in and behind a curtain drawn before my father's open
wardrobe, which stood just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and
nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and
shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and
fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of
the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage
with an effort, I take a cautious peep out. In the middle of the room
in front of my father stands the Sand-man, the bright light of the lamp
falling full upon his face. The Sand-man, the terrible Sand-man, is the
old advocate _Coppelius_ who often comes to dine with us.

But the most hideous figure could not have awakened greater trepidation
in my heart than this Coppelius did. Picture to yourself a large
broad-shouldered man, with an immensely big head, a face the colour of
yellow-ochre, grey bushy eyebrows, from beneath which two piercing,
greenish, cat-like eyes glittered, and a prominent Roman nose hanging
over his upper lip. His distorted mouth was often screwed up into a
malicious smile; then two dark-red spots appeared on his cheeks, and a
strange hissing noise proceeded from between his tightly clenched
teeth. He always wore an ash-grey coat of an old-fashioned cut, a
waistcoat of the same, and nether extremities to match, but black
stockings and buckles set with stones on his shoes. His little wig
scarcely extended beyond the crown of his head, his hair was curled
round high up above his big red ears, and plastered to his temples with
cosmetic, and a broad closed hair-bag stood out prominently from his
neck, so that you could see the silver buckle that fastened his folded
neck-cloth. Altogether he was a most disagreeable and horribly ugly
figure; but what we children detested most of all was his big coarse
hairy hands; we could never fancy anything that he had once touched.
This he had noticed; and so, whenever our good mother quietly placed a
piece of cake or sweet fruit on our plates, he delighted to touch it
under some pretext or other, until the bright tears stood in our eyes,
and from disgust and loathing we lost the enjoyment of the tit-bit that
was intended to please us. And he did just the same thing when father
gave us a glass of sweet wine on holidays. Then he would quickly pass
his hand over it, or even sometimes raise the glass to his blue lips,
and he laughed quite sardonically when all we dared do was to ex