ur return."

In a moment my hat was on my head, in another I was out of the room, and
in a third at my own house. What he had stated was substantially true.
Some of the mourners had arrived, and the undertaker's men were waiting
below, till they should be summoned up-stairs to screw down the lid.
Without an instant of delay I rushed to the chamber where my dear body
was lying in its shell. Some of my friends were there, and I entreated
them, in imploring accents, to stop for two days, and they would see
that the corpse which lay before them would revive. "I am not dead,"
cried I, forgetting myself,--"I assure you I am not dead."

"Poor fellow! he has lost his senses," said one.

"Ah, poor Wolstang," observed another: "he ran deranged some weeks ago,
and has been going about asking for himself ever since."

"I assure you I am not dead," said I, throwing myself upon my knees
before my cousin, who was present.

"I know that, my good fellow," was his answer, "but poor Stadt, you see,
is gone for ever."

"That is not Stadt--it is I--it is I--will you not believe me! I am
Stadt--this is not me--I am not myself. For heaven's sake suspend this
funeral." Such were my exclamations, but they produced no other effect
but that of pity among the bystanders.

"Poor unfortunate fellow, he is crazed. Get a porter, and let him be
taken home."

This order, which was given by my cousin himself, stung me to madness,
and, changing my piteous tones for those of fierce resistance, I swore
that "I would not turn out for any man living. I would not be buried
alive to please them." To this nobody made any reply, but in the course
of a minute four stout porters made their appearance, and I was forced
from the house.

Returning to Wolstang's lodgings, the old man was there in waiting, as
he promised. "What," said I with trepidation,--"what is the scheme you
were to propose? Tell me, and avert the horrible doom which will await
me, for they have refused to suspend the funeral."

"My dear friend," said he in the most soothing manner, "your case is far
from being so bad as you apprehend. You have just to write your name in
this book, and you will be yourself again in an instant. Instead of
coming alive in the grave, you will be alive before the coffin-lid is
put on. Only think of the difference of the two situations."

"A confounded difference indeed," thought I, taking hold of the pen. But
at the very moment when I was going to write, I