Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/177

 which he destroyed by a running fire of paradoxes, each more strange than the other. When his arm was fatigued more than his tongue, he descended from his scaffolding. The dawn of day began to pierce the shadows, and the light of the wax candles began to grow pale. I cast a last look at Berthold's painting; it was truly something admirable;—"You are," said I to him, "a strange man, and your work of a night is a thousand times more perfect than the fruits of long studies by our first masters. But one feels, in looking at it, that a burning fever guides your pencil; you are wearing out your strength."

"Good God!" exclaimed Berthold, "these hours of labor which are taking away my days are the only happy ones that I count in my sorrowful life."

"What!" said I, "can you be tormented by any grief, or pursued by the remembrance of any misfortune?"

Berthold gathered together, without saying a word, all his utensils; he then extinguished the wax candles which had furnished him with light, and, coming back to me, he pressed my hand forcibly, and said, with a fixed look, and in a voice trembling with emotion:—"Would you be able to live a single moment without suffering, if your soul was burthened with the remembrance of an ineffacable crime?"

I felt myself chilled with fear on hearing these words, which opened to me revelations hidden from sight in the life of this man. The first light of the rising sun illuminated his face with its ruddy beams, which brought out with more fascination his supernatural paleness. I dared not question him more, and he went out of the church staggering like a drunken man, through a little door which communicated with the college yard.

When I found again the professor Aloysius Walter, I hastily related to him my adventure of the past night, the emotion occasioned by which was still impressed on my countenance. He listened to me coldly, and ended by laughing at what he called my sensibility. However, as I earnestly 15*