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Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
Kapitel 8:
The queen's croquet ground, Lewis Carroll, Seite 4 ( von 4 )
"Who are
you talking to?" said the King, coming up to Alice, and looking at the
Cat's head with great curiosity.
"It's a friend of mine - a Cheshire Cat," said Alice: "allow me
to introduce it."
"I don't like the look of it at all," said the King: "however,
it may kiss my hand if it likes."
"I'd rather not," the Cat remarked.
"Don't be impertinent," said the King, "and don't look at me
like that!" He got behind Alice as he spoke.
"A cat may look at a king," said Alice. "I've read that in some
book, but I don't remember where."
"Well, it must be removed," said the King very decidedly, and he
called to the Queen, who was passing at the moment, "My dear! I wish you
would have this cat removed!"
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small.
"Off with his head!" she said, without even looking round.
"I'll fetch the executioner myself," said the King eagerly, and he
hurried off.
Alice thought she might as well go back and see how the game was going on, as
she heard the Queen's voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had
already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having
missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game
was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So
she went off in search of her hedgehog.
The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to
Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the
only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the
garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up
into a tree.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was
over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: "but it doesn't matter
much," thought Alice, "as all the arches are gone from this side of
the ground." So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape
again, and went back to have a little more conversation with her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large
crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner,
the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were
quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.
The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the
question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke
at once, she found it very hard to make out exactly what they said.
The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there
was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before,
and he wasn't going to begin at
his time of
life.
The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and
that you weren't to talk nonsense.
The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than
no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that
had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)
Alice could think of nothing else to say but "It belongs to the Duchess:
you'd better ask her about it."
"She's in prison." the Queen said to the executioner: "fetch her
here." And the executioner went off like an arrow.
The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he
had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and
the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the
party went back to the game.
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