Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/82

 and undoubtedly on account of our so singular a meeting, the conversation fell upon the metaphysics of happiness.

"By my faith," said the man from Chimborazo, "all my philosophy resolves itself into opposing patience to the thousand and one annoyances with which life is strown. We leave every day, and every where, a rag of our poor existence attached to some misfortune from which all human prudence would not have been able to preserve us."

"Faith, my dear, master," returned I, "I am an incontestible example of the truth of what you say; for this very night I have lost, by a very disagreeable accident, my hat and cloak, which remain hung up in the anteroom of the counsellor of justice."

At these words I saw my two neighbors start as if they had received a violent blow. The little man in brown threw towards me a savage look, in which there was something eminently diabolical. He jumped up into a chair, and re-adjusted carefully the red serge curtain with which the host had covered the mirror, whilst the citizen from Chimborazo snuffed the candles so as not to have the slightest shadow formed.

The conversation was with difficulty renewed, and fell upon the work of a young painter, then very much in vogue.

"His talent," said the tall man, "seizes the resemblance with admirable art. Nothing is wanting in his portraits but speech; to such a point that they would be taken, they are so animated, for a reflection stolen from a mirror."

"What stupidity!" said the little man in brown, moving about uneasily in his chair; "how can we suppose that the image reflected in a mirror can be stolen?—by whom, I ask you, unless the devil meddles with it? Yes, yes, Monsieur the wise man, Monsieur the great judge in matters of art, show me how, I pray you, to touch with my finger a reflection taken from the first mirror we find, and I will make a pirouette a hundred feet high!"

The tall thin man arose, and approaching the little man in brown, said—"Softly, my friend; do not be so sharp, or you