Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/405

 I uttered a fearful cry which awoke me, I was in a profuse perspiration, and nearly out of my senses. I arose from my bed with difficulty, and opened the window to refresh myself with a little fresh air. But what was again my terror in perceiving, in the moonlight, the fatal major dressed in his red coat, open a gate of the academy which led to the fields, and shut it again forcibly after him! I fell down in a fainting fit. When the morning came I related to our principal what had happened to me. He assured me at first that I had been dreaming; but as the major had not yet appeared, the morning being far advanced, we went to his chamber. The door was barricaded on the inside, and we had to force it open. We found the major lying on the floor, his eyes glaring, his mouth covered with bloody froth; he held his sword in a hand stiffened by death. No efforts could bring him to life."

The baron added nothing more to this recital. Ottmar, who had listened to him attentively, was meditating, with his face buried in his hands. Maria was quite tremulous with emotion. At this moment, the painter, Franz Bickert, an old friend of the family, who had noiselessly entered the room during the baron's narration, burst into a loud laugh, and said:—"Those are truly gay stories to relate before young girls before going to bed! As for myself, my friends, I have a system quite the opposite from our dear baron. As I know by experience that dreams are the fruit of sensations felt during the day, I always take care, before going to sleep, to drive away ail painful thoughts, and to amuse my mind by some joyful remembrance of past times. It is an excellent preventive against the nightmare. At most, my friends, these terrifying dreams which sometimes torment us, such as the illusion of falling from a tower, of being beheaded, and a thousand others more or less disagreeable, are the result of physical pain which reacts upon our moral faculties. This reminds me, I remember a dream in which I was present at an orgie. An officer and a student quarrelled, and threw glasses at each other's heads: I tried to separate them, but