Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/86

 minutes after I was sleeepingsleeping [sic] like one of the blessed, on the half of the bed that he gave up to me.

An hour before day I was awakened by the shining of a brilliant light. On opening my eyes, I perceived the little man, half dressed, very busily employed writing by the light of two candles. His grotesque appearance gave me the vertigo. I fell into a kind of hallucination, which transported me to the house of the counsellor, seated on a sofa, as the night before, near Julia. The counsellor appeared to me to be a sugar doll in the midst of bushes loaded with fruit, and tufted with roses. Julia offered me, as before, a glass, from which sparkled, like phosphorus, little blue flames. Then some one pulled me from behind; it was this very little man in brown, who whispered into my ear—"Do not drink! do not drink!"

"What are you afraid of?" said Julia; "are you not wholly mine, you and your reflection?"

I took the glass from her hand, and was about drinking, when the little man in brown, metamorphosed into a squirrel, jumped upon my shoulder, and repeated to me—"Do not drink! do not drink!" and with his floating tail he tried to extinguish the little blue flames.

Julia spoke again—"Why," said she to me, "dost thou refuse to take this glass, oh my beloved? This little flame, pure and brilliant, that thou seest burning on its surface, is the emblem of the first kiss of our ancient love."

At the sound of this voice so sweet, I felt moved and transported. I was about pressing to my heart this idolized woman, when Peter Schlemihl passed between us, and began to laugh in our faces. At the same time all the persons who filled the room of the counsellor, appeared to me to be changed into little sugar figures, and all commenced jumping about and buzzing like bees, and climbing around me like a parcel of children.

I awoke; it was broad day; noon sounded from the belfry of the neighboring church; and I asked myself, whilst