couldn’t be altogether true; nevertheless the Sand-man
continued to be for me a fearful incubus, and I was
always seized with terror— my blood always ran cold,
not only when I heard anybody come up the stairs, but
when I heard anybody noisily open my father’s room
door and go in. Often he stayed away for a long season
altogether; then he would come several times in close
succession.
This went on for years, without my being able to
accustom myself to this fearful apparition, without the
image of the horrible Sand-man growing any fainter in
my imagination. His intercourse with my father began to
occupy my fancy ever more and more; I was restrained
from asking my father about him by an unconquerable
shyness; but as the years went on the desire waxed
stronger and stronger within me to fathom the mystery
myself and to see the fabulous Sand-man. He had been
the means of disclosing to me the path of the wonderful
and the adventurous, which so easily find lodgment
in the mind of the child. I liked nothing better than to
hear or read horrible stories of goblins, witches, Tom
Thumbs, and so on; but always at the head of them all
stood the Sand-man, whose picture I scribbled in the
most extraordinary and repulsive forms with both chalk
and coal everywhere, on the tables, and cupboard doors,
and walls. When I was ten years old my mother removed
me from the nursery into a little chamber off the corridor
not far from my father’s room. We still had to withdraw
hastily whenever, on the stroke of nine, the mysterious
unknown was heard in the house. As I lay in my little
chamber I could hear him go into father’s room, and
soon afterwards I fancied there was a fine and peculiar
smelling steam spreading itself through the house. As my
curiosity waxed stronger, my resolve to make somehow
or other the Sand-man’s acquaintance took deeper root.
Often when my mother had gone past, I slipped quickly
out of my room into the corridor, but I could never see
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anything, for always before I could reach the place where
I could get sight of him, the Sand-man was well inside
the door. At last, unable to resist the impulse any longer,
I determined to conceal myself in father’s room and
there wait for the Sand-man.
One evening I perceived from my father’s silence and
mother’s sadness that the Sand-man would come; accordingly, pleading that I was excessively tired, I left the room before nine o’clock and concealed myself in a
hiding-place close beside the door. The street door
creaked, and slow, heavy, echoing steps crossed the
passage towards the stairs. Mother hurried past me with
my brothers and sisters. Softly— softly— I opened father’s room door. He sat as usual, silent and motionless, with his back towards it; he did not hear me; and in a
moment I was in and behind a curtain drawn before my
father’s open wardrobe, which stood just inside the
room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing
footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling
and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation
and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a
noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with
a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, I take a
cautious peep out. In the middle of the room in front of
my father stands the Sand-man, the bright light of the
lamp falling full upon his face. The Sand-man, the
terrible Sand-man, is the old advocate Coppelius who
often comes to dine with us.
But the most hideous figure could not have awakened
greater trepidation in my heart than this Coppelius did.
Picture to yourself a large broad-shouldered man, with
an immensely big head, a face the colour of yellow-ochre,
grey bushy eyebrows, from beneath which two piercing, greenish, cat-like eyes glittered, and a prominent Roman nose hanging over his upper lip. His distorted
mouth was often screwed up into a malicious smile;
then two dark-red spots appeared on his cheeks, and a
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strange hissing noise proceeded from between his tightly
clenched teeth. He always wore an ash-grey coat of an
old-fashioned cut, a waistcoat of the same, and nether
extremeties to match, but black stockings and buckles
set with stones on his shoes. His little wig scarcely
extended beyond the crown of his head, his hair was
curled round high up above his big red ears, and plastered to his temples with cosmetic, and a broad closed hair-bag stood out prominently from his neck, so that
you could see the silver buckle that fastened his folded
neck-cloth. Altogether he was a most disagreeable and
horribly ugly figure; but what we children detested most
of all was his big coarse hairy hands; we could never
fancy anything that he had once touched. This he had
noticed; and so, whenever our good mother quietly
placed a piece of cake or sweet fruit on our plates, he
delighted to touch it under some pretext or other, until
the bright tears stood in our eyes, and from disgust and
loathing we lost the enjoyment of the tit-bit that was
intended to please us. And he did just the same thing
when father gave us a glass of sweet wine on holidays.
