The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

But he answered this demonstration in words of anger, whilst his eyes flashed fire. Nobody could understand what it was that he said to her. But the old woman shrunk into a corner, as pale and wrinkled as she had been at first, and whimpering faintly and unintelligibly.

"My dear Mr. Lütkens," the stranger said to the master of the house, "I hope you will take great care lest something annoying may happen in your house here. I really hope, with all my heart, that everything will go well on this auspicious occasion. But this old creature, Barbara Roloffin, is by no means so well up to her business as perhaps you suppose. She is an old acquaintance of mine, and I am sorry to say that she has on many occasions not paid proper attention to her patients."

Both Lütkens and his wife had been very anxious, and had felt most eery and uncanny about this whole business, and full of suspicion as to old Barbara Roloffin, particularly when they remembered the extraordinary transfiguration which took place in her when she saw the stranger. They had very great suspicions that she was in the practice of black and unholy arts, so that they forbade her to cross the threshold of their house any more, and they made arrangements with another accoucheuse.

On this, old Barbara was very angry, and said that Lütkens and his wife would pay very dearly for what they had done to her.

Lütkens's hope and gladness were turned into bitter heart-sorrow and deep grief, when his wife brought into the world a horrible changeling in place of the beautiful boy predicted by Barbara Roloffin. It was a creature all chestnut brown, with two horns on its head, great fat eyes, no nose whatever, a big wide mouth with a white tongue sticking out of it upside down, and no neck. Its head was down between its shoulders; its body was wrinkled and swollen; its arms came out just above its hips, and it had long, thin shanks.

Mr. Lütkens wept and lamented terribly. "Oh, just heavens!" he cried; "what in the name of goodness is going to be the outcome of this? Can this little one ever be expected to tread in his father's steps? Was there ever such a thing known as a Member of Council with a couple of horns on his head, and chestnut brown all over?"

The stranger consoled Lütkens as much as ever he could. He pointed out to him that a good education does a great deal; that though, as concerned form and appearance, the new-born thing was really to be characterized as a most arrant schismatic, still he ventured to say that it looked about it very understandingly with its fat eyes, and that there was room for a deal of wisdom between the two horns on its forehead. Also that though it might, perhaps, never be fit to be a Member of Council, it was perfectly capable of becoming a distinguished savant, inasmuch as excessive ugliness is often a characteristic of savants, and even causes them to be highly respected and much looked up to.

However, Lütkens could not but ascribe his misfortune in the depths of his heart to old Barbara Roloffin, particularly when he learned that she had been sitting at the door of the room during his wife's accouchement; and Frau Lütkens had declared, with many tears, that the old woman's face had been before her eyes all the time of it, and that she had not been able to get rid of the sight of her.

Now Mr. Lütkens's suspicions were not, it is true, enough to base any legal proceedings upon in the matter; but Heaven so ordered things that in a very short time all the infamous deeds which old Barbara had committed were brought into the clear light of day.

For it happened that shortly after those events there came on one day, about twelve at noon, a terrible storm, and a most violent wind, and the people in the streets saw Barbara Roloffin (who was on her way to attend a lady in need of her professional services) borne, rushing away on the wings of a blast, high up through the air, over the housetops and the church steeples, and set down, none the worse for the trip, in a meadow close to Berlin.