The Nutcracker by E T A Hoffman

Author:E T A Hoffman [E T A Hoffmann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906548971
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2012-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

BUMP! MARIE FELL from a great height. Oh, what a jolt! But when she opened her eyes she was lying in her own bed, it was bright daylight, and her mother was standing there saying, “My goodness, how can you sleep so soundly? Breakfast was ready a long time ago!”

I am sure, my highly esteemed audience, you will realise that Marie, dazed by all the wonderful things she had seen, had fallen asleep in the great hall of the Marzipan Palace, and the Moors or the pages or even the Princesses themselves had carried her home and put her to bed.

“Oh Mother, dear Mother, where do you think young Mr Drosselmeier took me last night? I saw such lovely things!” And she told the story almost exactly as I have just told it to you, while her mother looked at her in surprise. When Marie had finished, her mother said, “You’ve had a long and very pleasant dream, dear Marie, but now you must put it all out of your head.”

Marie insisted that she hadn’t been dreaming, but had really seen it all, and then her mother led her to the glass-fronted cupboard, took out Nutcracker, who was standing on his usual shelf, and said, “You silly girl, how can you believe that this wooden doll from Nuremberg can really come to life and move?”

“Dear Mother,” Marie interrupted, “I know very well that little Nutcracker is young Mr Drosselmeier from Nuremberg, Godfather Drosselmeier’s nephew.” At that both Doctor Stahlbaum and his wife laughed heartily. “Oh,” Marie went on, almost in tears, “now you’re laughing at my Nutcracker, dear Father! And he spoke so well of you, for when we came to Marzipan Palace and he introduced me to his sisters the Princesses, he called you a highly esteemed medical man!”

Her parents laughed louder than ever, and Luise and even Fritz joined in. Then Marie ran to her own room, quickly opened her little box of trinkets, took out the Mouse King’s seven crowns, and handed them to her mother saying, “There, look at these, dear mother. They are the Mouse King’s seven crowns, and young Mr Drosselmeier gave them to me last night as a token of his victory.”

In great surprise, Mrs Stahlbaum looked at the little crowns, which were made of some unknown but sparkling metal, and so neatly worked that they looked as if no human hands could have made them. Doctor Stahlbaum stared hard at the little crowns too, and both of them, her father and her mother, urged Marie very gravely to tell them how she had come by them. She could only repeat what she had said already, and now, when her father spoke to her severely and even called her a little liar, she began shedding floods of tears and wailed, “Oh, poor me, what am I to say, poor child that I am?”

At that moment the door opened and in came Councillor Drosselmeier, crying, “What’s this, what’s this? My goddaughter Marie sobbing and

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