jar; the shadow ought to be clever enough
to step in and look about him, and then to come back and tell me
what he has seen. You could make yourself useful in this way," said
he, jokingly; "be so good as to step in now, will you?" and then he
nodded to the shadow, and the shadow nodded in return. "Now go, but
don't stay away altogether."

Then the foreigner stood up, and the shadow on the opposite
balcony stood up also; the foreigner turned round, the shadow
turned; and if any one had observed, they might have seen it go
straight into the half-opened door of the opposite balcony, as the
learned man re-entered his own room, and let the curtain fall. The
next morning he went out to take his coffee and read the newspapers.

"How is this?" he exclaimed, as he stood in the sunshine. "I
have lost my shadow. So it really did go away yesterday evening, and
it has not returned. This is very annoying."

And it certainly did vex him, not so much because the shadow was
gone, but because he knew there was a story of a man without a shadow.
All the people at home, in his country, knew this story; and when he
returned, and related his own adventures, they would say it was only
an imitation; and he had no desire for such things to be said of
him. So he decided not to speak of it at all, which was a very
sensible determination.

In the evening he went out again on his balcony, taking care to
place the light behind him; for he knew that a shadow always wants his
master for a screen; but he could not entice him out. He made
himself little, and he made himself tall; but there was no shadow, and
no shadow came. He said, "Hem, a-hem;" but it was all useless. That
was very vexatious; but in warm countries everything grows very
quickly; and, after a week had passed, he saw, to his great joy,
that a new shadow was growing from his feet, when he walked in the
sunshine; so that the root must have remained. After three weeks, he
had quite a respectable shadow, which, during his return journey to
northern lands, continued to grow, and became at last so large that he
might very well have spared half of it. When this learned man
arrived at home, he wrote books about the true, the good, and the
beautiful, which are to be found in this world; and so days and
years passed--many, many years.

One evening, as he sat in his study, a very gentle tap was heard
at the door. "Come in," said he; but no one came. He opened the
door, and there stood before