Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/123

served, doubtlessly, the features of the most notable members of the feudal line of R—sitten. The old leather covered coffers, standing against the wainscotting, blackened by time, brought out with more character the white spot, the sight of which had first struck me. I supposed that it was simply on account of there having been formerly a communicating door, since walled up, without the workmen having taken care to hide the mason work with a coating of paint to correspond with the other decorations of the room. For the rest, my imagination was occupied much more with all kinds of dreams than with the least reality. I peopled the castle with supernatural apparitions, which I gradually became afraid of myself. Finally the chance or the occasion operated so, that I found in my pocket a book, from which the young people of that time were inseparable; it was the Visionary, by Schiller. This reading destroyed the activity of my imagination. I was plunged into a kind of half hallucination, produced by the scene which passed before my eyes, when light, but well timed footsteps, seemed to me to traverse the room. I listened: a dull groan is heard, stops, then re-commences; I think that I hear scratching behind the white spot which represents the walled-up door. There is no longer any doubt, it is some poor animal that has been shut in there. I go and strike my foot on the floor, and the noise will cease, or the captive animal will utter some cry. But, oh terror! the scratching is continued with a kind of savageness; but no other sign of life is given; my blood is already freezing in my veins; the most incoherent ideas assail me, and behold me nailed to my chair, without daring to make a movement, when at last, the mysterious claw ceases to scratch, and the footsteps commence again. I rise as if moved by a spring, I advance towards the end of the room, hardly lighted by an expiring torch; suddenly a current of cold air is felt on my cheeks, and at the same time the moon, piercing a cloud, lights up, with a trembling reflection, a full length portrait of a man with a very repulsive countenance; then voices, which have