"Bosswinkel! here, as you see me, in these self-same clothes, with 'Thomasius on Diplomatic Acumen' in my pocket, I come straight here from Spandau Street, where I have been running up and down, and backwards and forwards, ever since the clock struck twelve last night. I have not set a foot across my own doorstep, or seen the sight of a bed, nor have I closed an eye the whole livelong night!"
And he told the Commissionsrath all that had happened to him from the time when he first came across the mysterious and fabulous sort of Goldsmith, till he had made his escape from the winehouse as fast as he could, in his terror at the sorcery which was going on there.
"Tussmann, old fellow," said Bosswinkel, "I see what it is, you're not accustomed to liquoring up. You go to your bed every night at eleven o'clock, after a couple of glasses of beer, and last night you went and took more liquor than was good for you, long after you ought to have been asleep; no wonder you had a lot of funny dreams."
"What!" Tussmann cried; "you think I was asleep, do you, and dreaming? Don't you know I'm pretty well up in the subject of sleep and dreams. I'll prove to you out of Rudow's 'Theory of Sleep,' and explain to you, what sleep really is, and that people can sleep without dreaming at all; and as for what dreaming is, you will know as well as I do, if you will read the 'Somnium Scipionis,' and Artimidorus's great work on Dreams, and the Frankfort Dreambook; but, you see, you never read anything and that's why you are always making such a hash of everything you have to do with."
"Now, my dear old man," the Commissionsrath replied, "don't you go and get yourself into a state of excitement. I can see, easily enough, how you may have allowed yourself to break out of bounds a bit last night, and then have got somehow into company with a set of mountebanks, who got the better of you when you had more liquor than you could carry; but what I cannot make out is, why, in all the earth, when you had once got out of the place, you didn't go straight home to your bed, like a reasonable man? Whatever for did you go wandering about the streets?"
"Oh, Bosswinkel!" lamented Tussman, "my old friend! my chum at the Grey Friars!--don't you go and insult me by base insinuations of that sort. Let me tell you that the infernal, diabolical enchantment which was practised upon me did not fairly commence till I got into the street. For, when I came to the Town-hall, every one of its windows was blazing with light, and there was music playing inside--a brass band, playing waltzes and so forth. How it came about I can't tell you; but, though I'm not a particularly tall man, I found that I was able to reach up on my tiptoes so that I could see in at the windows. And what did I see?--Oh, gracious powers of Heaven! whom did I see? Your daughter, Miss Albertine Bosswinkel, dressed as a bride, and waltzing like the very deuce (if I may permit myself such an expression) with a young gentleman! I thumped on the window; I cried out, 'Dearest Miss Bosswinkel, what are you doing? What sort of goings-on are those, here, at this time of the night?' But just as I was saying so, there came some horrible beast of a fellow down King Street, pulled my legs away from under me as he passed, and ran away from me, with them, in peals of laughter. As for me, wretched Clerk of the Privy Chancery that I am, I plumped down flat into the filthy mud of the gutter. 'Watchman!' I shouted, 'Police! patrol; guard, turn out! Come here!--look sharp!--Stop the thief!--stop him!--he's got both my legs!' But upstairs in the Town-hall everything had suddenly grown pitch-dark, and my voice died away in the air. I was getting desperate, when the man came back, and, as he flew by me like a mad creature, chucked my legs back to me, throwing them right into my face. I then picked myself up, as speedily as, in my state of discomfiture, I could, and ran to Spandau Street. But when I got to my own door (with my latchkey in my hand), there was I--I, myself, standing there already, staring at me, with the same big black eyes which you see in my head at this moment. Starting back in terror, I fell against a man, who seized me with a strong grip of his arms. By the halbert he was carrying, I thought he was the watchman; so I said, 'Dearest watchman!--worthy man!--please to drive away that wraith of Clerk of the Privy Chancery Tussmann from that door there, so that I, the real Tussmann, may get into my lodgings.' But the man growled out, 'Why, Tussmann! you're surely out of your senses!' in a hollow voice; and I saw it wasn't the watchman at all, but that terrible Goldsmith who had got me in his arms. Drops of cold perspiration stood on my forehead. I said: 'Most respected Herr Professor, pray do not take it ill that I should have thought you were the watchman, in the dark. Oh, Heavens! call me whatever you choose; call me in the most uncourteous manner 'Tussmann,' without the faintest adumbration of a title at all; or even 'My dear fellow!' I will overlook anything. Only rid me of this terrible enchantment--as you can, if you choose. 'Tussmann!' he said, in that awful hollow voice of his, 'nothing shall annoy you more, if you will take your solemn oath, here where we stand, to give up all idea of marrying Miss Albertine Bosswinkel.' Commissionsrath! you may fancy what I felt when this atrocious proposition was made to me. I said: 'Dearest Herr Professor! you make my very heart bleed. Waltzing is a horrible and improper thing; and Miss Albertine Bosswinkel was waltzing upstairs there--in her wedding-dress as my bride into the bargain--with some young gentleman or other (I don't know who he was), in a manner that made my sight and my hearing abandon me, out and out. But still, for all that, I cannot let that exquisite creature go. I must cleave to her, whatever happens, come what will.' The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when that awful, abominable Goldsmith gave me a sort of shove which made me begin immediately to spin round and round, and, as if impelled by some irresistible power, I went waltzing up and down Spandau Street, with my arms clasped about a broom-handle--not a lady, but a besom, which scratched my face. And all the time there were invisible hands beating my back black and blue. More than that; all round me, wherever I turned, the place was swarming with Tussmanns waltzing with their arms round besoms. At last I fell down exhausted, and lost my consciousness. When the light shone into my eyes in the morning--oh, Bosswinkel, share my terror!--I found myself sitting up on the horse of the Elector's statue, in front of him, with my head on his cold, iron breast. Luckily the sentry must have been asleep, for I managed to get down without being seen, at the risk of my life, and got away. I ran to Spandau Street; but I got so terribly frightened again that I was obliged to come on here to you."
"Now, now, old fellow!" Bosswinkel said, "do you think I'm going to believe all this rubbish? Did ever anybody hear of magical phenomena of this sort happening in our enlightened city of Berlin?"
"Now," said Tussmann, "don't you see what a quagmire of ignorance and error the fact that you never read anything plunges you into? If you had read Hafftitz's Chronicon, you would have seen that much more extraordinary things of the kind have happened here. Commissionsrath, I go so far as to assert, and to feel quite convinced, that this Goldsmith is the very Devil, in propria persona."
"Pooh, pooh!" said Bosswinkel, "I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense. Think a little. Of course, what happened was that you got screwed, and then went and climbed up on to the Elector's statue."
The tears came to Tussmann's eyes as he strove to disabuse Bosswinkel's mind of this idea; but Bosswinkel grew graver and graver, and at last said: