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"Mark this, Schlemihl; what we at first won't do with a good will, that will we in the end be compelled to. Hear you I will give you also my cap into the bargain." The mother came forth, and the conversation began. "How goes it with Mina?" "She weeps." "Silly child! it cannot be altered!" "Certainly not; but to give her to another so soon? Oh, man! thou art cruel to thy own child."
Now, it was a thriving mechanic in quest of a tenement that should come within his moderate means of rent; now, a ruddy Irish girl from the banks of Killarney, wandering from kitchen to kitchen of our land, while her heart still hung in the peat-smoke of her native cottage; now, a single gentleman looking out for economical board; and now for this establishment offered an epitome of worldly pursuits it was a faded beauty inquiring for her lost bloom; or Peter Schlemihl, for his lost shadow; or an author of ten years' standing, for his vanished reputation; or a moody man, for yesterday's sunshine.
Excuse me, therefore; and as it cannot now be otherwise, let us part." "It grieves me, Monsieur Schlemihl, that you obstinately decline the business which I propose to you as a friend. Perhaps another time I may be more fortunate. Till our speedy meeting again!
A poor devil a sort of scholar and philosopher, who obtains but poor thanks from his friends for his admirable arts, and whose only amusement on earth consists in his small experiments. But just sign this; to the right, exactly underneath Peter Schlemihl." I shook my head, and replied, "Excuse me, sir; I cannot sign that." "Cannot!" he exclaimed; "and why not?"
The man's words were precisely these: 'Tell your master, Peter Schlemihl, he will not see me here again. I am going to cross the sea; a favorable wind now calls all the passengers on board; but in a year and a day I shall have the honor of paying him a visit; when, in all probability, I shall have a proposal to make to him of a very agreeable nature.
He kept twirling in his hand the well-known parchment with an air of indifference; and while the ranger, absorbed in thought, and intent upon his paper, paced up and down the arbour, my tormentor confidentially leaned towards me, and whispered, "So, Mr. Schlemihl, you have at length accepted my invitation; and here we sit, two heads under one hood, as the saying is. Well, well, all in good time.
Surrounded by a circle of attached and admiring friends, Chamisso continued thus entirely engaged till his death, in 1839, leaving behind him a name and works which posterity "will not willingly let perish." We should take care, my dear Edward, not to expose the history of poor Schlemihl to eyes unfit to look upon it. That would be a bad experiment.
As a matter of fact, the work for which Chamisso is best known, a work which has become international in popularity, Peter Schlemihl , is an early bit of such realistic prose. The tale of the man who sells his shadow to the devil for the sake of the sack of Fortunatus has become in Chamisso's hands a genuine folk-fairy-tale in key-note and style.
No one seemed to perceive that I was destitute of a shadow. My boots, I was assured, together with everything found on me when I was brought here, were in safe keeping, and would be given up to me on my restoration to health. This place was called the SCHLEMIHLIUM: the daily recitation I had heard was an exhortation to pray for Peter Schlemihl as the founder and benefactor of this institution.
Her face was white and she spoke as if in self-defence. "She's such a Schlemihl that she lost her purse in the Lane, and I found her gushing with the eyes, and I let her carry home my fish and gave her a shilling and a peppermint, and thou seest how she turns on me, thou seest." "Poor little thing!" said David impulsively. "Here, come here, my child." Esther refused to budge.
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