than this very Coppelius. Imagine a large broad-shouldered man, with a
head disproportionately big, a face the colour of yellow ochre, a pair
of gray bushy eyebrows, from beneath which a pair of green cat’s eyes
sparkled with the most penetrating lustre, and with a large nose curved
over his upper lip. His wry mouth was often twisted into a malicious
laugh, when a couple of dark red spots appeared upon his cheeks, and a
strange hissing sound was heard through his compressed teeth.
Coppelius always appeared in an ashen-gray coat, cut in old-fashioned
style, with waistcoat and breeches of the same colour, while his
stockings were black, and his shoes adorned with buckles set with
precious stones. The little peruke scarcely reached further than the
crown of his head, the curls stood high above his large red ears, and a
broad hair-bag projected stiffly from his neck, so that the silver
buckle which fastened his folded cravat might be plainly seen. The
whole figure was hideous and repulsive, but most disgusting to us
children were his coarse brown hairy fists; indeed, we did not like to
eat what he had touched with them. This he had remarked, and it was
his delight, under some pretext or other, to touch a piece of cake, or
some nice fruit, that our kind mother might privately have put in our
plate, in order that we, with tears in our eyes, might, from disgust
and abhorrence, no longer be able to enjoy the treat intended for us.
He acted in the same manner on holidays, when my father gave us a
little glass of sweet wine. Then would he swiftly draw his fist over
it, or perhaps he would even raise the glass to his blue lips, and
laugh most devilishly, when we could only express our indignation by
soft sobs. He always called us the little beasts, we dared not utter a
sound when he was present, and we heartily cursed the ugly, unkind man,
who deliberately marred our slightest pleasures. My mother seemed to
hate the repulsive Coppelius as much as we did, since as soon as he
showed himself her liveliness, her free and cheerful mind was changed
into a gloomy solemnity. My father conducted himself towards him, as
though he was a superior being, whose bad manners were to be tolerated,
and who was to be kept in good humour at any rate. He need only give
the slightest hint, and the favourite dishes were cooked, and the
choicest wines served.
When I now saw this Coppelius, the frightful and terrific thought took
possession of my soul, that indeed no one but he could be the Sandman.
But the Sandman was no longer that bugbear of a nurse’s tale, who
provided the owl’s nest in the half-moon with children’s eyes,--no, he
was a hideous spectral monster, who, wherever he appeared, brought with
him grief, want, and destruction--temporal and eternal.
I was rivetted to the spot as if enchanted. At the risk of being
discovered, and as I plainly foresaw, of being severely punished, I
remained with my head peeping through the curtain. My father received
Coppelius with solemnity. “Now to our work!” cried the latter with a
harsh, grating voice, as he flung off his coat. My father silently and
gloomily drew off his night-gown, and both attired themselves in long
black frocks. Whence they took these, I did not see. My father opened
the door of what I had always thought to be a cupboard, but I now saw
that it was no cupboard, but rather a black hollow, in which there was
a little hearth. Coppelius entered, and a blue flame began to crackle
up on the hearth. All sorts of strange utensils lay around.
Heavens!--As my old father now stooped down to the fire, he looked
quite another man. A frightful convulsive pain seemed to have
distorted his mild reverend features into a hideous repulsive
diabolical countenance. He looked like Coppelius: the latter was
brandishing red hot tongs, and with them taking shining masses busily
out of the thick smoke, which he afterwards hammered. It seemed to me,
as if I saw human faces around without any eyes--but with deep holes
instead. “Eyes here, eyes!” said Coppelius in a dull roaring voice.
