The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

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Вильгельм Гауф. The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

PREFACE

THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN

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'Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.'–Othello, ii. 3.

'There's nothing to be done with the fellow,' I heard them say, as they stumped down the stairs; 'nine o'clock and he is going to doze away his evening like a dormouse. He wouldn't have been like that four years ago.' They were not far wrong from their point of view, good fellows; for this evening there was to be a most brilliant musical tea and muffin fight with dancing and recitation, and these gentlemen had come to invite me (who was a stranger to the High Life of Bremen) to go with them. But I did not feel up to it. Some one, whom I had come to Bremen on purpose to visit, was not to be there, and what's the use of going anywhere where Some one isn't? Besides, I knew I should have to sing if I went, and I didn't choose to sing if she wasn't to be there to hear me. I should only spoil all their fun by looking sulky. I preferred to let them curse me for a dull dog for a few minutes on the steps, rather than let them bore themselves from nine to one in talking to my body only, while my soul would be whole streets off wandering about in the neighbourhood of the Frauenkirche.

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It wasn't sleepiness though. I am not a habitual dormouse, and don't like being called one. No, I meant to be thoroughly awake that night, and one of my friends–it was you, Hermann–said as much when he got outside. 'He didn't look sleepy,' I heard him say, 'with those bright eyes of his. But he looked like a man who had been drinking either too much or too little, which probably means that he is going to make a night of it with the bottle, and alone.'

Prophetic soul! Did you know that my eyes were sparkling yet proleptically with the thought of old Rhenish? You didn't know that I had a permit from their High Mightinesses to greet my Lady Rose and the Twelve Apostles. And you certainly didn't know that it was my 'Retreat.'1

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