es_, "'Go to the
devil!' cried the student Nathanael, his eyes blazing wildly with rage
and fear, when the weather-glass hawker Giuseppe Coppola"--well, that
is what I really had written, when I thought I detected something of
the ridiculous in Nathanael's wild glance; and the history is anything
but laughable. I could not find any words which seemed fitted to
reflect in even the feeblest degree the brightness of the colours of my
mental vision. I determined not to begin at all. So I pray you,
gracious reader, accept the three letters which my friend Lothair has
been so kind as to communicate to me as the outline of the picture,
into which I will endeavour to introduce more and more colour as I
proceed with my narrative. Perhaps, like a good portrait-painter, I may
succeed in depicting more than one figure in such wise that you will
recognise it as a good likeness without being acquainted with the
original, and feel as if you had very often seen the original with your
own bodily eyes. Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is
more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all
that a writer can do is to present it as a dark reflection from a dim
cut mirror.

In order to make the very commencement more intelligible, it is
necessary to add to the letters that, soon after the death of
Nathanael's father, Clara and Lothair, the children of a distant
relative, who had likewise died, leaving them orphans, were taken by
Nathanael's mother into her own house. Clara and Nathanael conceived a
warm affection for each other, against which not the slightest
objection in the world could be urged. When therefore Nathanael left
home to prosecute his studies in G----, they were betrothed. It is from
G---- that his last letter is written, where he is attending the
lectures of Spalanzani, the distinguished Professor of Physics.

I might now proceed comfortably with my narration, did not at this
moment Clara's image rise up so vividly before my eyes that I cannot
turn them away from it, just as I never could when she looked upon me
and smiled so sweetly. Nowhere would she have passed for beautiful;
that was the unanimous opinion of all who professed to have any
technical knowledge of beauty. But whilst architects praised the pure
proportions of her figure and form, painters averred that her neck,
shoulders, and bosom were almost too chastely modelled, and yet, on the
other hand, one and all were in love with her