Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/351

 Afterwards, as I said, (and this was, indeed, a great crime,) that I could not give any farther information, they let me go, and retired, bearing away the murdered man.

'I cannot describe adequately my feelings when I was thus left alone. It seemed to me as if I had been under the dominion of some hideous dream, from which I must now awake, and wonder that I could have been so deceived! Cardillac, the father of my beloved Madelon, transformed all at once into an ignominious, cruel-hearted assassin! Notwithstanding the violence with which he had conducted himself towards me, I could not have imagined any event more utterly impossible. Overpowered by these reflections, I had sunk down, almost fainting, on the stone steps of a house-door, and remained there unconscious how the time passed, till the morning broke, and all was light around me. Then I observed an officer's hat, richly adorned with lace and feathers, lying on the pavement, and the idea that Cardillac's abominable deed had been perpetrated on the very spot where I now rested, rose in my mind with such intolerable force, that I started up in horror, and ran as fast as I could to my own lodgings.

"Quite confused, and unable to follow out distinctly any one train of thought, I was sitting in my lonely apartment, when, to my great surprise, the door opened, and Rene Cardillac stood before me. 'In God's name,' said I. 'what can you want here?' Not attending to this, he came up, and smiled upon me with an expression of friendly confidence, which only increased my inward agitation and abhorrence. He drew in an old broken stool, and took his place beside me, while I was not able to lift myself from the straw couch on which I had lain down.

"'Now then, Olivier,' he began, 'how have you lived, and how are you spending your time? My conduct was, indeed, shamefully rash, when I turned you out of my house; fur every moment since then, I have deeply regretted your absence. At present, for example, I have some jewelry in