. So having satisfied
their hunger, they left the pigeons passing their own opinions upon them
to each other and slipped through the garden railings. The door of a
room in the house, leading into the garden, stood open, and one of them,
feeling brave after his good dinner, hopped upon the threshold crying,
"Tweet, I can venture so far."

"Tweet," said another, "I can venture that, and a great deal more," and
into the room he hopped.

The first followed, and, seeing no one there, the third became
courageous and flew right across the room, saying: "Venture everything,
or do not venture at all. This is a wonderful place--a man's nest, I
suppose; and look! what can this be?"

Just in front of the sparrows stood the ruins of the burned cottage;
roses were blooming over it, and their reflection appeared in the water
beneath, and the black, charred beams rested against the tottering
chimney. How could it be? How came the cottage and the roses in a room
in the nobleman's house? And then the sparrows tried to fly over the
roses and the chimney, but they only struck themselves against a flat
wall. It was a picture--a large, beautiful picture which the artist had
painted from the little sketch he had made.

"Tweet," said the sparrows, "it is really nothing, after all; it only
looks like reality. Tweet, I suppose that is _the beautiful_. Can you
understand it? I cannot."

Then some persons entered the room and the sparrows flew away. Days and
years passed. The pigeons had often "coo-oo-d"--we must not say
quarreled, though perhaps they did, the naughty things! The sparrows had
suffered from cold in the winter and lived gloriously in summer. They
were all betrothed, or married, or whatever you like to call it. They
had little ones, and each considered its own brood the wisest and the
prettiest.

One flew in this direction and another in that, and when they met they
recognized each other by saying "tweet" and three times drawing back
the left foot. The eldest remained single; she had no nest nor young
ones. Her great wish was to see a large town, so she flew to Copenhagen.

Close by the castle, and by the canal, in which swam many ships laden
with apples and pottery, there was to be seen a great house. The windows
were broader below than at the top, and when the sparrows peeped through
they saw a room that looked to them like a tulip with beautiful colors
of every shade. Within the tulip were white figures of human beings,
m