They filled their arms with the starry blossoms and started to the manger. On their way they met the old man with the long white beard. He stopped for a moment and looked at the happy children. A strange light came into his eyes; he bowed his head and whispered, “The star of Bethlehem has burst into blossoms! The glory of the skies has come to abide on earth!”
NUTCRACKER AND MOUSE KING
EDWARD THEODOR WILLIAM HOFFMANN
It was Christmas Eve. Marie and Fritz sat cuddled together in a corner of the back parlor, for they had not been permitted during the whole day to go even into the small drawing room, much less into the best drawing room into which it opened. The deep evening twilight had come and they began to feel almost afraid. Seeing that no Christmas candles were brought in, Fritz whispered to his sister Marie, who was just seven, that he had heard rattlings and rustlings going on all day in the closed room, as well as distant hammerings, and that not long before, a little dark looking man with a big box under his arm had gone slipping and creeping across the floor. He well knew that this little man was no other than Godpapa Drosselmeier. At this news Marie clapped her little hands for gladness and cried:
“Oh, I do wonder what pretty things Godpapa Drosselmeier has been making for us this time!”
Godpapa Drosselmeier was anything but a nice looking man. He was little and lean, with a great many wrinkles on his face, a big patch of black plaster over his right eye, and not a hair on his head. He wore a fine white wig, made of glass. But he was a very, very clever man, for he knew and understood all about clocks and watches, and could make them himself. So when one of the beautiful clocks in Fritz and Marie’s home was out of sorts and couldn’t sing, Godpapa Drosselmeier would come, take off his glass periwig and his little yellow coat, put on a blue apron, and begin to stick sharp-pointed instruments into the inside of the clock. Of course, whenever he came he always brought something delightful in his pockets for Marie and Fritz—perhaps a little man who could roll his eyes and make bows and scrapes, most comic to behold, or a box out of which a little bird would jump. But for Christmas time he had invariably prepared some especially wonderful invention.
“Oh! what can Godpapa Drosselmeier have been making for us this time!” Marie said again.
“I’m sure this time,” said Fritz, “it must be a great castle, a fortress, where all sorts of pretty soldiers are drilling and marching about, then other soldiers come to try and get into the fortress, upon which the soldiers inside fire away at them with cannon until everything bangs and thunders like anything.”
“No, no,” said Marie. “Godpapa Drosselmeier once told me about a beautiful garden with a lake in it, and beautiful swans swimming about with great gold collars, singing lovely music. And then a lovely little girl comes down through the garden to the lake, and calls the swans and feeds them with shortbread and cake.”
“Swans don’t eat cake and shortbread,” Fritz cried, “and Godpapa Drosselmeier couldn’t make a whole garden.”
The children went on trying to guess what he might have in store for them this time. Marie told Fritz that her biggest doll had altered very much. She was more clumsy and awkward than ever, for she tumbled on to the floor every two or three minutes. Fritz said that a good fox was lacking in his collection of animals, and that his army of soldiers was quite without a cavalry, as his papa well knew. But the children knew that their elders had all sorts of charming things ready for them. They remembered, too, that the Christ Child at Christmas time took special care of their wants and knew best what gift would bring them true happiness.