“I had announced myself for to-day; you have hardly been able to wait so long—but all is well—you will take good counsel: exchange
your shadow again; it only waits your commands, and then turn back. You will be welcome in the forester’s garden; it was but a jest. Rascal, who has betrayed you, and who is a suitor to your betrothed, I will dispose of—the fellow is ripe.”
I stood there still, as if I were asleep—“Announced for to-day?”—I reckoned the time over again; it was so. I had erred in my calculations. I put my right hand on the bag in my bosom; he discovered my meaning, and drew back two paces.
“No, Sir Count, that is in good hands; that you may retain.” I looked on him with staring and inquiring eyes. He spoke: “May I ask for a trifling memento? Be so good as to sign this note.” The following words were on the parchment he held:
“I hereby promise to deliver over my soul to the bearer after its natural separation from my body.”
I looked with dumb astonishment, now on the grey unknown, and now on the writing. In the mean time he had dipped a new pen in a drop of my blood, which was flowing from a scratch made by a thorn in my hand. He handed the pen to me.
“Who are you, then?” I at last inquired.
“What does that matter?” he answered. “Don’t you see what I am?—a poor devil; a sort of philosopher or alchemist, who receives spare thanks for great favours he confers on his friends; one who has no enjoyment in this world, except a little experimentializing:—but sign, I pray—ay, just there on the right, Peter Schlemihl.”
I shook my head. “Forgive me, sir, for I will not sign.”—“Not!” replied he, with seeming surprise, “why not?”