from without him! The shaping of
the material is the important part of the business. We ought to think
of our Patron Saint Serapion. His stories were told out of his soul as
he had seen them with his eyes, not as he had read about them."

"You do me much injustice, Lothair," said Theodore, "if you suppose I
am of any other opinion. And there is nobody who has shown more
admirably how a subject may be vividly represented than Heinrich Kleist
in his tale of Kohlhaas, the horse dealer."

"However," said Lothair, "as we have been talking of Hafftitz's book, I
should like to read to you a story of which I took most of the leading
ideas from the Michrochronicon. I wrote it during an attack of a very
queer mood of mind, which beset me for a very considerable time. And I
hope, Ottmar, my dear friend, it will lead you to admit that the
'spleen,' which Theodore says I am suffering from, is not so very
serious as he would make it out to be."

He took out a manuscript, and read:

ALBERTINE'S WOOERS.
(A story in which many utterly improbable adventures happen.)

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TREATS OF SWEETHEARTS, WEDDINGS, CLERKS OF THE PRIVY CHANCERY,
PERTURBATIONS, WITCHCRAFT TRIALS, AND OTHER DELECTABLE MATTERS.

On the night of the autumnal equinox, Mr. Tussmann, a clerk in the
Privy Chancery, was making his way from the cafe, where he was in the
habit of passing an hour or two regularly every evening, towards his
lodgings in Spandau Street. The Clerk of the Privy Chancery was
excessively regular and punctilious in every action of his life. He
always had just done taking off his coat and his boots at the exact
moment when the clocks of St. Mary's and St. Nicholas's churches struck
eleven; so that, as the reverberating echo of the last stroke died
away, he always drew his nightcap over his ears, and placed his feet in
his roomy slippers.

On the night we are speaking of he, in order not to be late in going
through those ceremonies (for the clocks were just going to strike
eleven), was just going to turn out of King Street, round the corner
of Spandau Street, with a rapid sweep--almost to be denominated a
jump--when the sound of a strange sort of knocking somewhere in his
immediate proximity rivetted him to the spot.

And he became aware that, down at the bottom of the Town-house
Tower--rendered visible by the light of the neighbouring lamp--there
was a tall