The Complete Fairy Tales & Other Stories
By Hans Christian Andersen - online book

Oxford Complete Illustrated Edition all his stories written between 1835 and 1872.

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THE THORNY ROAD OF HONOUR 523
moving beneath his feet—Galileo. Blind and deaf he sits— an old man thrust through with the spear of suffering, and amid the torments of neglect, scarcely able to lift his foot— that foot with which, in the anguish of his soul, when men denied the truth, he stamped upon the ground with the exclamation, ' Yet it moves ! '
Here stands a woman of childlike mind, yet full of faith and inspiration ; she carries the banner in front of the combating army, and brings victory and salvation to her fatherland. The sound of shouting arises, and the pile flames up : they are burning the witch, Joan of Arc. Yes, and a future century jeers at the White Lily. Voltaire, the satyr of human intellect, writes ' La Pucelle '.
At the Thing or Assembly at Viborg, the Danish nobles burn the laws of the King—they flame up high, illuminating the period and the law-giver, and throw a glory into the dark prison tower, where an old man is growing grey and bent. With his finger he marks out a groove in the stone table. It is the popular King who sits there, once the ruler of three kingdoms, the friend of the citizen and the peasant : it is Christian the Second. Enemies wrote his history. Let us remember his imprisonment of seven-and-twenty years, if we cannot forget his crime.
A ship sails away from Denmark ; a man leans against the mast, casting a last glance towards the Island Hveen. It is Tycho Brahe. He raised the name of Denmark to the stars, and was rewarded with injury, loss, and sorrow. He is going to a strange country.
1 The sky is everywhere,' he says, ' and what do I want more ? '
And away sails the famous Dane, the astronomer, to live honoured and free in a strange land.
' Aye, free, if only from the unbearable sufferings of the body ! ' comes in a sigh through time, and strikes upon our ear. What a picture ! Griffenfeldt, a Danish Pro­metheus, bound to the rocky island of Munkholm.
We are in America, on the margin of one of the largest rivers ; an innumerable crowd has gathered, for it is said that a ship is to sail against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements ; the man who thinks he can do this is named Robert Fulton. The ship begins its passage,