Free Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen

been, and am.”
II. APART ASSIGNED
    He lay wakeful through many a night, shifting his males and females here and there in the play’s cast, as if they had been pieces in a choice game of chess. At length, except for one single figure, he had the whole distribution of parts on his fingers and was pleased with it. But an Ariel he had not yet found, and he tore his hair in despair over his inability. Already in his mind he had tried his best artists in the part and in exasperation had flung them out of it again, when one day his eye fell on a young girl who had recently become a member of the troupe, and in a couple of small parts had won modest applause.
    “My Lord and Judge,” Herr Soerensen at the same instant cried out in his heart, “where have I had my eyes? Here have I been on my knees, imploring heaven to send me a serviceable air-spirit! I have been on the point of losing all hope and giving up! And all the time the most exquisite Ariel the world has ever known has been walking up and down under my nose without my recognizing him!” So moved was he that he overlooked his pupil’s sex.
    “My girl,” he said to the young actress. “You are to play Ariel in
The Tempest
.”
    “Am I!” she cried.
    “Yes,” said Herr Soerensen.
    The girl to whom he was talking was big, with a pair ofclear, undaunted eyes, but with a peculiar reserved dignity in her manner. Herr Soerensen who, so far as the morals of his young actresses went, had preserved the high traditions of the Royal Copenhagen theatre, occasionally had noticed her just because she seemed difficult to approach. She was a pretty girl and to a chivalrous nature like that of Herr Soerensen there was something moving or pathetic in her face. Still no theatre man but one with the eyes of genius would ever have imagined her in the part of Ariel.
    “She is somewhat skinny,” Herr Soerensen thought, “because she has had to live on short commons, poor child. But it becomes her because the structure of her skeleton is exceptionally noble. If it be correct—as my Copenhagen director, of blessed memory, did hold forth to me—that woman is to man what poetry is to prose, then are the womenfolk we come across from day to day poems read aloud.—They’re read aloud with taste, and please the ear—or else they’re badly read, and grate and jar.—But this my gray-eyed lassie is a song.”
    “Now then, little one,” he said, as he lit one of the fat cigars which were the only luxury he allowed himself. “Now we two will set to work, and set to work in earnest. We are here to serve Will Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon. And we are not going to think of ourselves at all, for we are nothing at all in ourselves. You are prepared to forget everything for his sake?”
    The girl thought the matter over, blushed and said: “If only I am not too big.”
    Herr Soerensen looked her over observantly from head to foot and even walked round her once in order to become certain.
    “To hell with stones and pounds,” he burst out. “I could,
au contraire
, wish that there was more of you. For you arelight in yourself, in the way of a gas balloon: the more one fills into it the higher it will go. Besides, surely our William is man enough to do away with such a hackneyed regulation as the law of gravity.
    “And look at me now. I am a little man as I walk about on my dreary daily round. But do you think that once in the cloak of Prospero I shall look the same? Nay, the danger will then be that the stage will become too cramped for my stature; the rest of my cast will find it a bit of a tight fit. And when I order myself a new suit of clothes—which the Lord knows I need—the tailor who has had a seat in the pit will put up his price because he realizes that he will need to use extra material for my volume!
    “I am aware,” he continued after a long pause and in deep earnest, “that even among theatre managers there may be found those who have the heart—and the means—to let