The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

"Stupid fool that I am," she cried in French, "have I not got to do whatever Madame von G. bids me? I will keep perfectly calm. I will go on making their punch. I will listen to their ghost-stories without being in the least afraid."

"Bravo, angelic child," cried Dagobert. "My heroism has infected you, and the sweetness of your lips has inspired me. My imagination has unfolded new wings, and I feel ready to serve up the most awful events and mysteries from the 'Regno di Pianto.'"

"I thought we had done with this unpleasant subject," said Madame von G.

"Oh no, mother dear," cried Angelica eagerly; "please to let Dagobert go on! I am exactly like a child about those things. I don't know anything I so delight in as a nice ghost story--something that makes all one's flesh creep."

"Oh, how I do like that!" Dagobert cried. "Nothing is so utterly delightful in young ladies as their being tremendously superstitious, and easily frightened; and I should never dream of marrying a woman who was not terribly afraid of ghosts."

"You were saying a little while ago, dear Dagobert," said Moritz, "that we ought to guard ourselves against--or take care how we allow ourselves to get into--that dreamy state of awe which is the commencement of spirit-fear--the dread of the superhuman, the ghostly world. You have still got to explain to us the why."

"If there is, at the commencement of it, any real cause for that sense of awesomeness--which is at first so thoroughly blended up with the dreamily pleasurable--it by no means remains at that stage. Soon there supervenes a deadly fear--a horror which makes the hair stand on end; so that the said pleasurable feeling at the commencement would seem to be the fascination of temptation with which the Spirit World lures us on and ensnares us. We were talking of certain Nature-tones which are capable of explanation, and of their fearsome effect upon our senses. But we at times hear sounds more extraordinary, of which the origin and cause are indiscoverable by us, and which produce in us the profoundest awe and terror. All reassuring ideas--such as that they proceed from some animal in pain, or are produced by currents of air, or other natural causes--are useless and of no avail. Every one, I presume, has experienced that, in the night, the very faintest sound, if only it occurs at regular intervals with pauses between, completely drives away sleep, and goes on increasingly stirring up one's inward disquiet till it reaches the point of complete disorganization of the faculties. Not very long ago I had to spend a night, on a journey, at an inn, where the landlord put me in a nice, comfortable, lofty, airy bedroom. In the middle of the night I started up from my sleep, wide awake. The moon was shining brightly in at the window, which was uncurtained, so that I could see every article of the furniture, and even the minutest objects in the room. There was a sound as of water dropping into some metallic dish. I lay and listened. The drops went on falling at regular, measured intervals, drip, drip, drip. My dog, who was lying under the bed, crept out, and went about the room whimpering and crying, scratching on the walls and on the floor. I felt as if streams of icy water were running all through me, and the cold perspiration dripped from my brow. However, I collected myself by a great effort, and--after first of all giving a good loud shout--I got out of bed, and went forward to the middle of the room. There the drops seemed to be falling close in front of me, or rather I should say right through me into the metal, of which I heard the reverberation ringing loud and clear as they fell. Then, overcome by terror, I crept back, somehow, to the bed, and covered myself up with the bedclothes. And then it seemed to me that the dropping--still going on at the same regular intervals--grew gradually fainter and fainter, and died away as if in the distance. I fell into a deep sleep, out of which I did not wake till it was bright daylight in the morning. The dog had come and lain down close beside me in bed, and did not move till I got up, when he jumped up too, barking vigorously, as if he had got over his terror of the previous night. It occurred to me that it might only be to me that the (doubtless) natural cause or causes of this strange sound were a mystery, and I told the landlord of my adventure--of which I still felt the terror in all my frame. I ended by saying that he could, no doubt, explain the whole affair to me, but that he ought to have told me of it beforehand. He turned as pale as a sheet, and begged me never to tell any one what had happened to me, as he would risk the loss of his customers. He said many travellers had complained about that sound, which they had heard on bright moonlight nights--that he had examined everything with the utmost care and attention, and even had the floor of that room and the adjoining one taken up, as well as making inquisition into everything in the neighbourhood, without coming upon the faintest trace of anything to account for this awe-inspiring noise. It had not been heard for nearly a year before the night I speak of, and he had been flattering himself that the Principle--whatever it might be--which was haunting the room had ceased its operation. But seeing, to his great alarm, that in this he was mistaken, he determined that he would never, in any circumstances, allow anybody to pass the night there again."

"Oh! how terrible!" cried Angelica, shuddering like one in the cold stage of an ague. "That is really most terrible! Oh! I am sure I should have died if anything like that had happened to me! But I have often woke up from sleep, suddenly, feeling an indescribable, inexplicable alarm and anxiety, as if I had been going through something terrible and alarming; and yet, I had not the slightest idea what it was that I had been going through, nor the very faintest recollection of any fearful dream, or anything of that kind. Rather I seemed to be waking from some condition of complete unconsciousness, like death."

"I know that feeling perfectly well," Dagobert said. "Perhaps it points straight to the effect upon us of psychical influences external to us, to which we are compelled to yield ourselves up, whether we choose or not. Just as the mesmeric subject has no remembrance of the mesmeric sleep, or of anything which happens in it. Perhaps that sense of fear and anxiety which we feel on awaking (as we have said), of which the cause is hidden from us, may be the lingering echo of some mighty spell which has forced us out of ourselves."

"I remember very distinctly," Angelica said, "some four years ago, the night before my fourteenth birthday, awaking in a condition of that kind. I could not shake off the terror of it for several days afterwards. But I strove in vain to remember anything about my dream (if dream it was, that had so terrified me). I knew, and I know quite well, that in the very dream itself I had told several people--my own dear mother amongst them--what the dream was, several times. But all I could remember when I woke was that I had told the dream. I could not recall the slightest trace of what the dream had been."