Everybody laughed at him, and the master, astonished at such amazing stupidity, as he called it, made Johannes remain after school to write out this sentence a hundred times: "The age of my aunt is very great, the age of the sun is greater; but the greatest thing of all is my amazing stupidity." His schoolmates had all disappeared, and Johannes sat alone writing in the great school-room. The sun shone gaily in, lighting up a thousand motes on the way, and forming on the white-washed walls great splashes of light which, with the passing hours, crept slowly forward. The teacher had gone away, and shut the door behind him with a bang. Johannes was already on the fifty-second "age of my aunt," when a nimble little mouse, with silky ears, and little black beads of eyes, came out of the farthest corner of the room and ran without a sound along by the wall. Johannes kept as still as death, not to frighten away the pretty creature. It was not afraid, and came up close to where he was sitting. Then, peering round a moment with its bright keen little eyes, it sprang lightly up--one jump to the bench, the second to the desk on which Johannes was writing. "Hey!" said he, half to himself, "but you are a plucky little mouse!" "I do not know whom I should be afraid of," said a mite of a voice; and the mouse showed his little teeth as if he were laughing. Johannes had already become used to many wonderful things, but this made him open his eyes wide. In the middle of the day, and in school! It was past all belief. "You need not be afraid of me," said he, softly--for fear of startling the mouse. "Have you come from Windekind?" "I came just to say to you that the teacher is quite right, and that you roundly deserved your punishment." "But Windekind said that the sun was our father." "Yes, but it was not necessary to let anybody else know it. What have human beings to do with it? You must never speak of such delicate matters to them--they are too coarse. A human being is an astonishingly cruel and clumsy creature, who would prefer to seize and trample to death whatever came within his reach. We mice have had experience of that." "But, Mousie, why do you stay in this neighborhood? Why do you not go far away--to the woods?" "Alas! we cannot do that now. We are too much accustomed to town food. Provided one is prudent and always takes care to avoid their traps and their heavy feet, it becomes possible to endure human beings. Fortunately, we still retain our nimbleness. The worst of it is that human beings help out their own clumsiness by covenanting with the cat. That is a great calamity, but in the woods there are owls and hawks, and we should all certainly perish there. Now, Johannes, remember my advice. There comes the teacher!"