Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/108

 tinged with a sweet blush; and, as if some electric spark had pervaded her whole being, she sprang towards the harpsichord,—opened her lips,—she was about to sing, when Krespel drawing her back, and pushing me away, cried out in the voice of a stentor:—"Young man! young man! young man!"

Then suddenly resuming his former ceremonious manners, he added:

"I am truly too polite, my dear master student, to beg the devil to strangle you; but it is pretty late, as you see, and it is dark enough for you to break your neck without troubling me to throw you down stairs. So then, oblige me by going home, and keep in good remembrance your old friend, if—do you understand?—if by chance you should no longer find him at home."

At these words, he embraced me as at our first meeting, and led me out without giving me an opportunity to throw a last sad look at Antonia. Professor M was not backward in rallying me, and told me that I was forever scratched from the counsellor's books. I left H with a wounded soul; but, by degrees, absence and distance softened this violent grief; the image of Antonia, the remembrance of that heavenly song that I had been permitted to hear, became effaced, were veiled insensibly by a mysterious slumbering in my thoughts.

Two years later, I was travelling in the south of Germany. The city of H was again in my path; as I approached it, an agonized sensation weighed upon me; it was in the evening; the church spires appeared on the horizon in the blue mist which precedes the darkness of night; I could hardly breathe, I had to leave the carriage and continue the journey on foot. By degrees this sensation took a stranger character; I imagined that I heard in the air modulations of a sweet and fantastic song; then I distinguished voices that were singing a chant.

"What is that? what is that?" exclaimed I, in a frightened tone which surprised a passer.