Then he would quickly pass his hand over it, or even
sometimes raise the glass to his blue lips, and he laughed
quite sardonically when all we dared do was to express
our vexation in stifled sobs. He habitually called us the
“little brutes”; and when he was present we might not
utter a sound; and we cursed the ugly spiteful man who
deliberately and intentionally spoilt all our little pleasures. Mother seemed to dislike this hateful Coppelius as much as we did; for as soon as he appeared her cheerfulness and bright and natural manner were transformed into sad, gloomy seriousness. Father treated him as if he
were a being of some higher race, whose ill-manners were
to be tolerated, whilst no efforts ought to be spared to
keep him in good-humour. He had only to give a slight
hint, and his favourite dishes were cooked for him and
rare wine uncorked.
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As soon as I saw this Coppelius, therefore, the fearful
and hideous thought arose in my mind that he, and he
alone, must be the Sand-man; but I no longer conceived
of the Sand-man as the bugbear in the old nurse’s fable,
who fetched children’s eyes and took them to the halfmoon as food for his little ones— no! but as an ugly spectre-like fiend bringing trouble and misery and ruin,
both temporal and everlasting, everywhere wherever he
appeared.
I was spell-bound on the spot. At the risk of being
discovered, and, as I well enough knew, of being severely
punished, I remained as I was, with my head thrust
through the curtains listening. My father received
Coppelius in a ceremonious manner. “Come, to work!”
cried the latter, in a
hoarse snarling voice, throwing off
his coat. Gloomily and silently my father took off his
dressing-gown, and both put on long black smock-frocks.
Where they took them from I forgot to notice. Father
opened the folding-doors of a cupboard in the wall; but I
saw that what I had so long taken to be a cupboard was
really a dark recess, in which was a little hearth.
Coppelius approached it, and a blue flame crackled
upwards from it. Round about were all kinds of strange
utensils. Good God! as my old father bent down over the
fire how different he looked! His gentle and venerable
features seemed to be drawn up by some dreadful
convulsive pain into an ugly, repulsive Satanic mask. He
looked like Coppelius. Coppelius plied the red-hot tongs
and drew bright glowing masses out of the thick smoke
and began assiduously to hammer them. I fancied that
there were men’s faces visible round about, but without
eyes, having ghastly deep black holes where the eyes
should have been. “Eyes here! Eyes here!” cried
Coppelius, in a hollow sepulchral voice. My blood ran
cold with horror; I screamed and tumbled out of my
hiding-place onto the floor. Coppelius immediately
seized upon me. “You little brute! You little brute!” he
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bleated, grinding his teeth. Then, snatching me up, he
threw me on the hearth, so that the flames began to singe
my hair. “Now we’ve got eyes— eyes— a beautiful pair
of children’s eyes,” he whispered, and, thrusting his
hands into the flames he took out some red-hot grains
and was about to strew them into my eyes. Then my
father clasped his hands and entreated him, saying,
“Master, master, let my Nathanael keep his eyes— oh!
do let him keep them.” Coppelius laughed shrilly and
replied, “Well then, the boy may keep his eyes and whine
and pule his way through the world; but we will now at
any rate observe the mechanism of the hand and the
foot.” And there with he roughly laid hold upon me, so
that my joints cracked, and twisted my hands and my
feet, pulling them now this way, and now that, “That’s
not quite right altogether! It’s better as it was!— the old
fellow knew what he was about.” Thus lisped and hissed
Coppelius; but all around me grew black and dark; a
sudden convulsive pain shot through all my nerves and
bones; I knew nothing more.
I felt a soft warm breath fanning my cheek; I awakened
as if out of the sleep of death; my mother was bending
over me. “Is the Sand-man still there?” I stammered.
“No, my dear child; he’s been gone a long, long time;
he’ll not hurt you.” Thus spoke my mother, as she kissed
her recovered darling and pressed him to her heart. But
why should I tire you, my dear Lothair? why do I dwell at
such length on these details, when there’s so much
remains to be said? Enough— I was detected in my
eavesdropping, and roughly handled by Coppelius. Fear
and terror had brought on a violent fever, of which I lay
ill several weeks. “Is the Sand-man still there?” These
were the first words I uttered on coming to myself again,
the first sign of my recovery, of my safety. Thus, you see,
I have only to relate to you the most terrible moment of
my youth for you to thoroughly understand that it must
not be ascribed to the weakness of my eyesight if all that I
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see is colourless, but to the fact that a mysterious destiny
has hung a dark veil of clouds about my life, which I shall
perhaps only break through when I die.
Coppelius did not show himself again; it was reported
he had left the town.
