Continuation of the Tale of the Hard Nut

NOW YOU KNOW VERY WELL, CHILDREN (Drosselmeier continued the next evening), you know very well why the queen had the gorgeous Princess Pirlipat guarded so carefully. Shouldn’t the queen fear that Frau Mouserink might carry out her threats, come back, and chew the little princess to death? Drosselmeier’s devices were useless against Frau Mouserink’s wisdom and insight; and only the royal astronomer, who also doubled as the king’s secret diviner and stargazer, appeared to know that only the family of Tomcat Purr would be able to keep Frau Mouserink away from the cradle of the princess. Hence it happened that each lady-in-waiting held one of the sons of that family in her lap, deftly stroking him, trying to sweeten his vast political service. Incidentally, the sons were employed at court as secret legation counsels.

One midnight, one of the two ladies sitting close to the cradle awoke out of deep sleep. Everybody around them lay there, trapped by slumber—no purring, a deep and deathly hush, in which the picking of the woodworm could be heard! But how did the secret supreme lady-in-waiting feel when she spotted a huge, hideous mouse, which stood up on its hind legs, pressing its wretched face against the head of the princess?

With a shriek of dismay, the lady jumped up. Everybody awoke. That same moment, Frau Mouserink (nobody else was the big mouse on Pirlipat’s cradle) scurried into a corner of the room. The legation counsels dashed after her. But too late. Frau Mouserink vanished through a crack in the floor.

Pirlipat was awakened by the uproar and she wept very lamentably. “Thank goodness!” the ladies exclaimed. “She’s alive!”

But how great was their horror when they looked for Pirlipat and saw what had become of the lovely, delicate child. Instead of her golden locks with a red and white face and an angelic head, a thick, deformed head now perched on a twisted, teensy-weensy body. The small azure eyes had turned into green, gaping, gawking eyes, and the little lips had pulled from one ear to the other.

The queen dissolved in weeping and wailing, and the royal study had to be thoroughly padded because time after time the king would run with his head against the wall, shouting lamentably: “Oh, what a miserable monarch I am!”

The king realized perfectly well that it would have been better to eat the sausages without bacon and leave Frau Mouserink and her clan in peace behind the hearth. But Pirlipat’s royal father wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, he placed all the blame on the royal clockmaker and adept, Christian Elias Drosselmeier from Nuremberg. That was why the king issued a wise order: Drosselmeier had four weeks to restore Princess Pirlipat to her former condition or at least indicate a specific, unerring measure for doing so. Otherwise, the royal clockmaker would be doomed to a shameful death under the headsman’s ax.

Drosselmeier was not without fear, but he relied on his skill and his luck, and he promptly tackled the first operation that struck him as useful. He took Princess Pirlipat apart very adroitly, unscrewed her little hands and feet, and viewed her inner structure. But, alas, he found that the bigger the princess grew, the more shapeless she became, and he was at a loss—at his wit’s end. He very carefully put her together again and sank into a melancholy at her cradle, which he was not allowed to leave.

The fourth week had already begun. It was Wednesday when the king peered into the cradle, his eyes sparkling furiously. Brandishing his scepter, the king exclaimed: “Christian Elias Drosselmeier, cure the princess, or you must die!” Drosselmeier started weeping bitterly, but the princess delightfully cracked nuts.

For the first time, Drosselmeier noticed that Pirlipat had been born with teeth and that she had an unusual appetite for nuts. Indeed, she had hollered so long after her transformation, until a nut happened to come her way. She promptly cracked it open, ate the kernel, and then calmed down. Since then, the ladies couldn’t bring her enough nuts.

“Oh, holy instinct of nature, eternally inscrutable sympathy of all beings,” cried Christian Elias Drosselmeier, “you show me the gates to the mystery. I wish to knock, and the gates will open.”

Drosselmeier then asked for permission to speak to the court astronomer, and he was taken to him under heavy guard. These two gentlemen embraced tearfully because they were close friends. Next they withdrew into a secret study, where they perused many books dealing with instincts, sympathies, antipathies, and other mysterious things.

Night broke in. The court astronomer gazed at the stars and, with the help of the very dexterous Drosselmeier, he cast the princess’s horoscope. This demanded great effort, for the lines got more and more entangled. But finally—what joy. Finally it lay clearly before them that the princess, in order to undo the hideous spell and restore her beauty, had nothing to do but enjoy the sweet Krakatuk Nut.

The shell of the Krakatuk Nut was so hard that a forty-eight-pound cannon could have charged across it without breaking it. But this hard nut had to be chewed up in front of the princess by a man who had never shaved and who had never worn boots. And with closed eyes, he handed the princess the kernel. The young man could reopen his eyes only after taking seven steps backward without stumbling.

Drosselmeier and the astronomer labored uninterruptedly for three days and three nights. Now the king was having his Saturday dinner. All at once, Drosselmeier, who was to be decapitated on Sunday, at the crack of dawn, burst in joyfully and ecstatically and he announced the measure for restoring the princess’s lost beauty. The king hugged Drosselmeier with intense benevolence and promised him a diamond sword, four medals, and two new Sunday coats.

“After we finish our meal,” the king added amiably, “we can get to work right away. Make sure, dear adept, that the young unshaven and nonbooted man with the Krakatuk Nut is properly at hand. He should drink no wine earlier; otherwise he’ll stumble when he tries taking seven steps backward like a crab. Afterward he can liquor up for all he’s worth!”

Drosselmeier was stunned by the king’s words, and it was not without shaking and shuddering that he managed to squeeze out a response: he had discovered the measure. Now both the Krakatuk Nut and the young man had to be sought. But it remained doubtful whether Nut and Nutcracker could ever be found.

The fuming sovereign swung his scepter over his crowned head and he roared in a lion’s voice: “Then we’ll make do with your heads!”

Luckily for Drosselmeier, who was filled with terror and misery, the king had found his meal to be delicious that very day. So he was in the right mood to listen to reasonable ideas, of which the magnanimous queen had no lack. Indeed, she was deeply touched by Drosselmeier’s fate. Drosselmeier pulled himself together and finally pointed out that he had gained his life by actually carrying out the king’s orders. He had been told to find the means of curing the princess and he had done so.

The king called these lame excuses and silly twaddle. But eventually, after drinking a glass of digestive, he decided that both the clockmaker and the astronomer should get going and should not return without a Krakatuk Nut in their pocket. The man who bit them open should, as the queen informed them, insert multiple public notices and various advertisements in domestic and foreign gazettes.

***

Drosselmeier broke off here and he promised to finish the story tomorrow evening.