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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Still," said Ottmar, "any annoyance which a playwright may feel, when he sees other characters, quite dissimilar from his own, represented instead of them, is richly compensated for by the applause of the public, to which no author can, or should, be indifferent."
"Strictly speaking," said Vincenz, "it is a breach of all Serapiontic rule to keep chattering in this sort of style; and not only that, but, moreover, without any especial motive or inducement, the most unseemly things about gruesome vampires, and other such matters, are brought forward, so that I am obliged to shut my mouth just as I have got it opened. But go on, my Ottmar.
"An unnecessary Capitatio Benevolentiae; read us your Novella, my good friend Ottmar, and if you succeed in vividly portraying to us your Salvator Rosa in verisimilitude before our eyes, we will recognise you as a true Serapion brother, and leave everything else to the grumbling, fault-finding critics. Shall it not be so, my eminent Serapion Brethren?" The friends acquiesced, and Ottmar began.
"'Ye Divell, in this year of Grace, appeared bodily in ye streets of Berlin, and attended funerals, conducting himself thereat sorrowfullie, &c., &c., &c. "You will see, my dear Ottmar, that this entertaining piece of intelligence was of a nature to delight me immensely; but some pages in Lothair's handwriting delighted me still more.
And just as Ottmar read those words, the door of the summer-house in which the friends were sitting flew open, also with a startling noise, and they saw a dark form, wrapped in a mantle, approaching slowly, with noiseless footfalls, as of a spirit. They all gazed at this form, a little startled, holding their breaths.
Here with the wretched piece of scribbling, that I may tear it up and scatter it to the winds of heaven." "No, no," cried Theodore; "you must read it to Ottmar, as a penance for what you inflicted on me in my illness with your horrible weird Chronicle matter."
But where have you appeared from so suddenly? How did you find out that we were here?" "I came back to-day from my journey," Cyprian said. "I went at once to see Theodore, Lothair, and Ottmar, but found none of them at home.
"On the whole," said Lothair, "I am convinced, and the instance which Ottmar has given confirms me, that the writer on whom, in the depths of his soul, the true recognition and comprehension of art, and with them, that worship which they give to the creating formative spirit of the universe, have arisen in light, cannot lower himself to the degraded idol-cult, which worships only its own self as being the Fetish that created all things.
Whilst Lothair had been reading, Ottmar had laughed a great deal, but towards the close he had become grave and silent. "I must admit," he said, "that in this little tale or 'prank' for I don't know what else to call it of Lothair's there predominates an attempt, often more or less successful, at a certain sort of amusing naïveté, very appropriate to the character of the German Devil.
"We cannot hurry away too quickly from this gruesome picture," Ottmar said. Have I your permission, Vincenz?"
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