Overcome by the wildest terror, I shrieked out, and fell from my hiding
place upon the floor. Coppelius seized me, and showing his teeth,
bleated out, “Ah--little wretch,--little wretch!”--then dragging me up,
he flung me on the hearth, where the fire began to singe my hair. “Now
we have eyes enough--a pretty pair of child’s eyes.” Thus whispered
Coppelius and taking out of the flame some red-hot grains with his
fists, he was about to sprinkle them in my eyes. My father upon this
raised his hands in supplication, and cried: “Master, master, leave my
Nathaniel his eyes!” Coppelius uttered a yelling laugh, and said:
“Well let the lad have his eyes and cry his share in the world, but we
will examine the mechanism of his hands and feet.” And then he seized
me so forcibly that my joints cracked, and screwed off my hands and
feet, and then put them on again, one here and the other there. “Every
thing is not right here!--As good as it was--the old one has understood
it!” So did Coppelius say, in a hissing, lisping tone, but all around
me became black and dark, a sudden cramp darted through my bones and
nerves--and I lost all feeling. A gentle warm breath passed over my
face; I woke as out of a sleep of death. My mother had been stooping
over me. “Is the Sandman yet there?” I stammered. “No, no, my dear
child, he has gone away long ago,--he will not hurt you!”--So said my
mother, and she kissed and embraced her recovered darling.
Why should I weary you, my dear Lothaire! Why should I be so diffuse
with details, when I have so much more to tell. Suffice it to say,
that I had been discovered while watching, and ill-used by Coppelius.
Agony and terror had brought on delirium and fever, of which I lay sick
for several weeks. “Is the sandman still there?” That was my first
sensible word and the sign of my amendment--my recovery. I can now
only tell you, the most frightful moment in my juvenile years. Then
you will be convinced that it is no fault of my eyes, that all to me
seems colourless, but that a dark fatality has actually suspended over
my life a gloomy veil of clouds, which I shall perhaps only tear away
in death.
Coppelius was no more to be seen; it was said he had left the town.
About a year might have elapsed, when, according to the old custom, we
sat at the round table. My father was very cheerful, and told much
that was entertaining, about his travels in his youth; when, as the
clock struck nine, we heard the house-door creak on the hinges, and
slow steps, heavy as iron, groaned through the passage and up the
stairs. “That is Coppelius,” said my mother, turning pale.
“Yes!--that is Coppelius!” repeated my father, with a faint broken
voice. The tears started from my mother’s eyes. “But father--father!”
she cried, “must it be so?” “He comes to me for the last time, I
promise you,” was the answer. “Only go now--go with the
children--go--go to bed. Good night!”
I felt as if I were pressed into cold, heavy stone,--my breath was
stopped. My mother caught me by the arm as I stood immoveable. “Come,
come, Nathaniel!” I allowed myself to be led, and entered my chamber!
“Be quiet--be quiet--go to bed--go to sleep!” cried my mother after me;
but tormented by restlessness, and an inward anguish perfectly
indescribable, I could not close my eyes. The hateful, abominable
Coppelius stood before me with fiery eyes, and laughed at me
maliciously. It was in vain that I endeavoured to get rid of his
image. About midnight there was a frightful noise, like the firing of
a gun. The whole house resounded. There was a rattling and a rustling
by my door, and the house-door was closed with a violent sound. “That
is Coppelius!” I cried, and I sprang out of bed in terror. There was
then a shriek as if of acute inconsolable grief. I darted into my
father’s room; the door was open, a suffocating smoke rolled towards
me, and the servant girl cried: “Ah, my master, my master!” On the
floor of the smoking hearth lay my father dead, with his face burned
and blackened, and hideously distorted,--my sisters were shrieking and
moaning around him,--and my mother had fainted. “Coppelius!--cursed
Satan, thou hast slain my father!” I cried, and lost my senses. When,
two days afterwards, my father was laid in his coffin, his features
were again as mild and gentle as they had been in his life. My soul
was comforted by the thought that his compact with the devilish
Coppelius could not have plunged him into eternal perdition.
The explosion had awakened the neighbours, the occurrence had become
the common talk, and had reached the ears of the magistracy, who wished
to make Coppelius answerable. He had, however, vanished from the spot,
without leaving a trace.
If I tell you, my dear friend, that the barometer-dealer was the
accursed Coppelius himself, you will not blame me for regarding a
phenomenon so unpropitious as boding some heavy calamity. He was
dressed differently, but the figure and features of Coppelius are too
deeply imprinted in my mind, for an error in this respect to be
possible. Besides, Coppelius has not even altered his name. As I hear
he gives himself out as a Piedmontese optician, and calls himself
Giuseppe Coppola.
