Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/90

82 and street-stillness; nothing moving except (probably from the wind), on the distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged.

Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I: therefore I again wrapped myself in my passive lit de justice and air-bed, and waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.

In a few minutes, the coverlid, the infernal Faust’s-mantle, again began flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker again lifted me up. Accursed hour!—I should beg to know whether, in the whole of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who, in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry? I lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid: and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little to the Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the game; but I turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud: “To thee I commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy weak servant; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf,”—a promise which shall be kept nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid treachery and trick.

My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded little whether a guest’s bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition; for the bed-clothes at last literally marched off to the door of the room.

Now was the moment to rise into the sublime; and to trouble myself no longer about aught here below, but softly to devote myself to death. “Snatch me away,” cried I, and, without thinking, cut three crosses; “quick, dispatch me, ye