly's grub with my dear little brother." Again she wept bitterly while she thought to herself: "Mother said that my brother lives, and is happy with God; but I saw him lying in the coffin, and put into the grave, and how can he then come back again? No, no; he is dead, and I shall never see either of them again."