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