how it
would end.

We sat, one day, before a cave which the strangers who frequent
these mountains are accustomed to visit. One hears there the rush
of subterranean streams roaring up from immeasurable depths, and the
stone cast in seemed, in its resounding fall, to find no bottom. He
painted to me, as he often did, with a vivid power of imagination
and in the lustrous charms of the most brilliant colors, the most
carefully finished pictures of what I might achieve in the world
by virtue of my purse, if I had but once again my shadow in my
possession. With my elbows resting on my knees, I kept my face
concealed in my hands and listened to the false one, my heart divided
between his seduction and my own strong will. I could not longer stand
such an inward conflict, and the deciding strife began.

"You appear, sir, to forget that I have indeed allowed you, upon
certain conditions, to remain in my company, but that I have reserved
my perfect freedom."

"If you command it, I pack up."

He was accustomed to this menace. I was silent. He began immediately
to roll up my shadow. I turned pale, but I let it proceed. There
followed a long pause; he first broke it.

"You cannot bear me, sir. You hate me; I know it; yet why do you
hate me? Is it because you attacked me on the highway, and sought to
deprive me by violence of my bird's nest? Or is it because you have
endeavored, in a thievish manner, to cheat me out of my property, the
shadow, which was intrusted to you entirely on your honor? I, for my
part, do not hate you in spite of all this. I find it quite natural
that you should seek to avail yourself of all your advantages,
cunning, and power. Neither do I object to your very strict principles
and to your fancy to think like honesty itself. In fact, I think not
so strictly as you; I merely act as you think. Or have I at any time
pressed my finger on your throat in order to bring to me your most
precious soul, for which I have a fancy? Have I, on account of my
bartered purse, let a servant loose on you? Have I sought to swindle
you out of it?" I had nothing to oppose to this, and he proceeded:
"Very good, sir! very good! You cannot endure me; I know that very
well, and am by no means angry with you for it. We must part, that is
clear, and, in fact, you begin to be very wearisome to me. In order,
then, to rid you of my continued, shame-inspiring presence, I counsel
you once more to purchase this thing from me." I extend