led; all the delicately
fine veils and flags disappeared in the air; the swinging kiosks of
cobwebs, the suspension bridges and balustrades, or whatever they are
called, which were constructed from leaf to leaf, vanished into
nothing; six elves brought me my sausage-stick, and at the same time
asked if I had any wish they could fulfil; whereupon I begged them to
tell me how soup could be made from a sausage-stick.

"'What we can do,' said the foremost, laughing, 'you have just seen.
You could scarcely have recognised your sausage-stick.'

"'You mean as you transformed it,' said I; and then I told them the
cause of my journey, and what was expected at home from it. 'Of what
use,' I asked, 'will it be to the King of the Mice and all our large
community that I have seen this beautiful sight? I cannot shake the
sausage-stick and say, You see here the stick--now comes the soup!
That would be like a hoax.'

"Then the elf dipped its little finger into a blue violet, and said to
me,--

"'Look! I spread a charm over your walking-stick, and when you return
to the palace of the King of the Mice make it touch the king's warm
breast, and violets will spring from every part of the staff, even in
the coldest winter weather. See! you have now something worth taking
home, and perhaps a little more.'"

But before the little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had
said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough
there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so
strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood
nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, in order
that the smell of the singed hair should overpower the odour from the
flowers, which was very offensive.

"But what was 'the little more' you spoke of?" asked the King of the
Mice.

"Oh!" said the little mouse, "it is what is called an _effect_;" and
so she turned her sausage-stick. And behold, there were no more
flowers visible! She held only the naked stick, and she moved it like
a stick for beating time.

"The violets are for sight, smell, and touch, the elf told me; but
there are still wanting hearing and taste."

She beat time, and there was music--not such, however, as sounded in
the wood at the elfin fete; no, such as is heard at times in the
kitchen. It came suddenly, like the wind whistling down the chimney.
The pots and the pans boiled over, and the shovel thundered against
the large brass