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Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
Kapitel 5:
Advice from a caterpillar, Lewis Carroll, Seite 4 ( von 4 )
"Serpent, I say again!" repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued
tone, and added with a kind of sob, "I've tried every way, and nothing
seems to suit them!"
"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Alice.
"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried
hedges," the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; "but those
serpents! There's no pleasing them!"
Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying
anything more till the Pigeon had finished.
"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon;
"but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I haven't
had a wink of sleep these three weeks!"
"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed," said Alice, who was beginning
to see its meaning.
"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the
Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I
should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the
sky! Ugh, Serpent!"
"But I'm not a serpent, I
tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a - I'm a -"
"Well! What
are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you're trying to invent
something!"
"I - I'm a little girl," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she
remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.
"A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest
contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never
one with such a
neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I
suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!"
"I have
tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful child;
"but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know."
"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, why then
they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say."
This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or
two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, "You're looking for
eggs, I know that well enough;
and what does it matter to me wether you're a little girl or a serpent?"
"It matters a good deal to
me," said
Alice hastily; "but I'm not looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was,
I shouldn't want yours: I don't like
them raw."
"Well, be off, then!" said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled
down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she
could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now
and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she
still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very
carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes
taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down
to her usual height.
It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt
quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began
talking to herself, as usual. "Come, there's half my plan done now! How
puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one
minute to another! However, I've got back to my right size: the next thing is,
to get into that beautiful garden - how
is that to be
done, I wonder?" As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place,
with a little house in it about four feet high. "Whoever lives
there," thought Alice, "it'll never do to come upon them
this size: why,
I should frighten them out of their wits!" So she began nibbling at the
right-hand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had
brought herself down to nine inches high.
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