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Page 59
"Everything!" said the shadow. "For I saw everything, and I know everything!"
"How did it look in the furthest saloon?" asked the learned man. "Was it there
as in the fresh woods? Was it there as in a holy
church? Were the saloons like the starlit firmament when we stand on the high
mountains?"
"Everything was there!" said the shadow. "I did not go quite in, I remained in
the foremost room, in the twilight, but I stood there quite well; I saw
everything, and I know everything! I have been in the antechamber at the court
of Poesy."
"But WHAT DID you see? Did all the gods of the olden times pass through the
large saloons? Did the old heroes combat there? Did sweet children play there,
and relate their dreams?"
"I tell you I was there, and you can conceive that I saw everything there was
to be seen. Had you come over there, you would not have been a man; but I
became so! And besides, I learned to know my inward nature, my innate
qualities, the relationship I had with Poesy. At the time I was with you, I
thought not of that, but always--you know it well--when the sun rose, and when
the sun went down, I became so strangely great; in the moonlight I was very
near being more distinct than yourself; at that time I did not understand my
nature; it was revealed to me in the antechamber! I became a man! I came out
matured; but you were no longer in the warm lands; as a man I was ashamed to
go as I did. I was in want of boots, of clothes, of the whole human varnish
that makes a man perceptible. I took my way--I tell it to you, but you will
not put it in any book--I took my way to the cake woman--I hid myself behind
her; the woman didn't think how much she concealed. I went out first in the
evening; I ran about the streets in the moonlight; I made myself long up the
walls--it tickles the back so delightfully! I ran up, and ran down, peeped
into the highest windows, into the saloons, and on the roofs, I peeped in
where no one could peep, and I saw what no one else saw, what no one else
should see! This is, in fact, a base world! I would not be a man if it were
not now once accepted and regarded as something to be so! I saw the most
unimaginable things with the women, with the men, with parents, and with the
sweet, matchless children; I saw," said the shadow, "what no human being must
know, but what they would all so willingly know--what is bad in their
neighbor. Had I written a newspaper, it would have been read! But I wrote
direct to the persons themselves, and there was consternation in all the
towns where I came. They were so afraid of me, and yet they were so
excessively fond of me. The professors made a professor of me; the tailors
gave me new clothes--I am well furnished; the master of the mint struck new
coin for me, and the women said I was so handsome! And so I became the man I
am. And I now bid you farewell. Here is my card--I live on the sunny side of
the street, and am always at home in rainy weather!" And so away went the
shadow. "That was most extraordinary!" said the learned man. Years and days
passed away, then the shadow came again. "How goes it?" said the shadow.
"Alas!" said the learned man. "I write about the true, and the good, and the
beautiful, but no one cares to hear such things; I am quite desperate, for I
take it so much to heart!"
"But I don't!" said the shadow. "I become fat, and it is that one wants to
become! You do not understand the world. You will become ill by it. You must
travel! I shall make a tour this summer; will you go with me? I should like to
have a travelling companion! Will you go with me, as shadow? It will be a
great pleasure for me to have you with me; I shall pay the travelling
expenses!"
"Nay, this is too much!" said the learned man.
"It is just as one takes it!" said the shadow. "It will do you much good to
travel! Will you be my shadow? You shall have everything free on the journey!"
"Nay, that is too bad!" said the learned man.
"But it is just so with the world!" said the shadow, "and so it will be!" and
away it went again.
The learned man was not at all in the most enviable state; grief and torment
followed him, and what he said about the true, and the good, and the
beautiful, was, to most persons, like roses for a cow! He was quite ill at
last.
"You really look like a shadow!" said his friends to him; and the learned man
trembled, for he thought of it.
"You must go to a watering-place!" said the shadow, who came and visited him.
"There is nothing else for it! I will take you with me for old acquaintance'
sake; I will pay the travelling expenses, and you write the descriptions--and
if they are a little amusing for me on the way! I will go to a
watering-place--my beard does not grow out as it ought--that is also a
sickness--and one must have a beard! Now you be wise and accept the offer; we
shall travel as comrades!"
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