When Christmas time approached, quite young trees were felled, sometimes trees which were neither so old nor so large as this Fir Tree, that never rested, but always wanted to go away. These beautiful young trees kept all their branches; they were put upon wagons, and horses dragged them away out of the wood. "Where are they all going?" asked the Fir Tree. "They are not greater than I--indeed, one of them was much smaller. Why do they keep all their branches? Whither are they taken?" "We know that! We know that!" chirped the Sparrows. "Yonder in the town we looked in at the windows. We know where the fir trees go. We have looked in at the windows and have seen that they are planted in the middle of a warm room and dressed up in the greatest splendor with the most beautiful things--gilt apples, honey-cakes, playthings, and many hundreds of candles." "And then?" asked the Fir Tree, trembling through all its branches. "And then? what happens then?" "Why, we have not seen anything more. But it was wonderful!" "Perhaps I may be destined to this glorious end one day!" cried the Fir Tree, rejoicing. "That is even better than traveling across the sea. How I long for it! If it were only Christmas! Now I am great and grown up like the rest who were led away last year. Oh, if I were only on the wagon! If I were only in the warm room amidst all the pomp and splendor! And then? Yes, then something even better will come, something far more charming, else why should they adorn me so? There must be something grander, something greater still to come; but what? Oh! I'm suffering, I'm longing! I don't know myself what is the matter with me!" "Rejoice in us," said Air and Sunshine. "Rejoice in thy fresh youth here in the woodland." The Fir Tree did not rejoice at all, but it grew and grew; winter and summer it stood there, green, dark green. The people who saw it said, "That's a handsome tree!" and at Christmas time it was felled before any of the others. The axe cut deep into its marrow, and the tree fell to the ground with a sigh; it felt a pain, a sensation of faintness, and could not think at all of happiness, for it was sad at parting from its home, from the place where it had grown up; it knew that it should never again see the dear old companions, the little bushes and the flowers all around, perhaps not even the birds. The Tree came to itself only when it was unloaded in a yard, with other trees, and heard a man say: "This one is famous; we want only this one!"