"Of what, did you say?"
"A hallucination. A complete and perfect hallucination. When I first entered your chamber, my friend, I saw, standing before me, a sailor of just your height, or possibly an inch or an inch and a half shorter, but of your breadth across the shoulders, in a rough sailor jacket, gray trousers, wide straw-hat like the traders to the West Indies wear; with exactly no, not exactly, but very nearly your features. I saw the figure as plainly as I see you at this moment--it could not have been more distinct. The illusion was so perfect that I supposed they had put you in another room, and went to ask Süssmilch what he meant by giving our healthiest room to the first comer. Do not smile, my friend; it is no laughing matter--at least for me. It is the first time that anything of the kind has happened to me, though my frequent congestions of the head might have prepared me to expect it, I know that I shall die of apoplexy; and even if I had not known it before, I should know it now."
He took out his watch and examined his pulse.
"Strange to say, my pulse is perfectly normal; and all this morning I have felt unusually well and cheerful."
"My dear doctor," I said, "who knows what you saw? You learned men have such singular notions, and out of the merest gnat you will make a scientific elephant."
"Scientific elephant is good," said the doctor; "nobody would have expected such an expression from an unscientific mammoth like you--very good! but you are mistaken. That may apply to others, but not to me. I observe too coolly to commit gross blunders. I have told you already that my pulse is normal, exactly normal, and all my functions in perfect order; therefore the thing must have a deeper psychological cause, which just now escapes my perceptions; for the psychological cause----"
"Then at all events you have a psychological cause," said I, who was mischievous enough to be delighted at the serious scruples of my learned friend.
"I have; and I will tell it to you, even at the risk of more of your malicious grins. I was dreaming all night long of you, you mammoth, and always the same dream, though in different forms, namely, that you either were escaping, or had escaped, or were about to escape from here. Sometimes you were lowering yourself by a rope from the window, or clambering over the roofs, or leaping down from the wall, or any other neck-breaking trick that one might expect from a fellow of your physical and moral peculiarities; and you were every time in a different dress, now a chimney-sweep, now a mason, a rope-dancer, and so forth. As soon as I awaked, I asked myself what this dream could mean, and I said to myself--True, George Hartwig is now again in his prison, but the exceptional position in which he stands still continues, and so does the danger for our valued friend the superintendent, which lies in an arrangement which we must acknowledge to be not merely irregular, but contrary to the rules. For every creature is only content in the element to which it is born. The frog would spring from a golden chair into his native swamp; and the bird escapes when he can, though you cram his cage with sugar. Will it not be so with this youth, who of all men must most long for liberty? May he not in a moment of weakness forget what consideration he owes to Herr von Zehren, that the latter to a certain extent risks his position on his account, and in this moment of weakness and forgetfulness make his escape? And do you know, young mammoth, I determined that, as I also had some claim upon you, I would privately and in all friendship ask you to give me your word that if such a temptation seizes you, you will only think of your own honor. This was what I had in my mind when I came up the corridor, and I was in some degree undecided, for I thought he will have taken this resolution already, and to give his word to me will be superfluous. But now, after this singular projection of my dream into reality--a memento mori to me, moreover--I beg you earnestly to give me your word. Hm, hm, hm!"
I had ceased to laugh, long before he had reached this conclusion; and now, while the worthy doctor tuned down his voice, extended him my hand, and said with emotion:
"With all my heart I give you my word, although it is true that I have given it to myself, and that not ten minutes ago. And as for the hallucination, you may make your mind easy, doctor; here lies your memento mori."