enchantment--as you can, if you choose. 'Tussmann!' he said, in that awful hollow voice of his, 'nothing shall annoy you more, if you will take your solemn oath, here where we stand, to give up all idea of marrying Miss Albertine Bosswinkel.' Commissionsrath! you may fancy what I felt when this atrocious proposition was made to me. I said: 'Dearest Herr Professor! you make my very heart bleed. Waltzing is a horrible and improper thing; and Miss Albertine Bosswinkel was waltzing upstairs there--in her wedding-dress as my bride into the bargain--with some young gentleman or other (I don't know who he was), in a manner that made my sight and my hearing abandon me, out and out. But still, for all that, I cannot let that exquisite creature go. I must cleave to her, whatever happens, come what will.' The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when that awful, abominable Goldsmith gave me a sort of shove which made me begin immediately to spin round and round, and, as if impelled by some irresistible power, I went waltzing up and down Spandau Street, with my arms clasped about a broom-handle--not a lady, but a besom, which scratched my face. And all the time there were invisible hands beating my back black and blue. More than that; all round me, wherever I turned, the place was swarming with Tussmanns waltzing with their arms round besoms. At last I fell down exhausted, and lost my consciousness. When the light shone into my eyes in the morning--oh, Bosswinkel, share my terror!--I found myself sitting up on the horse of the Elector's statue, in front of him, with my head on his cold, iron breast. Luckily the sentry must have been asleep, for I managed to get down without being seen, at the risk of my life, and got away. I ran to Spandau Street; but I got so terribly frightened again that I was obliged to come on here to you." "Now, now, old fellow!" Bosswinkel said, "do you think I'm going to believe all this rubbish? Did ever anybody hear of magical phenomena of this sort happening in our enlightened city of Berlin?" "Now," said Tussmann, "don't you see what a quagmire of ignorance and error the fact that you never _read_ anything plunges you into? If you had read Hafftitz's Chronicon, you would have seen that much more extraordinary things of the kind have happened here. Commissionsrath, I go so far as to assert, and to feel quite convinced, that this Goldsmith is the very Devil, in _propria persona_." "Pooh, pooh!" said Bosswinkel, "I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense. Think a little. Of course, what happened was that you got screwed, and then went and climbed up on to the Elector's statue." The tears came to Tussmann's eyes as he strove to disabuse Bosswinkel's mind of this idea; but Bosswinkel grew graver and graver, and at last said: