| |
Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
Kapitel 2:
The pool of tears, Lewis Carroll, Seite 3 ( von 3 )
"I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about,
trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
being drowned in my own tears! That
will be a queer
thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day."
Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and
she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a
walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she
soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.
"Would it be of any use, now," thought Alice, "to speak to this
mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying." So she began:
"O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of
swimming about here, O Mouse!" (Alice thought this must be the right way
of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she
remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, "A mouse - of a
mouse - to a mouse - a mouse - O mouse!" The Mouse looked at her rather
inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it
said nothing.
"Perhaps it doesn't understand English," thought Alice; "I
daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." (For,
with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago
anything had happened.) So she began again: "Où est ma
chatte?" which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse
gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had
hurt the poor animal's feelings. "I quite forgot you didn't like
cats."
"Not like cats!" cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice.
"Would you
like cats if you were me?"
"Well, perhaps not," said Alice in a soothing tone: "don't be
angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you'd
take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet
thing," Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the
pool, "and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her paws and
washing her face - and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse - and she's such
a capital one for catching mice - oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice
again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it
must be really offended. "We won't talk about her any more if you'd rather
not."
"We, indeed!" cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of
his tail. "As if
I would talk on
such a subject! Our family always
hated cats:
nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name again!"
"I won't indeed!" said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject
of conversation. "Are you - are you fond - of - of dogs?" The Mouse
did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: "There is such a nice little dog
near our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you
know, with oh! such long curly brown hair! And it'll fetch things when you
throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things -
I can't remember half of them - and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he
says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills all the rats
and - oh dear!" cried Alice in a sorrowful tone. "I'm afraid I've
offended it again!" For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it
could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it: "Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we
won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them!" When the
Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face was
quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low, trembling
voice, "Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and
you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs."
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds
and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and
an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the
whole party swam to the shore.
|
|
