Chap­ter III begins with a qui­et moment in the night, as a watch­man per­form­ing his rou­tine rounds notices a pair of galosh­es left care­less­ly by a door. Believ­ing they must belong to the offi­cer across the hall, he picks them up with casu­al inter­est. Tempt­ed by their warmth and soft lin­ing, he slips them on, unaware that these are no ordi­nary shoes. No soon­er does he begin to muse about the pleas­ant life of the lieu­tenant than a strange trans­for­ma­tion begins. Sud­den­ly, he finds him­self no longer clad in his coarse coat, but dressed ele­gant­ly, sur­round­ed by refined fur­nish­ings, and inhab­it­ing a life far from his own. Yet almost instant­ly, the ease he imag­ined begins to unrav­el. The lieutenant’s lifestyle is filled with silent bur­dens. There are debts, roman­tic dis­ap­point­ments, and the con­stant need to main­tain a pol­ished exte­ri­or. What had once seemed envi­able now feels frag­ile and exhaust­ing.

As he lives through the lieutenant’s day, the watch­man becomes sen­si­tive to the unspo­ken sor­row behind the glam­our. He lis­tens to poems writ­ten in long­ing and reads let­ters nev­er sent. These small tokens of pain leave an imprint on him. In them, he sens­es a yearn­ing not so dif­fer­ent from his own. It turns out that the lieutenant’s charm and social priv­i­lege con­ceal a heavy heart. Despite appear­ances, there is a sense of emptiness—love that can’t be claimed, joy that feels dis­tant, and hopes tied up in uncer­tain futures. The watch­man, now see­ing this from the inside, real­izes how mis­lead­ing sur­face impres­sions can be. No sta­tus exempts one from sad­ness. His respect for the lieu­tenant grows, but his desire to be him quick­ly fades. There is no per­fect life, only dif­fer­ent ver­sions of strug­gle.

Still wear­ing the mag­i­cal galosh­es, the watch­man casu­al­ly reflects on the stars above, won­der­ing what life on the moon might be like. In a blink, he’s no longer among city build­ings but stand­ing on lunar ground. The moon is cold and bright, filled with crea­tures that speak and rea­son but know lit­tle of Earth. The beings around him, the Selen­ites, are curi­ous and dis­tant. They pon­der the nature of Earth’s peo­ple, ques­tion­ing whether they feel emo­tion, under­stand art, or val­ue wis­dom. The watch­man, over­whelmed by the strange world and the philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions posed, strug­gles to make sense of his sur­round­ings. He finds their log­ic odd­ly detached, their curios­i­ty unset­tling. Through their con­ver­sa­tions, he real­izes how deeply human expe­ri­ence is tied to imper­fec­tion and feel­ing. The moon may be fas­ci­nat­ing, but it is not home.

Among the Selen­ites, the watch­man begins to feel like a sub­ject under a micro­scope. His heart miss­es the sounds of the city and the sub­tle com­forts of famil­iar rou­tines. Even the trou­bles of his old life now seem more pre­cious. He longs not for grandeur or celes­tial knowl­edge, but for some­thing warm, known, and ground­ed. The far­ther he moves from his for­mer life, the more he sees its hid­den val­ue. This long­ing leads to a qui­et wish for return. The moment the thought forms, the mag­ic responds. The moon fades. The night air of Copen­hagen returns, and he is back on his usu­al path, lantern in hand. There’s no applause, no vis­i­ble change—but every­thing inside him is dif­fer­ent.

Back in his own shoes, the watch­man takes a deep breath. The night no longer feels dull or unevent­ful. His mod­est job, once dis­missed as tedious, now car­ries a sense of pur­pose. He doesn’t envy the lieu­tenant. Nor does he crave celes­tial mys­ter­ies. What he val­ues now are the sim­ple truths of his life—the peo­ple he greets, the ground he walks on, and the small moments he used to ignore. The galosh­es showed him entire worlds, yet the great­est dis­cov­ery was the mean­ing found in his own. That sense of clar­i­ty can­not be pur­chased or wished into being. It has to be lived, seen, and under­stood through con­trast.

This tale offers a gen­tle but pro­found reflec­tion on human desire. Often, we wish to trade lives, to escape our own trou­bles by imag­in­ing that some­one else’s bur­dens are lighter. But Ander­sen reminds us that every life, no mat­ter how pol­ished, car­ries its shad­ows. The jour­ney through anoth­er’s real­i­ty or an oth­er­world­ly place can be illu­mi­nat­ing, but it is rarely an escape. The les­son isn’t that dream­ing is wrong—it’s that ful­fill­ment often grows from know­ing where you stand and learn­ing to val­ue it. What the watch­man expe­ri­ences is not just adven­ture but insight. He is shown that hap­pi­ness doesn’t lie in trans­for­ma­tion, but in per­spec­tive.

Through the fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments of mag­ic footwear and moon trav­el, Ander­sen sub­tly weaves a very human mes­sage. The heart is not nour­ished by nov­el­ty alone but by appre­ci­a­tion. In reveal­ing the qui­et dig­ni­ty of the ordi­nary, he invites read­ers to look at their own lives with gen­tler eyes. We are often sur­round­ed by enough, but we are trained to want more. This chap­ter unpacks that ten­sion and leaves read­ers with a truth that res­onates beyond fairy tales. Mag­ic may change your form, but only aware­ness changes your life.