It was about a year later when, in pursuance of the old
unchanged custom, we sat around the round table in the
evening. Father was in very good spirits, and was telling
us amusing tales about his youthful travels. As it was
striking nine we all at once heard the street door creak on
its hinges, and slow ponderous steps echoed across the
passage and up the stairs. “That is Coppelius,” said my
mother, turning pale. “Yes, it is Coppelius,” replied
my father in a faint broken voice. The tears started from
my mother’s eyes. “But, father, father,” she cried, “must
it be so?” “This is the last time,” he replied; “this is the
last time he will come to me, I promise you. Go now, go
and take the children. Go, go to bed—good-night.”
As for me, I felt as if I were converted into cold, heavy
stone; T could not get my breath. As I stood there
immovable my mother seized me by the arm. “Come,
Nathanael! do come along!” I suffered myself to be led
away; I went into my room. “Be a good boy and keep
quiet,” mother called after me; “get into bed and go to
sleep.” But, tortured by indescribable fear and uneasiness, I could not close my eyes. That hateful, hideous Coppelius stood before me with his glittering eyes,
smiling maliciously down upon me; in vain did I strive to
banish the image. Somewhere about midnight there was
a terrific crack, as if a cannon were being fired off. The
whole house shook; something went rustling and clattering past my door; the house-door was pulled to with a bang. “That is Coppelius,” I cried, terror-stricken, and
leaped out of bed. Then I heard a wild heart-rending
scream; I rushed into my father’s room; the door stood
open, and clouds of suffocating smoke came rolling
towards me. The servant maid shouted, “Oh! my master!
my master!” On the floor in front of the smoking hearth
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lay my father, dead, his face burned black and fearfully
distorted, my sisters weeping and moaning around him,
and my mother lying near them in a swoon.
“Coppelius, you atrocious fiend, you’ve killed my
father,” I shouted. My senses left me. Two days later,
when my father was placed in his coffin, his features were
mild and gentle again as they had been when he was
alive. I found great consolation in the thought that his
association with the diabolical Coppelius could not have
ended in his everlasting ruin.
Our neighbours had been awakened by the explosion;
the affair got talked about, and came before the magisterial authorities, who wished to cite Coppelius to clear himself. But he had disappeared from the place, leaving
no traces behind him.
Now when I tell you, my dear friend, that the peddler I
spoke of was the villain Coppelius, you will not blame
me for seeing impending mischief in his inauspicious
reappearance. He was differently dressed; but Cop-
pelius’s figure and features are too deeply impressed
upon my mind for me to be capable of making a mistake
in the matter. Moreover, he has not even changed his
name. He proclaims himself here, I learn, to be a
Piedmontese mechanician, and styles himself Giuseppe
Coppola.
I am resolved to enter the lists against him and avenge
my father’s death, let the consequences be what they
may.
Don’t say a word to mother about the reappearance of
this odious monster. Give my love to my darling Clara; I
will write to her when I am in a somewhat calmer frame
of mind. Adieu, &c.
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C lara to N ath an ael
You are right, you have not written to me for a very long
time, but nevertheless I believe that I still retain a place
in your mind and thoughts. It is a proof that you were
thinking a good deal about me when you were sending off your last letter to brother Lothair, for instead of directing it to him you directed it to me. With joy I
tore open the envelope, and did not perceive the
mistake until I read the words, “Oh! my dear, dear
Lothair.”
Now I know I ought not to have read any more of the
letter, but ought to have given it to my brother. But as
you have so often in innocent raillery made it a sort of
reproach against me that I possessed such a calm and, for
a woman, cool-headed temperament that I should be like
the woman we read of—if the house was threatening to
tumble down, I should stop before hastily fleeing, to
smooth down a crumple in the window curtains— I need
hardly tell you that the beginning of your letter quite
upset me. I could scarcely breathe; there was a bright
mist before my eyes.
Oh! my darling Nathanael! what could this terrible
thing be that had happened? Separation from you—
never to see you again, the thought was like a sharp knife
in my heart. I read on and on. Your description of that
horrid Coppelius made my flesh creep. I now learned for
the first time what a terrible and violent death your good
old father died. Brother Lothair, to whom I handed over
his property, sought to comfort me, but with little
success. That horrid peddler Giuseppe Coppola followed
me everywhere; and I am almost ashamed to confess it,
but he was able to disturb my sound and in general calm
sleep with all sorts of wonderful dream-shapes. But
soon— the next day— I saw everything in a different
light. Oh! do not be angry with me, my best-beloved, if.
despite your strange presentiment that Coppelius will do
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