"I had announced myself for today, but you could not wait the time. There is nothing amiss, however, yet. You consider the matter, receive your shadow again in exchange, which is at your service, and turn immediately back. You shall be welcome in the Forest-master's garden; the whole has been only a joke. Rascal, who has betrayed you, and who seeks the hand of your bride, I will take charge of; the fellow is ripe."
I stood there as if in a dream. "Announced for today?" I counted over again the time—he was right. I had constantly miscalculated a day. I sought with the right hand in my bosom for my purse; he guessed my meaning, and stepped two paces backwards.
"No, Count, that is in too good hands, keep you that." I stared at him with eyes of inquiring wonder, and he proceeded: "I request only a trifle, as memento. You be so good as to set your name to this paper." On the parchment stood the words:
"By virtue of this my signature, I make over my soul to the holder of this, after its natural separation from the body."
I gazed with speechless amazement, alternately at the writing and the gray unknown. Meanwhile, with a new-cut quill he had taken up a drop of blood which flowed from a fresh thorn-scratch on my hand and presented it to me.
"Who are you, after all?" at length I asked him.
"What does it matter?" he replied. "And is it not plainly written on me? A poor devil, a sort of learned man and doctor, who, in return for precious arts, receives from his friends poor thanks, and, for himself, has no other amusement on earth but to make his little experiments.—But, however, sign. To the right there—PETER SCHLEMIHL."
I shook my head, and said: "Pardon me, sir, I do not sign that."
"Not?" replied he, in amaze; "and why not?"
"It seems to me to a certain degree serious to stake my soul on a shadow."