Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/406

 in the struggle I feel myself badly wounded in the hand, the pain of which awakes me,—my hand was really bleeding, for I had just scratched it with a large pin which was stuck in my coverlid. I have had at other times frightful dreams, and"

"Ah! I beg of you," exclaimed Maria, "spare me the recital of it, for you will torture me all night long"

"No!" said Bickert, "there is no escape. You must know that in a dream I was invited to a brilliant tea party at the house of the princess Almaldasongi. As I reached the middle of the room clothed in my finest dress coat, I set about addressing her in a most flattering manner, when on throwing a complacent look upon my costume, I perceived that I had forgotten my breeches!"

An explosive laugh followed this outbreak of Bickert.—But without leaving his auditory time to recollect themselves, the joyous artist continued:—"Do you wish," said he, "that I should relate you a mishap still more humiliating? I dreamed, another night, that I was only twenty years of age, and that I was about dancing a quadrille with a beautiful lady. I had expended my last crown to improve the appearance of my last coat. I go, I mingle with the crowd, beautifully dressed and sparkling with jewels, that is clustering around the door of the saloon, when an accursed Spaniel dog opened the stove door before me, and said:—'Mr. Beauty, through this hole, if you please, you will take the trouble to pass!'

"Hold! last night, I dreamed that I had become a sheet of paper; an ignoble apprentice poet, armed with a badly mended goose quill, scratched me in all directions whilst writing upon my poor individual self his insipid rhymes blotted with erasures. Another time, I dreamed that a surgeon took off my limbs one at a time, as though I had been a mannikin, and cruelly amused himself with trying the effect produced by planting my feet in the middle of my back, or adapting my right arm to lengthen my left leg—Lastly"

But here the baron and his children were rolling on the