"Where are they going?" asked the Fir Tree. "They are not larger than I am; indeed, one of them was much less. Why do they keep all their branches? where can they be gone?"
"We know! we know!" twittered the Sparrows. "We peeped in through the windows of the town below! we know where they are gone! Oh, you cannot think what honour and glory they receive! We looked through the window-panes and saw them planted in a warm room, and decked out with such beautiful things—gilded apples, sweetmeats, playthings, and hundreds of bright candles!"
"And then?" asked the Fir Tree, trembling in every bough; "and then? what happened then?"
"Oh, we saw no more. That was beautiful, beautiful beyond compare!"
"Is this glorious lot destined to be mine?" cried the Fir Tree, with delight. "This is far better than sailing over the sea. How I long for the time! Oh, that I were even now in the wagon! that I were in the warm room, honoured and adorned! and then—yes, then, something still better must happen, else why should they take the trouble to decorate me? it must be that something still greater, still more splendid, must happen—but what? Oh, I suffer, I suffer with longing! I know not what it is that I feel!"
"Rejoice in our love!" said the Air and the Sunshine. "Rejoice in thy youth and thy freedom!"
But rejoice he never would: he grew and grew, in winter as in summer he stood there clothed in green, dark green foliage; the people that saw him said, "That is a beautiful tree!" and, next Christmas, he was the first that was felled. The axe struck sharply through the wood, the tree fell to the earth with a heavy groan; he suffered an agony, a faintness, that he had never expected. He quite forgot to think of his good fortune, he felt such sorrow at being compelled to leave his home, the place whence he had sprung; he knew that he should never see again those dear old comrades, or the little bushes and flowers that had flourished under his shadow, perhaps not even the birds. Neither did he find the journey by any means pleasant.
The Tree first came to himself when, in the court-yard to which he first was taken with the other trees, he heard a man say, "This is a splendid one, the very thing we want!"
Then came two smartly dressed servants, and carried the Fir Tree into a large and handsome saloon. Pictures hung on the walls, and on the mantel-piece stood large Chinese vases with lions on the lids; there were rocking-chairs, silken sofas, tables covered with picture-books, and toys that had cost a hundred times a hundred rix-thalers—at least so said the children. And the Fir Tree was planted in a large cask filled with sand, but no one could know that it was a cask, for it was hung with green cloth and placed upon the carpet woven of many gay colours. Oh, how the Tree trembled! What was to happen next? A young lady, assisted by the servants, now began to adorn him.
Upon some branches they hung little nets cut out of coloured paper, every net filled with sugar-plums; from others gilded apples and walnuts were suspended, looking just as if they had grown there; and more than a hundred little wax tapers, red, blue, and white, were placed here and there among the boughs. Dolls, that looked almost like men and women,—the Tree had never seen such things before,—seemed dancing to and fro among the leaves, and highest, on the summit, was fastened a large star of gold tinsel; this was, indeed, splendid, splendid beyond compare! "This evening," they said, "this evening it will be lighted up."