Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/80



Rushing along from street to street like a wild horse, I arrived in front of the Hunter's Tavern. A group of joyous companions came out of it, with gay songs and noisy bursts of laughter. Devoured by a burning thirst, I went into the inn, and let myself drop, all out of breath, into a seat.

"What shall I serve you with, sir?" said the landlord, taking off his foxskin cap.

"A mug of beer and some tobacco," I cried.

Thanks to the cherished liquid of our good Germans, I found myself soon in a state of inert satisfaction, so profound that the devil, who had bewitched me all that evening, judged that he would be doing wisely to put off until the morrow the next trick that he was preparing for me. My ball dress, joined to my singular physiognomy, must have produced an incredible effect on my pot-house neighbors. I imagined that the landlord was about to question me, when a vigorous hand knocked on the shutters of the inn, whilst a voice cried out—"Open, open, it is I!"

Hardly was the door partly opened, (for it was then an unseasonable hour,) when a tall person, who appeared to be nothing but skin and bones, slid into the room, trying to walk with his back against the wall. He came and seated himself in front of me. The landlord put two lights on the table. This new comer had a distinguished but melancholy face. He asked, as I had done, for a pot of beer and a pipe of tobacco; then he appeared to busy himself in his reflections, at the same time blowing out enormous clouds of smoke, which, mixed with mine, enveloped us in a few instants in an atmosphere of narcotic fog. I contemplated him, without saying a word, through this cloud. His black hair, parted on the forehead, fell back in curls, after the style of the heads of Rubens. He wore a straight frock coat, ornamented with frogs, and what surprised me not a little, he had put on over his boots large furred slippers.