I am determined to cope with him, and to avenge my father’s death, be
the issue what it may.
Tell my mother nothing of the hideous monster’s appearance. Remember
me to my dear sweet Clara, to whom I will write in a calmer
mood.--Farewell.
CLARA TO NATHANIEL.
It is true that you have not written to me for a long time, but
nevertheless I believe that I am still in your mind and thoughts. For
assuredly you were thinking of me most intently, when designing to send
your last letter to my brother Lothaire, you directed it to me, instead
of him. I joyfully opened the letter, and did not perceive my error
till I came to the words: “Ah, my dear Lothaire.” Now, by rights I
should have read no farther, but should have handed over the letter to
my brother. Although you have often in your childish teasing mood,
charged me with having such a quiet, womanish, steady disposition, that
like the lady, even if the house were about to fall in, I should smooth
down a wrong fold in the window curtain before I ran away, I can hardly
tell you how your letter shocked me. I could scarcely breathe,--my
eyes became dizzy. Ah, my dear Nathaniel, how could such a horrible
event have crossed your life? To be parted from you, never to see you
again,--the thought darted through my breast like a burning dagger. I
read and read. Your description of the repulsive Coppelius is
terrific. For the first time I learned, how your good old father died
a shocking violent death. My brother Lothaire, to whom I gave up the
letter as his property, sought to calm me, but in vain. The fatal
barometer-maker, Giuseppe Coppola followed me at every step, and I am
almost ashamed to confess that he disturbed my healthy and generally
peaceful sleep with all sorts of horrible visions. Yet soon,--even the
next day, I was quite changed again. Do not be offended, dearest one,
if Lothaire tells you, that in spite of your strange misgiving, that
Coppelius will in some manner injure you, I am in the same cheerful
unembarrassed frame of mind as ever.
I will honestly confess to you that, according to my opinion, all the
terrible things of which you speak, merely occurred in your own mind,
and that the actual external world had little to do with them. Old
Coppelius may have been repulsive enough, but his hatred of children
was what really caused the abhorrence of your children towards him.
In your childish mind the frightful sandman in the nurse’s tale was
naturally associated with old Coppelius, who, even if you had not
believed in the sandman, would still have been a spectral monster,
especially dangerous to children. The awful nightly occupation with
your father, was no more than this, that both secretly made alchemical
experiments, and with these your mother was constantly dissatisfied,
since besides a great deal of money being uselessly wasted, your
father’s mind being filled with a fallacious desire after higher wisdom
was alienated from his family--as they say, is always the case with
such experimentalists. Your father no doubt, by some act of
carelessness, occasioned his own death, of which Coppelius was
completely guiltless. Would you believe it, that I yesterday asked our
neighbour, the clever apothecary, whether such a sudden and fatal
explosion was possible in such chemical experiments? “Certainly,” he
replied, and in his way told me at great length and very
circumstantially how such an event might take place, uttering a number
of strange-sounding names, which I am unable to recollect. Now, I know
you will be angry with your Clara; you will say that her cold
disposition is impenetrable to every ray of the mysterious, which often
embraces man with invisible arms, that she only sees the varigated
surface of the world, and has the delight of a silly child, at some
gold-glittering fruit, which contains within it a deadly poison.
Ah! my dear Nathaniel! Do you not then believe that even in free,
cheerful, careless minds, here may dwell the suspicion of some dread
power, which endeavours to destroy us in our own selves? Forgive me,
if I, a silly girl, presume in any manner to indicate, what I really
think of such an internal struggle; I shall not find out the right
words after all, and you will laugh at me, not because my thoughts are
foolish, but because I set about so clumsily to express them.
