Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/319

302 Paul are evidently lost upon this translator; and through an exceedingly imperfect knowledge of the German language, apparently of its very accidence, even the grammatical sense is not always faithfully given. We might adduce, if it were worth the while, numberless instances in justification of these remarks; one passage may suffice. Walt in his capacity as notary is called upon to draw up the last will and testament of Flitte, a runagate, who, to avoid his creditors, has lodged himself in the keeper's apartments in the top of the church-tower, and, feigning deadly sickness for fraudulent ends, has recourse to the comedy of making his will. For this purpose he employs the single-hearted Walt, whom he insists, in spite of his remonstrances, on including in the number of his legatees. After the execution of the document Jean Paul thus continues the story:—

"It was a bitter pang to Walt, to part from the poor merry bird, who was leaving him some of his feathers and golden eggs, and to see him already fluttering, half-plucked, in the talons of the owl of death. Heering lighted him and all the witnesses down. ' It bodes me,' said the keeper, 'he will not get over the night; I have my own curious tokens. But to-morrow morning I'll hang out my handkerchief from the tower if he is actually gone.' Ghastly was the descent down the high-step ladders, through the vacant dank chambers of the tower, which contained nothing but stairs. The heavy stroke of the iron-pendulum, like the mowing to and fro of the iron scythe of time, suspended from the clock,—the wind without beating against the tower,—the lonesome noise of the nine living footsteps,—the strange gleams of light which the lantern, swinging in the keeper's hand, cast down from the highest gallery into the pews below, in every one of which a livid corpse might be devoutly sitting, as well as one standing in the pulpit, and the apprehension that at every step Flitte, having breathed his last, might be flitting through the church in a pallid glance,—all this chased the notary like a frightful dream through the dusky land of shadows and of terrors, so that he was as one arising from the dead, when out of the narrow tower he stepped out below the open starry sky, where above him eye was twinkling to eye, and life to life, and disclosing the world in deeper and deeper depth."-Flegeljahre, s. W., t. xxxiv. pp. 36, 37.

This passage the American translator has rendered as follows :—

"It was sad and bitter to Walt to bid farewell to the poor pleasure-loving bird, who would have left him both feathers and golden eggs.