Ch. 8 - The Puppet Showman - Page 2

and I believe we each
derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
spiral line, becomes magnetic,--well, how is that? The spirit comes
over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them--and there stands
a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.

"'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.

"'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company--a company
of real men and women.'

"'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
then think that you would be perfectly happy?'

"Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
would be--that I was intoxicated.

"That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
the family!--And he was so--my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
excellent artists--they said so themselves--and I was the