Euchar found him stretched on his sofa, with his head bound up, pale and worn from sleeplessness.
"Is it you?" he cried, in a feeble voice, stretching an arm towards him: "is it you, my noble friend? Ah! you have some sympathy for my sufferings. At all events, let me tell you what I have gone through, and then say whether you think all is over with me, or not."
"Things did not turn out quite as you expected at the ball, I suppose," said Euchar.
Ludwig heaved a deep sigh.
"Was the lovely Victorine a little unkind?" inquired Euchar. "Didn't she behave to you quite as you expected?"
"I offended her," answered Ludwig, in the most funereal tones, "to an extent, and in a manner, which she can never forgive."
"Good heavens!" cried Euchar; "this is very distressing. How did it happen? Please to let me hear."
Ludwig, after heaving a profound sigh, and quoting some verses of appropriate poetry, went on, in a voice of profound melancholy:
"Yes, Euchar. As the mysterious whirring of the wheels of a clock tells me that it is going to strike the hour, warnings go before coming misfortunes. On the very night before the ball I had an awful, a horrible dream. I thought I was at the ball, and when I was going to begin dancing, I suddenly found that I could not move my feet from the floor. And I saw in the mirror, to my horror, that instead of the well-looking nether extremities which nature has provided me with, I was dragging about under my body, the gouty old legs of the Consistorial President, with all their wrappings and bandages. And while I had to stick to the floor in this terrible manner, lo and behold! the Consistorial President, with Victorine in his arms, whirling along in a Laendler, lightly and gracefully as any bird. But the point of the thing was, that he sniggered at me, with the most insulting style of sneering laughter, and said he had won my legs from me at picquet.
"I awoke, as you may imagine, bathed in a perspiration of anguish. Still sunk in thought over this horrible vision of the night, I must needs set the cup of almost boiling chocolate to my lips, and burn them to that extent, that you may see the mark still, although I have rubbed on as much pomade as I could. Now I know that you don't take much interest in other people's troubles, so I shall say nothing about the numerous fateful events which destiny dogged my steps with all day yesterday, and merely tell you that when it came to be time to dress in the evening, two stitches burst out of one of my silk stockings--two of my waistcoat buttons came off--as I was getting into the carriage to go to the ball, I let my Wellington get into the mud, and at last, in the carriage itself, when I wanted to tighten the patent buckles of my pumps, I found, to my intense annoyance, that my idiot of a servant had put on two which we're not a pair! I was obliged to go home again, and lost a good half hour. However, Victorine came to me in all the glory of her beauty and delightsomeness. I asked her for the next dance. It was a Laendler, we started off together. I was in heaven. But in a moment I felt the spite of adverse fortune."