ts in order, and fancied that his
too lively imagination had run away with him.

"Good Heavens!" sighed he. "I have surely a disposition to madness--'tis
dreadfully hot here; my blood boils in my veins and my head is burning
like a coal." And he now remembered the important event of the evening
before, how his head had got jammed in between the iron railings of the
hospital. "That's what it is, no doubt," said he. "I must do something
in time: under such circumstances a Russian bath might do me good. I
only wish I were already on the upper bank." [*]

*In these Russian (vapor) baths the person extends himself
on a bank or form, and as he gets accustomed to the heat,
moves to another higher up towards the ceiling, where, of
course, the vapor is warmest. In this manner he ascends
gradually to the highest.

And so there he lay on the uppermost bank in the vapor-bath; but with
all his clothes on, in his boots and galoshes, while the hot drops fell
scalding from the ceiling on his face.

"Holloa!" cried he, leaping down. The bathing attendant, on his side,
uttered a loud cry of astonishment when he beheld in the bath, a man
completely dressed.

The other, however, retained sufficient presence of mind to whisper to
him, "'Tis a bet, and I have won it!" But the first thing he did as soon
as he got home, was to have a large blister put on his chest and back to
draw out his madness.

The next morning he had a sore chest and a bleeding back; and, excepting
the fright, that was all that he had gained by the Shoes of Fortune.

V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk

The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile
of the galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now
went to fetch them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in
the street, claimed them as his property, they were delivered over to
the police-office.*

*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal,
but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the
labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is
enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among
many other scribes of various denominations, of which, it seems, our
hero was one.

"Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own," said one of the
clerks, eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he,
sharp as he was, was not able to discove