If there is a dark power, which with such enmity and treachery lays a
thread within us, by which it holds us fast, and draws us along a path
of peril and destruction, which we should not otherwise have trod; if,
I say, there is such a power, it must form itself within us, or from
ourselves; indeed, become identical with ourselves, for it is only in
this condition that we can believe in it, and grant it the room which
it requires, to accomplish its secret work. Now, if we have a mind,
which is sufficiently firm, sufficiently strengthened by cheerful life,
always to recognise this strange hostile operation as such, and calmly
to follow the path which belongs to our inclination and calling, then
will the dark power fail in its attempt to gain a power, that shall be
a reflection of ourselves. Lothaire adds that it is certain, that the
dark physical power, if of our own accord, we have yielded ourselves up
to it, often draws within us some strange form, which the external
world has thrown in our way, so that we ourselves kindle the spirit,
which, as we in our strange delusion believe, speaks to us in that
form. It is the phantom of our own selves, the close relationship with
which, and its deep operation on our mind casts us into hell, or
transports us into heaven. You see, dear Nathaniel, that I and my
brother Lothaire have freely given our opinion on the subject of dark
powers, which subject, now I find I have not been able to write down
the chief part without trouble, appears to me somewhat deep.
Lothaire’s last words I do not quite comprehend. I can only suspect
what he means, and yet I feel as if it were all very true. I beg of
you, get the ugly advocate, Coppelius, and the barometer-seller,
Giuseppe Coppola, quite out of your head. Be convinced that these
strange fears have no power over you, and that it is only a belief in
their hostile influence that can make them hostile in reality. If the
great excitement of your mind did not speak from every line of your
letter, if your situation did not give me the deepest pain, I could
joke about the Sandman-Advocate, and the barometer-seller, Coppelius.
Be cheerful, I have determined to appear before you as your
guardian-spirit, and if the ugly Coppelius takes it in his head to
annoy you in your dreams, to scare him away with loud peals of
laughter. I am not a bit afraid of him nor of his disgusting hands; he
shall neither spoil my sweetmeats as an advocate, nor my eyes as a
sandman. Ever yours, my dear Nathaniel.
NATHANIEL TO LOTHAIRE.
I am very sorry that in consequence of the error occasioned by my
wandering state of mind, Clara broke open the letter intended for you,
and read it. She has written me a very profound philosophical epistle,
in which she proves, at great length, that Coppelius and Coppola only
exist in my own mind, and are phantoms of myself, which will be
dissipated directly I recognise them as such. Indeed, one could not
believe that the mind which often peers out of those bright, smiling,
childish eyes, like a sweet charming dream, could define with such
intelligence, in such a professor-like manner. She appeals to
you--you, it seems have been talking about me. I suppose you read her
logical lectures, that she may learn to divide and sift every thing
acutely. Pray leave it off. Besides it is quite certain that the
barometer-dealer, Guiseppe Coppola, is not the advocate Coppelius. I
attend the lectures of the professor of physics, who has lately
arrived. His name is the same as that of the famous natural
philosopher, Spalanzani, and he is of Italian origin. He has known
Coppola for years, and moreover it is clear from his accent that he is
really a Piedmontese. Coppelius was a German, but I think no honest
one. Calmed I am not, and though you and Clara may consider me a
gloomy visionary, I cannot get rid of the impression, which the
accursed face of Coppelius makes upon me. I am glad that Coppola has
left the town, as Spalanzani says. This professor is a strange
fellow--a little round man, with high cheek bones, sharp nose, pouting
lips, and little piercing eyes. Yet you will get a better notion of
him than by this description, if you look at the portrait of
Cagliostro, designed by Chodowiecki, in one of the Berlin annuals,
Spalanzani looks like that exactly. I lately went up stairs, and
perceived that the curtain, which was generally drawn completely over a
glass door, left a little opening on one side. I know not what
curiosity impelled me to look through, a tall and very slender lady
most symmetrically formed, and most splendidly attired, sat in the room
by a little table on which she had laid her arms, her hands being
folded together. She sat opposite to the door, so that I could
completely see her angelic countenance. She did not appear to see me,
and indeed there was something fixed about her eyes as if, I might
almost say, she had no power of sight. It seemed to me that she was
sleeping with her eyes open. I felt very uncomfortable, and therefore
I slunk away into the auditorium, which was close at hand. Afterwards
I learned that the form I had seen was that of Spalanzani’s daughter
Olympia, whom he kept confined in a very strange and improper manner,
so that no one could approach her. After all, there may be something
the matter with her; she is silly perhaps, or something of the kind.
