Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/101

 arrange itself, without dispute or embarrassment. At dawn on the following day, when the master-mason arrived at the place indicated with his workmen, he found a trench traced in a regular square, and Krespel said to him:—"It is here that the foundations of my house are to be dug; then you will raise the four enclosing walls until I judge that they are high enough."

"Without windows or doors, and without partition walls? Do you dream?" exclaimed the master-mason, looking at Krespel as a madman.

"Have the kindness to do what I tell you, my good man," coldly replied the counsellor, "everything shall have its turn."

The certainty of being generously paid could alone determine the master to undertake this construction, which seemed absurd to him; the workmen went gaily to work, laughing inwardly at the expense of the proprietor; they worked day and night, drinking and eating well at the cost of the counsellor, who seldom left them. The four walls arose, constantly, until one morning Krespel cried out:—"That is enough!" The workmen stopped immediately like true automatons, and, leaving their scaffolding, came and ranged themselves in a circle around Krespel, and by their joking looks each one seemed to say to him: "Master, what are we to do?"

"Room there! room," exclaimed the counsellor, after several moments' reflection; and, running to the other end of the garden, he came back again counting his steps, towards his square of walls; then shaking his head discontentedly, he renewed this pantomime on each face of the enclosure, until at last, as if struck with a sudden idea, he rushed with his head down towards a point in the wall, crying out as loud as he could:—"Here, here, my boys, take the pickaxe and dig me a door!" He sketched at the same time on the wall the exact dimension of the issue that he wanted. It was the affair of a moment. Then he entered the house, and smiled like a man charmed with his master-piece, when the master-mason observed to him that the four 9