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The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. by Hans Christian Andersen
page 10 of 91 (10%)

"No, no!" sounded back the echo of the church-bells through the
mountain, like a sweet melody; it was like speech, an harmonious
chorus of all the spirits of nature, mild, good, full of love, for it
came from the daughters of the sun-beams, who encamped themselves
every evening in a circle around the pinnacles of the mountains, and
spread out their rose-coloured wings, that grow more and more red as
the sun sinks, and glow over the high Alps; men call it, "the Alpine
glow." When the sun is down, they enter the peaks of the rocks and
sleep on the white snow, until the sun rises, and then they sally
forth. Above all, they love flowers, butterflies, and men, and amongst
them they had chosen little Rudy as their favourite.

"You will not catch him! You shall not have him!" said they. "I have
caught and kept stronger and larger ones!" said the Ice-Maiden.

Then the daughters of the Sun sang a lay of the wanderer, whose cloak
the whirlwind had torn off and carried away. The wind took the
covering, but not the man. "Ye children of strength can seize, but not
hold him; he is stronger, he is more spirit-like, than we; he ascends
higher than the Sun, our mother! He possesses the magic word, that
restrains wind and water, so that they are obliged to obey and serve
him!"

So sounded cheerfully the bell-like chorus.

And every morning the sun-beams shone through the tiny window in the
grandfather's house, on the quiet child. The daughters of the
sun-beams kissed him, they wished to thaw him, to warm him and to
carry away with them the icy kiss, which the queenly maiden of the
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