Вильгельм Гауф
The Wine-ghosts of Bremen
Stunned by the awful fall I lay long, but at length a headache and the coldness of the ground awoke me. Anxiously I examined my limbs, but found nothing broken. Daylight was faintly streaming in through a cellar grating; on the table a candle was flickering as it expired, and round the table in front of each chair a long-shaped bottle with a label on its neck. The company was gone! But whither and how?
Thoughtfully I walked round the long table. The sample bottles stood where each one had sat. Frau Rosa's at the head of the board. Surely it couldn't have been a dream? No, one does not dream so vividly–besides, my headache from that bump! But I had little time left for reflections. I heard keys rattling at the door–it opened slowly, and my old friend of the evening before came in wishing me good morning. 'It has just struck six, sir,' said he, 'and I have come as you desired to let you out. Well, how did you sleep?' 'As well as one can upon a chair–pretty fairly, thank you.' 'Sir,' cried he, anxiously examining me, 'something strange happened to you last night–you look disturbed and pale, and your voice trembles.' 'Nonsense,' said I, 'what could have happened to me? I am only sleepy.' 'I am not so blind as you think,' said he, 'and, besides, the night watchman came to me early this morning and told me that as he passed by the cellar between twelve and one last night he heard all kinds of riot and revelry within there.' 'Pure imagination,' said I, 'I'm given to talking loud, and even to singing, in my sleep sometimes.'
'Never again,' said he, 'do I leave a gentleman alone in the cellar at night. The Lord knows what awful things he has not heard and seen. I wish you a most respectful good morning, sir.'
'But the thing that best would win it
Is the Lady Fair within it.'
Remembering these words of the joyous Bacchus as being particularly applied to Bremen and to my own case, I hurried, after I had slept a few hours, to bid good morning to the lovely Adelgunde. But she received me with more than wonted coldness, and when I whispered some affectionate words to her she fairly laughed aloud, and turning her back said, 'Go, and have your sleep well out, sir, first.' A friend, who was sitting at the piano in another corner of the room, followed me as I turned away, and taking my hand said, 'Dear Brother, it is all over with your love for her–put all thoughts of it out of your head.' 'I could see as much,' I answered; and then, sotto voce, 'The Devil take every pretty pair of eyes and every rosy mouth in the world!' 'But tell me,' says my friend, 'is it true that you stayed the whole night drinking in the wine cellar?' 'Well, yes! but whose business is that?' 'Heaven knows how she heard it, for she has been crying all the morning, and vows you are a mere vulgar sot, and she will have no more to do with you.' 'Well,' said I, steeling myself, 'good then; that proves she can never have loved me. Give her my kind regards; farewell.'
I ran home quickly and resolved to quit Bremen at once. As I left the market-place that evening I gave old Roland's statue a friendly wave of the hand, and to the horror of my postillion, he nodded a parting greeting at me with his stone head. I threw a kiss to the old Council Hall and its happy cellars, and curling up in the comer of my chaise allowed the fancies of the night to pass once more before my eyes.