But why should I write you all this? I could have conveyed it better
and more circumstantially by word of mouth. Know that I shall see you
in a fortnight. I must again behold my dear; sweet, angelic Clara.
The ill-humour will then be dispersed, which, I must confess, has
endeavoured to get the mastery over me, since that fatal, sensible
letter. Therefore I do not write to her to-day. A thousand greetings,
&c.
* * * * *
Nothing more strange and chimerical can be imagined than that which
occurred to my poor friend, the young student Nathaniel, and which I,
gracious reader, have undertaken to tell you. Have you, kind reader,
ever known a something that has completely filled your heart, thoughts,
and senses, so as to exclude every thing else? There was in you a
fermentation and a boiling, and your blood inflamed to the hottest glow
bounded through your veins, and gave a higher colour to your cheeks.
Your glance was so strange, as if you wished to perceive, in empty
space, forms which to no other eyes are visible, and your speech flowed
away into dark sighs. Then your friends asked you: “What is it,
revered one?” “What is the matter, dear one.” And now you wished to
express the internal picture with all its glowing tints, with all its
light and shade, and laboured hard to find words only to begin. You
thought that in the very first word you ought to crowd together all the
wonderful, noble, horrible, comical, frightful, that had happened, so
that it might strike all the hearers at once like an electric shock.
But every word, every thing that is in the form of speech, appeared to
you colourless, cold and dead. You hunt and hunt, and stutter and
stammer, and the sober questions of your friends dart like icy breezes
upon your internal fire until it is ready to go out; whereas if, like a
bold painter, you had first with a few daring strokes drawn an outline
of the internal picture, you might with small trouble have laid on the
colours brighter and brighter, and the living throng of various forms
would have carried your friends along with it, and they, like you,
would have seen themselves in the picture that had proceeded from your
mind. Now I must confess to you, kind reader, that no one has really
asked me for the history of the young Nathaniel, but you know well
enough that I belong to the queer race of authors, who, if they have
any thing in their mind, such as I have just described, feel as if
every one who comes near them, and indeed perhaps the whole world
besides, is asking them: “What is it then--tell it, my dear friend?”
Thus was I forcibly compelled to tell you of the momentous life of
Nathaniel. The singularity and marvellousness of the story filled my
entire soul, but for that very reason and because, my reader, I had to
make you equally inclined to endure oddity, which is no small matter, I
tormented myself to begin the history of Nathaniel in a manner as
inspiring, original and striking as possible. “Once upon a time,” the
beautiful beginning of every tale, was too tame. “In the little
provincial town of S---- lived”--was somewhat better, as it at least
prepared for the climax. Or should I dart at once _medias in res_,
with “Go to the devil, cried the student Nathaniel with rage and horror
in his wild looks, when the barometer-seller, Guiseppe Coppola?”--I had
indeed already written this down, when I fancied that in the wild looks
of the student Nathaniel, I could detect something ludicrous, whereas
the story is not comical at all. No form of language suggested itself
to my mind, which even in the slightest degree seemed to reflect the
colouring of the internal picture. I resolved that I would not begin
it at all. So take, gentle reader, the three letters, which friend
Lothaire was good enough to give me, as the sketch of the picture which
I shall endeavour to colour more and more as I proceed in my narrative.
Perhaps, like a good portrait-painter, I may succeed in catching many a
form in such a manner, that you will find it is a likeness without
having the original, and feel as if you had often seen the person with
your own corporeal eyes. Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe
that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is
all that the poet can conceive, as it were in the dull reflection of a
dimly polished mirror.
In order that that which it is necessary in the first place to know,
may be made clearer, we must add to these letters the circumstance,
that shortly after the death of Nathaniel’s father, Clara and Lothaire,
the children of a distant relative, who had likewise died, and left
them orphans, were taken by Nathaniel’s mother to her own home. Clara
and Nathaniel formed a strong attachment for each other, and no one in
the world having any objection to make, they were betrothed, when
Nathaniel left the place to pursue his studies in G----. He is,
according to the date of his last letter, hearing the lectures of the
celebrated professor of physics, Spalanzani.