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Through
the Looking-Glass
and what Alice
found there
Kapitel 6:
Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll, Seite 1 ( von 7 )
However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she
had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and
mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY
DUMPTY himself. "It can't be anybody else!" she said to herself.
"I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his
face!"
It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face.
Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a
high wall - such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his
balance - and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and
he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure
after all.
"And how exactly like an egg he is!" she said aloud, standing with
her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.
"It's very
provoking," Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from
Alice as he spoke, "to be called an egg -
very!"
"I said you looked like an egg,
Sir," Alice gently explained. "And some eggs are very pretty, you
know," she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of compliment.
"Some people," said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual,
"have no more sense than a baby!"
Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she
thought, as he never said anything to
her; in fact,
his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree - so she stood and softly
repeated to herself: -
"Humpty Dumpty
sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again."
"That last line is much too long for the poetry," she added, almost
out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.
"Don't stand chattering to yourself like that," Humpty Dumpty said,
looking at her for the first time, "but tell me your name and your
business."
"My name is
Alice, but -"
"It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently.
"What does it mean?"
"Must a
name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.
"Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: "my name means the
shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you
might be any shape, almost."
"Why do you sit out here all alone?" said Alice, not wishing to begin
an argument.
"Why, because there's nobody with me!" cried Humpty Dumpty. "Did
you think I didn't know the answer to
that? Ask
another."
"Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?" Alice went on,
not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured
anxiety for the queer creature. "That wall is so
very
narrow!"
"What tremendously easy riddles you ask!" Humpty Dumpty growled out.
"Of course I don't think so! Why, if ever I
did fall off -
which there's no chance of - but
if I did -"
Here he pursed up his lips, and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could
hardly help laughing. "If I did
fall," he went on, "the King has promised
me - ah, you may turn pale, if you like! You didn't think I was going to
say that, did you? The King has promised
me - with his very own mouth - to - to -"
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