Section 154. NEW-YEAR’S EVE. III.
Reading edition
The countless lights rose higher and higher, and she now saw that they (es) were the stars, one of which fell[1], leaving a long line of light in the sky.
Some[2] one has (S. 29, N. 3) died just now, the girl said; for her old grandmother, who alone[3] had loved her, but who was now dead, had told her that[4] when a star fell, a soul took (App. §§ 28 and 30) its flight up to heaven.
She drew another match across the wall, and in the light it threw[5] around stood her old grandmother, so bright[6], so mild, and so loving.
“Grandmother,” the little girl cried, “oh, take me with you! I know that you will disappear as soon as the match is burnt out, just like the warm stove, the delicious roast goose, and the Christmas-tree!” And hastily she lighted the[7] rest of the matches that remained in the box, for she wished to keep[8] her grandmother with her as long as possible; and the matches burnt so brightly, that it was lighter than day. Never before[9] had she seen her grandmother so beautiful and so tall, and behold, she[10] now took the little girl in her arms, and[11], in radiance and joy, flew high, high up with her into the heaven, where she felt neither (kein) cold, nor (kein) hunger, nor (und kein) fear any more[12],—for she was with God.
But, in the corner between the two houses, in the cold morning air, lay the little girl with pale cheeks and smiling lips. She was frozen[13] to death during the last night of the Old Year. The first light of the New Year shone upon the dead body of the little girl with the matches, one[14] box of which was nearly consumed. “She must have tried to warm herself,” the people said; but no one knew of (von) the visions[15] she had had, or of the splendour that (S. 48, N. 6) surrounded her when she entered with her grandmother into the joys of a New Year.—After Hans Andersen, “Fairy Tales.”