Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/190

 At these words, I saw his lips contract into a smile. This appearing to me to be a good omen, I risked the conversation on the adventures of his life. I reached, by long turnings, that I considered very adroit, to the confidence so greedily hoped for, of the fatal winding up, and to lead to an avowal, I said to him suddenly:—It was then in a fit of fever that you killed your wife and child?

The thunder falling from heaven, would not have produced a like effect. Berthold dropped his brushes, and, after throwing on me a horrible look, raised his hands towards heaven and cried out:

"I am pure of the blood of my wife and my child. But if you say another word more, I will throw myself with you down to the floor of the church!"

At this threat, feeling very little reassured, and fearing that in a fit of remorse he might wish to kill himself, and draw me with him to the tomb, I rapidly turned the conversation.

"Good God!" exclaimed I, with all the assurance I could affect, "look Berthold, how that ugly yellow color runs down the wall!" And whilst master Berthold turned round to wipe off the color with his largest brush, I gained the ladder, to put myself out of the reach of the dangerous caprices of the Jesuit painter. Some hours after, I took leave of the professor Aloysius Walter, making him promise to keep me informed by letter, of what he could learn new concerning Berthold.

Six months after my journey, he wrote to me:

"Our strange artist has finished his reparations of the church, and put the last touches to the picture of the Virgin Mary, of which he has made a finished piece. Then he disappeared; and as two days after his departure they found his hat and stick on the banks of the river O, everybody here believes that the poor devil put an end to his misery by suicide. Pray for him."