Once upon a time there was such a summer storm in the South, that all the trees and bushes bowed down their heads, and looked so very mournful, as though their whole heart had been made up of feelings. Only one apple tree stood upright, and that’s because he was bound to the ground with beautiful strong roots, which had been given to him by nature just for this express purpose.
His whole head was full of unripe green apples, and this was a great blessing; for when the moonlight above shines strong upon him—and that’s quite as well as though peeping had been allowed—thousands and thousands of little brown ants come creeping out of the dark, twisting furrows in the limber as soon as it begins to grow warm, move across a little bridge, which they fashion out of leaves in case they don’t find the road direct. They bring dew from the edge of the river, and they want to drink quite as much of it as they’ll hold, but they take care always to leave a drop or two, for they continually do battle against a little meadow ant, and that’s because they are such heavenly neighbors, that it’s too warm for even a little ant in their company; and they don’t want him to perish from excess of friendship.
Well, one day the sun was just going to bed, to preserve a little his usual warmth. He lay, as it said itself, quite ill. Annie, one of the apple children, happened to have an eye to spare and looked down; she saw the people’s sun on its last rays. “Oh! how pale and twisted his hacks are, and how his rich golden hairs are gone.” “That’s his best sleeping time,” said the linden flowers; while the apple buds bowed down their heads the whole night long. Annie, however, kept on looking, and something carried it so far, that she caught a burning nightingale, which wanted to go and sing to the sun; and that was forbidden.
“Don’t go to sleep,” said Annie, “and I won’t burn you.” “Burn me! oh, no!” said the nightingale; and when the fresh dew fell and spilled over the lively forest into the apple tree, it really went on singing even a whole linden leaf, some little bird clung to it, and has even gone so far as to vow that she for years had never met with a truer melodious voice. But Annie only grew red in the face, and then came the moon and said, “That has no significance, only keep on blooming, since the other sways; you have truth, at least.”
Well, now in autumn, all the other apples grew rosy red, and even Annie’s elder sister over beyond the fence, where the sun has very fiery height, blushed like a promiscuous girl. “Don’t look such a fine fellow,” said Annie. “Oh you have certainly mocking in your figures,” said sister Apple. “But I soon throw it off,” said Annie. “I feel here at least in a weak way how auxiliary an apple really is to people’s happiness. The knowledge itself gives one a foretaste of the hereafter. That’s why I like it so.” And Annie didn’t cease speaking sweet thoughts all day long such, as she would wished everything might have answered her; at length really early morale greyish twilight came, she sat quite stiff upright, and she was even silent—a sign of decay every apple knows.
Everybody in the apple tree was now very ill. The master in the apple orchard, too, who had no daughter. “What could he do without his daughter!” he said. Even the one apple tree which wanted to strut just before the storm—as it and Annie were well known above all—the rest of the trees drooped. Annie alone in the greyish twilight sat quite stout and serious, she was pure tranquillized loveliness. Suddenly she began.) But what did she sing? She sang it herself.