Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/265

 the old bravo, who served Capuzzi as watch-dog, and who had followed them at a distance, as ordered, from Ripetta street to Formica's theatre, and during the return. Michael, whose former trade rendered him less superstitious, seeing the phantoms and devils appear, had run to call the guard at the People's Gate; but he did not return with the reinforcement until after doctor Splendiano had been carried off. One of the young painters had seen Michael carrying away the fainting Marianna in his arms; and Pasquale Capuzzi, profiting by the confusion, had followed them with as quick a step as his trembling legs, and the weight of the unfortunate Pitichinaccio, who clung to his neck in despair, would allow.

On the morrow was found, near the pyramid of Cestius, the doctor Splendiano, rolled up into a ball like a porcupine, and snoring in the recesses of his wig like a bird in a downy nest; it was necessary to shake him to arouse him from his stupor. On awaking, he raved, and a thousand arguments were used to prove to him that he had not quitted this humble planet, and that Rome still enjoyed the favor of possessing him. When they had very carefully transported him to his own house, he gave thanks to all the saints for his deliverance from the devil's claws; then throwing out of the window ointments, pills, opiates, elixirs, phials and boxes of all kinds, he burnt his prescriptions and books of medicine, and swore that he would, for the future, only treat his patients with the assistance of magnetism;—the secret of which he had from an old physician, who died in the full odor of sanctity, and who, if he never cured his patients, at least, before sending them on their long journey, offered them a foretaste of the joys of paradise, in a marvellous ecstasy which he knew how to occasion in place of a last agony.

"Salvator," said Antonio to his friend, when they had, the next day, retired to the studio at Bergognona street; "Salvator, I have no more patience left, nor respect to show. I must make my way forcibly into this rascal, Capuzzi's house, kill him if he resists me. and carry off Marianna!"