uses, functions and accidents of the voice

“I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. You want to get rid of your fish’s tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince may fall in love with you, and that you may have an immortal soul.” And then the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly, that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay there wriggling about. “You are but just in time,” said the witch; “for after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year. I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.” “Yes, I will,” said the little princess in a trembling voice, as she thought of the prince and the immortal soul. “But think again,” said the witch; “for when once your shape has become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father’s palace again; and if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake, and to love you with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another your heart will break, and you will become foam on the crest of the waves.” “I will do it,” said the little mermaid, and she became pale as death. “But I must be paid also,” said the witch, “and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm the prince with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the best thing you possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own blood must be mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.” “But if you take away my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what is left for me?” “Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the powerful draught.” “It shall be,” said the little mermaid. Then the witch placed her cauldron on the fire, to prepare the magic draught.

The voice imitator, who had been invited as the guest of the surgical society last evening, had declared himself - after being introduced in the Palais Pallavinci - willing to come with us to the Kahlenberg, where our house was always open to any artist whatsoever who wished to demonstrate his art there - not of course without a fee. We had asked the voice imitator, who hailed from Oxford in England but who had attended school in Landshut and had originally been a gunsmith in Berchtesgaden, not to repeat himself on the Kahlenberg but to present us something entirely different from what he had done in the surgical society; that is, to imitate quite different people from those he had imitated in the Palais Pallavinci, and he had promised to do this for us, for we had been enchanted with the program that he had presented in the Palais Pallavinci. In fact, the voice imitator did imitate voices of quite different people - all more or less well known - from those he had imitated before the surgical society. We were allowed to express our own wishes, which the voice imitator fulfilled most readily. When, however, at the very end, we suggested that he imitate his own voice, he said he could not do that.