Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/81

 When he had finished smoking his pipe, he took from a tin case a large quantity of plants, which he spread out upon the table, and set himself to examine them one after another with eminent satisfaction. For the purpose of entering into conversation with him, I complimented him on the knowledge that he appeared to possess of botany. He smiled in a strange manner, and answered—"Those plants that you see have no real value except their rarity. I gathered them myself on the sides of the summit of Chimborazo.

As I was about asking him a new question, some one knocked again at the door of the inn. The landlord went to open it, and a voice cried from without—"Do me the kindness to cover your mirror."

"Ah!" said the host, Gen. Suvarow arrives very late this evening."

At the same time a little dried-up man, rolled up in the folds of a brown cloak, entered skippingly into the tavern, and came and seated himself between the traveller from Chimborazo and myself.

"How cold it is out," said he; "and what a smoke there is here! I should like to have a pinch of snuff."

I hastened to offer him my steel snuff-box, polished like a mirror—a pledge of friendship very dear to me. Hardly had the little man thrown his eyes upon it, than he started back, and cried out, whilst pushing it with both hands—"To the devil with your accursed mirror!"

I looked at him in a stupor. All his features were convulsed, and he was pale as death. I did not dare to ask him the cause of the uneasiness that he felt. I do not know what of fantastic and infernal seemed to me to be attached to this little man in brown. I approached my friend from Chimborazo, and we continued our conversation on botany. Whilst conversing, I looked from time to time at the little man with anxiety, and seeing his face change every minute, an icy shuddering ran through my veins. From phrase to phrase,