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Through
the Looking-Glass
and what Alice
found there
Kapitel 1:
Looking-glass house, Lewis Carroll, Seite 4 ( von 6 )
I'd far better help you, hadn't I?" But the King took no notice of the
question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.
So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she
had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away: but, before she
put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was
so covered with ashes.
She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the
King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and
being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his
mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand
shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.
"Oh! please
don't make such faces, my dear!" she cried out, quite forgetting that the
King couldn't hear her. "You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you!
And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into it - there,
now I think you're tidy enough!" she added, as she smoothed his hair, and
set him upon the table near the Queen.
The King immediatly fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice
was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if
she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but
a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and
he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper - so low, that
Alice could hardly hear what they said.
The King was saying, "I assure you, my dear, I turned cold to the very
ends of my whiskers!"
To which the Queen replied, "You haven't got any whiskers."
"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never,
never
forget!"
"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a
memorandum of it."
Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous
memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck
her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his
shoulder, and began writing for him.
The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for
some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at
last he panted out, "My dear! I really
must get a
thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things
that I don't intend -"
"What manner of things?" said the Queen, looking over the book (in
which Alice had put 'The White Knight is
sliding down the poker. He balances very badly'). "That's not a
memorandum of your
feelings!"
There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the
White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all
ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves,
to find some part that she could read, "- for it's all in some language I
don't know," she said to herself.
It was like this.
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