l they say, man,
The tempests will be still'd that shake the deep,
And we in part sleep our untroubled sleep.

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO.

_Berlin_, _August_, 1834.

To Julius Edward Hitzig, from Adelbert von Chamisso.

You forget nobody, and surely you must remember one Peter Schlemihl, whom
you now and then met at my house in former days; a long-shanked fellow,
who had the credit of awkwardness because he was unpolished, and whose
negligence gave him an air of habitual laziness. I loved him--you cannot
have forgotten, Edward, how often, in the spring-time of our youth, he
was the subject of our rhymes. Once I recollect introducing him to a
poetical tea-party, where he fell asleep while I was writing, even
without waiting to hear anything read. And that brings to my mind a
witty thing you said about him; you had often seen him, heaven knows
where and when, in an old black _kurtka_, {20} which in fact he always
wore, and you declared "he would be a lucky fellow if his soul were half
as immortal as his kurtka!" So little did you value him. I loved him, I
repeat; and to this Schlemihl, whom I had not seen for many a year, we
owe the following sheets. To you, Edward, to you only, my nearest,
dearest friend--my better self, from whom I can hide no secret,--to you I
commit them; to you only, and of course to Fouque, who, like yourself, is
rooted in my soul--but to him as a friend alone, and not as a poet. You
can easily imagine, how unpleasant it would be to me, if the secret
reposed by an honourable man, confiding in my esteem and sincerity,
should be exposed in the pillory of an _epopee_, or in any way distorted,
as if some miserable witling had engendered unnatural and impossible
things. Indeed, I must frankly own it is a very shame that a history,
which another and cleverer hand might have exhibited in all its comic
force, has been reduced to mere insipidity by our good man's pen. What
would not John Paul Richter have made of it! In a word, my dear friend,
many who are yet alive may be named, but--

One word more on the way in which these leaves came into my hands.
Yesterday morning early--as soon as I was up--they were presented to me.
A strange man with a long grey beard, wearing a black, worn-out kurtka,
with a botanical case suspended at his side, and slippers over his boots,
on account of the damp rainy weather, inquired after me, and left these
papers behind him. He pretended he came from Berlin