gilt apples, honey-cakes, playthings, and many hundred candles."

"And then?" asked the Fir Tree, and trembled through all its branches.
"And then? What happens then?"

"Why, we have not seen anything more. But it was incomparable."

"Perhaps I may be destined to tread this glorious path one day!" cried
the Fir Tree, rejoicingly. "That is even better than traveling across
the sea. How painfully I long for it! If it were only Christmas now! Now
I am great and grown up, like the rest who were led away last year. Oh,
if I were only on the carriage! If I were only in the warm room, among
all the pomp and splendor! And then? Yes, then something even better
will come, something far more charming, or else why should they adorn me
so? There must be something grander, something greater still to come;
but what? Oh! I'm suffering, I'm longing! I don't know myself what is
the matter with me!"

"Rejoice in us," said Air and Sunshine. "Rejoice in thy fresh youth here
in the woodland."

But the Fir Tree did not rejoice at all, but it grew and grew; winter
and summer it stood there, green, dark green. The people who saw it
said, "That's a handsome tree!" and at Christmas time it was felled
before any one of the others. The ax cut deep into its marrow, and the
tree fell to the ground with a sigh; it felt a pain, a sensation of
faintness, and could not think at all of happiness, for it was sad at
parting from its home, from the place where it had grown up; it knew
that it should never again see the dear old companions, the little
bushes and flowers all around--perhaps not even the birds. The parting
was not at all agreeable.

The Tree only came to itself when it was unloaded in a yard, with other
trees, and heard a man say:

"This one is famous; we want only this one!"

Now two servants came in gay liveries, and carried the Fir Tree into a
large, beautiful saloon. All around the walls hung pictures, and by the
great stove stood large Chinese vases with lions on the covers; there
were rocking-chairs, silken sofas, great tables covered with picture
books, and toys worth a hundred times a hundred dollars, at least the
children said so. And the Fir Tree was put into a great tub filled with
sand; but no one could see that it was a tub, for it was hung round with
green cloth, and stood on a large, many-colored carpet. Oh, how the Tree
trembled! What was to happen now? The servants, and the young ladies
also, decked it out. On one bran