streamed from her, and dazzled his eyes; but then he had only just opened
them, as he awoke from his sleep. With one spring he was out of bed, and
crept softly behind the curtain. But she was gone-the brightness had
disappeared; the flowers no longer appeared like flames, although still as
beautiful as ever. The door stood ajar, and from an inner room sounded
music so sweet and so lovely, that it produced the most enchanting
thoughts, and acted on the senses with magic power. Who could live there?
Where was the real entrance? for, both in the street and in the lane at the
side, the whole ground floor was a continuation of shops; and people could
not always be passing through them.
One evening the foreigner sat in the balcony. A light was burning in his
own room, just behind him. It was quite natural, therefore, that his shadow
should fall on the wall of the opposite house; so that, as he sat amongst the
flowers on his balcony, when he moved, his shadow moved also.
“I think my shadow is the only living thing to be seen opposite,” said the
learned man; “see how pleasantly it sits among the flowers. The door is
only ajar; the shadow ought to be clever enough to step in and look about
him, and then to come back and tell me what he has seen. You could make
yourself useful in this way,” said he, jokingly; “be so good as to step in
now, will you?” and then he nodded to the shadow, and the shadow nodded
in return. “Now go, but don’t stay away altogether.”
Then the foreigner stood up, and the shadow on the opposite balcony
stood up also; the foreigner turned round, the shadow turned; and if any one
had observed, they might have seen it go straight into the half-opened door
of the opposite balcony, as the learned man re-entered his own room, and let
the curtain fall. The next morning he went out to take his coffee and read
the newspapers.
“How is this?” he exclaimed, as he stood in the sunshine. “I have lost my
shadow. So it really did go away yesterday evening, and it has not returned.
This is very annoying.”
