e
desperate, for I take it so much to heart!"

"But I don't!" said the shadow, "I become fat, and it is that one
wants to become! You do not understand the world. You will become ill
by it. You must travel! I shall make a tour this summer; will you go
with me?--I should like to have a travelling companion! will you go
with me, as shadow? It will be a great pleasure for me to have you
with me; I shall pay the travelling expenses!"

"Nay, this is too much!" said the learned man.

"It is just as one takes it!"--said the shadow. "It will do you much
good to travel!--will you be my shadow?--you shall have everything
free on the journey!"

"Nay, that is too bad!" said the learned man.

"But it is just so with the world!" said the shadow,--"and so it will
be!"--and away it went again.

The learned man was not at all in the most enviable state; grief and
torment followed him, and what he said about the true, and the good,
and the beautiful, was, to most persons, like roses for a cow!--he was
quite ill at last.

"You really look like a shadow!" said his friends to him; and the
learned man trembled, for he thought of it.

"You must go to a watering-place!" said the shadow, who came and
visited him; "there is nothing else for it! I will take you with me
for old acquaintance' sake; I will pay the travelling expenses, and
you write the descriptions--and if they are a little amusing for me on
the way! I will go to a watering-place,--my beard does not grow out as
it ought--that is also a sickness--and one must have a beard! Now you
be wise and accept the offer; we shall travel as comrades!"

And so they travelled; the shadow was master, and the master was the
shadow; they drove with each other, they rode and walked together,
side by side, before and behind, just as the sun was; the shadow
always took care to keep itself in the master's place. Now the learned
man didn't think much about that; he was a very kind-hearted man, and
particularly mild and friendly, and so he said one day to the shadow:
"As we have now become companions, and in this way have grown up
together from childhood, shall we not drink '_thou_' together, it is
more familiar?"

"You are right," said the shadow, who was now the proper master. "It
is said in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a
learned man, certainty know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot
bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every
limb