The Tales of Hoffmann by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Author:E.T.A. Hoffmann [Hoffmann, E.T.A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: German Literature, Classics, Short Stories, Fiction
ISBN: 9780141914886
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2004-05-26T23:00:00+00:00

One stormy autumn night in the year 1760, a tremendous crash, as if the whole rambling castle had collapsed in a thousand pieces, awoke the servants in Castle R. from a deep sleep. In a moment everyone was on his feet; lamps were lit; and, with fear and anxiety on his deathly pale countenance, the steward came panting up with the keys. In a silence like that of the grave, he moved through the passages, halls and rooms, but nowhere was there the slightest sign of damage. A dark foreboding seized him. He went up to the big hall, in one of the side rooms of which Baron Roderich von R. used to rest when engaged on his astronomy. Between the door of this room and another small room there was an entrance which led through a narrow passage directly to the observation tower. But as Daniel (as the steward was called) opened this heavy door, the storm, howling and roaring, hurled rubble and broken masonry at him, so that he recoiled in terror and, as he dropped the lamp to the floor, cried aloud: ‘O Lord of Heaven! The Baron has been dashed to pieces!’

At that instant, the sound of wailing was heard from the Baron’s bedroom: Daniel found the servants gathered around the body of their master. Fully clad, he was seated in his chair as if resting. As daylight came, they saw that the top of the tower had collapsed, stones had crashed through into the astronomy chamber, and the heavy timbers, exposed by the fall, had broken through the lower vaulting and torn away part of the castle wall and the passage. To step through the doorway from the hall was to risk falling eighty feet into the abyss.

The Baron had foreseen his death to the hour and had told his son, so Wolfgang, Baron R., the eldest son of the deceased and hence holder of the entail, arrived the following day from Vienna, where he had been on a visit. The steward had had the large hall hung in black, and the dead Baron lay on a bier in the dress in which he had been found, surrounded by silver candelabra with burning candles. Silently, Wolfgang went up to the hall and stood gazing into his father’s colourless countenance. At length, with a convulsive movement, he murmured: ‘Did the stars compel you to make miserable the son you loved?’

Stepping back a pace, he gazed heavenwards and said gently: ‘Poor deluded old man! Your game is now finished! Now you may learn that what we have here has nothing to do with what is beyond the stars. What will or power can reach beyond the grave?’

He again fell silent – then he cried vehemently: ‘No, not one atom of my earthly happiness, which you sought to destroy, shall I be robbed of now!’

With that, he drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and held it to one of the candles: the paper flared up,

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