英语有声儿童童话故事 海的女儿 第20章

Then the little mermaid sighedand looked sorrowfully at her fish’s tail. “Let us be happy,” said the oldlady, “and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have tolive, which is really quite long enough. After that we can rest ourselves allthe better. This evening we are going to have a court ball.”

It was one of thosesplendid sights which we can never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling ofthe large ballroom were of thick but transparent crystal. Many hundreds ofcolossal shells,—some of a deep red, others of a grass green,—with blue fire inthem, stood in rows on each side. These lighted up the whole salon, and shonethrough the walls so that the sea was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes,great and small, swam past the crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowedwith a purple brilliance, and on the others shone like silver and gold. Throughthe halls flowed a broad stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaidsto the music of their own sweet singing.