r when, in pursuance of the old unchanged
custom, we sat around the round table in the evening. Father was in
very good spirits, and was telling us amusing tales about his youthful
travels. As it was striking nine we all at once heard the street door
creak on its hinges, and slow ponderous steps echoed across the passage
and up the stairs. "That is Coppelius," said my mother, turning pale.
"Yes, it is Coppelius," replied my father in a faint broken voice. The
tears started from my mother's eyes. "But, father, father," she cried,
"must it be so?" "This is the last time," he replied; "this is the
last time he will come to me, I promise you. Go now, go and take the
children. Go, go to bed--good-night."

As for me, I felt as if I were converted into cold, heavy stone; I
could not get my breath. As I stood there immovable my mother seized me
by the arm. "Come, Nathanael! do come along!" I suffered myself to be
led away; I went into my room. "Be a good boy and keep quiet," mother
called after me; "get into bed and go to sleep." But, tortured by
indescribable fear and uneasiness, I could not close my eyes. That
hateful, hideous Coppelius stood before me with his glittering eyes,
smiling maliciously down upon me; in vain did I strive to banish the
image. Somewhere about midnight there was a terrific crack, as if a
cannon were being fired off. The whole house shook; something went
rustling and clattering past my door; the house-door was pulled to with
a bang. "That is Coppelius," I cried, terror-struck, and leapt out of
bed. Then I heard a wild heartrending scream; I rushed into my father's
room; the door stood open, and clouds of suffocating smoke came rolling
towards me. The servant-maid shouted, "Oh! my master! my master!" On
the floor in front of the smoking hearth lay my father, dead, his face
burned black and fearfully distorted, my sisters weeping and moaning
around him, and my mother lying near them in a swoon. "Coppelius, you
atrocious fiend, you've killed my father," I shouted. My senses left
me. Two days later, when my father was placed in his coffin, his
features were mild and gentle again as they had been when he was alive.
I found great consolation in the thought that his association with the
diabolical Coppelius could not have ended in his everlasting ruin.

Our neighbours had been awakened by the explosion; the affair got
talked about, and came before the magisterial authorities, who wished
to cite Coppelius to