"One has a strange feeling on leaving one's own mouse-hole at home, being carried away in a ship, which becomes a home for the time, and suddenly finding one's self, at the distance of more than a hundred miles, standing alone in a foreign land. I saw myself amidst a large tangled wood full of pine and birch trees. Their scent was so strong! It is not at all my taste; but the perfume from the wild plants was so spicy that I was quite charmed, and thought of the sausage and the seasoning for the soup. There were lakes amidst the forest, the water was beautifully clear close at hand, but looking in the distance as black as ink. There were white swans upon the lake. I mistook them at first for foam, they lay so still; but when I saw them fly I recognised them. They, however, belong to the race of geese. No one can deny his kindred. I like mine, and I hastened to seek the field mice, who, truth to tell, know very little except what concerns their food; and it was just that on account of which I had travelled to a foreign country. That any one should think of making soup out of a sausage-stick seemed to them so extraordinary an idea, that it was speedily circulated through the whole wood; but that the problem should be solved they considered an impossibility. Little did I think then that the very same night I should be initiated into the process.
"It was midsummer; therefore it was that the woods scented so strongly, they said; therefore were the plants so aromatic in their perfume, the lake so clear, and yet so dark with the white swans upon them. On the borders of the forest, amidst three or four houses, was erected a pole as high as a mainmast, and around it hung wreaths and ribbons. This was the Maypole. Girls and young men danced round it, and sang to the accompaniment of the fiddler's violin. All went on merrily till after the sun had set, and the moon had risen, but I took no part in the festivity; for what had a little mouse to do with a forest ball? I sat down amidst the soft moss, and held fast my sausage-stick. The moon shone brightly on a place where there was a solitary tree surrounded by moss so fine--yes, I venture to say as fine as the Mice-King's skin--but it had a green tint, and its colour was very soothing to the eye. All at once I saw approaching a set of the most beautiful little people, so little that they would only have reached to my knee; they looked like men and women, but they were better proportioned. They called themselves Elves, and their garments were composed of the leaves of flowers, trimmed with the wings of gnats and flies--not at all ugly. They seemed as if they were searching for something--what I did not know; but when they came a little nearer to me their leader tapped my sausage-stick, and said, 'This is what we want; it is all ready, all prepared;' and he became more and more joyful as he gazed upon my walking-stick.