ell enough, but only to think upon it makes the wild laughter
burst from my lips. Oh! my dear, dear Lothair, what shall I say to make
you feel, if only in an inadequate way, that that which happened to me
a few days ago could thus really exercise such a hostile and disturbing
influence upon my life? Oh that you were here to see for yourself! but
now you will, I suppose, take me for a superstitious ghost-seer. In a
word, the terrible thing which I have experienced, the fatal effect of
which I in vain exert every effort to shake off, is simply that some
days ago, namely, on the 30th October, at twelve o'clock at noon, a
dealer in weather-glasses came into my room and wanted to sell me one
of his wares. I bought nothing, and threatened to kick him downstairs,
whereupon he went away of his own accord.

You will conclude that it can only be very peculiar relations--
relations intimately intertwined with my life--that can give
significance to this event, and that it must be the person of this
unfortunate hawker which has had such a very inimical effect upon me.
And so it really is. I will summon up all my faculties in order to
narrate to you calmly and patiently as much of the early days of my
youth as will suffice to put matters before you in such a way that your
keen sharp intellect may grasp everything clearly and distinctly, in
bright and living pictures. Just as I am beginning, I hear you laugh
and Clara say, "What's all this childish nonsense about!" Well, laugh
at me, laugh heartily at me, pray do. But, good God! my hair is
standing on end, and I seem to be entreating you to laugh at me in the
same sort of frantic despair in which Franz Moor entreated Daniel to
laugh him to scorn.[2] But to my story.

Except at dinner we, _i.e._, I and my brothers and sisters, saw but
little of our father all day long. His business no doubt took up most
of his time. After our evening meal, which, in accordance with an old
custom, was served at seven o'clock, we all went, mother with us, into
father's room, and took our places around a round table. My father
smoked his pipe, drinking a large glass of beer to it. Often he told us
many wonderful stories, and got so excited over them that his pipe
always went out; I used then to light it for him with a spill, and this
formed my chief amusement. Often, again, he would give us picture-books
to look at, whilst he sat silent and motionless in his easy-chair,
puffing out such dense clouds of s