She became fonder and fonder of mankind, and longed more and more to be able to live among them; their world seemed so infinitely bigger than hers; with their ships they could scour the ocean, they could ascend the mountains high above the clouds, and their wooded, grass-grown lands extended further than her eye could reach.  There was so much that she wanted to know, but her sisters could not give an answer to all her questions, so she asked her old grandmother, who knew the upper world well, and rightly called it the country above the sea.

‘If men are not drowned,’ asked the little mermaid, ’do they live for ever?  Do they not die as we do down here in the sea?’

‘Yes,’ said the old lady, ’they have to die too, and their lifetime is even shorter than ours.  We may live here for three hundred years, but when we cease to exist we become mere foam on the water and do not have so much as a grave among our dear ones.  We have no immortal souls; we have no future life; we are just like the green sea-weed, which, once cut down, can never revive again!  Men, on the other hand, have a soul which lives for ever, lives after the body has become dust; it rises through the clear air, up to the shining stars!  Just as we rise from the water to see the land of mortals, so they rise up to unknown beautiful regions which we shall never see.’

‘Why have we no immortal souls?’ asked the little mermaid sadly.  ’I would give all my three hundred years to be a human being for one day, and afterwards to have a share in the heavenly kingdom.’

‘You must not be thinking about that,’ said the grandmother; ’we are much better off and happier than human beings.’

’Then I shall have to die and to float as foam on the water, and never hear the music of the waves or see the beautiful flowers or the red sun!  Is there nothing I can do to gain an immortal soul?’

‘No,’ said the grandmother; ’only if a human being so loved you that you were more to him than father or mother, if all his thoughts and all his love were so centred in you that he would let the priest join your hands and would vow to be faithful to you here, and to all eternity; then your body would become infused with his soul.  Thus, and only thus, could you gain a share in the felicity of mankind.  He would give you a soul while yet keeping his own.  But that can never happen!  That which is your greatest beauty in the sea, your fish’s tail, is thought hideous up on earth, so little do they understand about it; to be pretty there you must have two clumsy supports which they call legs!’

Then the little mermaid sighed and looked sadly at her fish’s tail.

‘Let us be happy,’ said the grandmother; ’we will hop and skip during our three hundred years of life; it is surely a long enough time; and after it is over we shall rest all the better in our graves.  There is to be a court ball to-night.’