Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/206

 forcibly compelled to tell you of the momentous life of Nathaniel. The singularity and marvellousness of the story filled my entire soul, but for that very reason and because, my reader, I had to make you equally inclined to endure oddity, which is no small matter, I tormented myself to begin the history of Nathaniel in a manner as inspiring, original and striking as possible. "Once upon a time," the beginning of every tale, was too tame. "In the little provincial town of S lived"—was somewhat better, as it at least prepared for the climax. Or should I dart at once medias in res, with "Go to the devil, cried the student Nathaniel, with rage and horror in his wild looks, when the barometer-seller, Giuseppe Coppola?" I had, indeed, already written this down, when I fancied that, in the wild looks of the student Nathaniel, I could detect something ludicrous, whereas the story is not comical at all. No form of language suggested itself to my mind, which even in the slightest degree seemed to reflect the coloring of the internal picture. I resolved that I would not begin it at all. So take, gentle reader, the three letters, which friend Lotharie was good enough to give me, as the sketch of the picture which I shall endeavor to color more and more as I proceed in my narrative. Perhaps, like a good portrait painter, I may succeed in catching many a form in such a manner, that you will find it is a likeness without having the original, and feel as if you had seen the person with your own corporeal eyes. Perchance, dear reader, you will believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all the poet can conceive, as it were in the dull reflection of a dimly polished mirror.

In order that that which is necessary in the first place to to know, may be made clearer, we must add to these letters the circumstance, that shortly after the death of Nathaniel's father, Clara and Lothaire, the children of a distant relative, who had likewise died, and left them orphans, were taken by Nathaniel's mother to her own home. Clara and Nathaniel formed a strong attachment for each other, and no one in the