Every one laughed excepting the master, who was amazed at such utter stupidity as he thought it, and he desired Johannes to remain in school and write out a hundred times: 'The age of my wilful aunt is great, but not so great as that of the Sun (feminine), and greater still is my arrogant stupidity.'
His school-fellows had departed, and Johannes sat alone writing, in the great empty school-room. The sun shone in brightly, making the dust-motes glitter in its beams, and painting the wall with patches of light which crept round as time went on. The master, too, was gone, slamming the door behind him. Johannes had just got to the fifty-second 'wilful aunt' when a tiny, brisk mouse, with black, beady little eyes and erect ears, came out of the farthest corner of the room and ran noiselessly along by the wall. Johannes kept as still as death, not to scare the pretty little thing; but it was not shy and came close to where he was sitting. It looked sharply about for a minute or two, with its small, bright eyes; then with one spring leaped on to the bench, and with a second on to the desk on which Johannes was writing.
'Well done!' said he half to himself, 'you are a very bold little mouse.'
'I ought to know whom I should be afraid of,' said a wee-wee voice, and the mouse showed his little white teeth as if he were laughing.
Johannes was by this time quite used to marvels; still, this made him open his eyes very wide. Here, in school, in the middle of the day--it was incredible.
'You need not be afraid of me,' said he, very gently for fear of frightening the mouse. 'Did Windekind send you?'
'I am sent to tell you that the master was quite right, and that you thoroughly deserved your extra task.'
'But it was Windekind who told me that the sun was masculine. He said he was his father.'
'Yes; but no one else need know it. What have men to do with that? You must never discuss such delicate matters with men; they are too gross to understand them. Man is an astonishingly perverse and stupid creature that only cares to catch or kill whatever comes within his reach. Of that we mice have ample experience.'
'But why then, little mouse, do you live among men? Why do you not run away to the woods?'