《安徒生童话英文版》第22章

　　All his great mental abilities had been lost,nothing but hardship, sorrow, and disappointment had been his fate. Hewas like a rare plant, torn from its native soil, and tossed uponthe beach to wither there. And was this one of God's creatures,fashioned in His own likeness, to have no better fate? Was he to beonly the plaything of fortune? No! the all-loving Creator wouldcertainly repay him in the life to come for what he had suffered andlost here. "The Lord is good to all; and His mercy is over all Hisworks." The pious old wife of the merchant repeated these words fromthe Psalms of David in patience and hope, and the prayer of herheart was that Jurgen might soon be called away to enter intoeternal life.

　　In the churchyard where the walls were surrounded with sandClara lay buried. Jurgen did not seem to know this; it did not enterhis mind, which could only retain fragments of the past. EverySunday he went to church with the old people, and sat theresilently, staring vacantly before him. One day, when the Psalms werebeing sung, he sighed deeply, and his eyes became bright; they werefixed upon a place near the altar where he had knelt with his friendwho was dead. He murmured her name, and became deadly pale, andtears rolled down his cheeks. They led him out of church; he toldthose standing round him that he was well, and had never been ill; he,who had been so grievously afflicted, the outcast, thrown upon theworld, could not remember his sufferings. The Lord our Creator is wiseand full of loving kindness- who can doubt it?

　　In Spain, where balmy breezes blow over the Moorish cupolas andgently stir the orange and myrtle groves, where singing and thesound of the castanets are always heard, the richest merchant in theplace, a childless old man, sat in a luxurious house, while childrenmarched in procession through the streets with waving flags andlighted tapers. If he had been able to press his children to hisheart, his daughter, or her child, that had, perhaps never seen thelight of day, far less the kingdom of heaven, how much of his wealthwould he not have given! "Poor child!" Yes, poor child- a child still,yet more than thirty years old, for Jurgen had arrived at this agein Old Skjagen.

　　The shifting sands had covered the graves in the courtyard,quite up to the church walls, but still, the dead must be buried amongtheir relatives and the dear ones who had gone before them. MerchantBronne and his wife now rested with their children under the whitesand.

　　It was in the spring- the season of storms. The sand from thedunes was whirled up in clouds; the sea was rough, and flocks of birdsflew like clouds in the storm, screaming across the sand-hills.Shipwreck followed upon shipwreck on the reefs between Old Skagenand the Hunsby dunes.

　　One evening Jurgen sat in his room alone: all at once his mindseemed to become clearer, and a restless feeling came over him, suchas had often, in his younger days, driven him out to wander over thesand-hills or on the heath. "Home, home!" he cried. No one heardhim. He went out and walked towards the dunes. Sand and stones blewinto his face, and whirled round him; he went in the direction ofthe church. The sand was banked up the walls, half covering thewindows, but it had been cleared away in front of the door, and theentrance was free and easy to open, so Jurgen went into the church.

　　The storm raged over the town of Skjagen; there had not beensuch a terrible tempest within the memory of the inhabitants, nor sucha rough sea. But Jurgen was in the temple of God, and while thedarkness of night reigned outside, a light arose in his soul thatwas never to depart from it; the heavy weight that pressed on hisbrain burst asunder. He fancied he heard the organ, but it was onlythe storm and the moaning of the sea. He sat down on one of the seats,and lo!