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Hereupon he wandered into a boudoir formed entirely of mirrors, like the one
in Castle Rosenburg; but here the glasses magnified to an astonishing degree.
On the floor, in the middle of the room, sat, like a Dalai-Lama, the
insignificant "Self" of the person, quite confounded at his own greatness. He
then imagined he had got into a needle-case full of pointed needles of every
size.

"This is certainly the heart of an old maid," thought he. But he was mistaken.
It was the heart of a young military man; a man, as people said, of talent and
feeling.

In the greatest perplexity, he now came out of the last heart in the row; he
was unable to put his thoughts in order, and fancied that his too lively
imagination had run away with him.

"Good Heavens!" sighed he. "I have surely a disposition to madness--'tis
dreadfully hot here; my blood boils in my veins and my head is burning like a
coal." And he now remembered the important event of the evening before, how
his head had got jammed in between the iron railings of the hospital. "That's
what it is, no doubt," said he. "I must do something in time: under such
circumstances a Russian bath might do me good. I only wish I were already on
the upper bank."*

*In these Russian (vapor) baths the person extends himself on a bank or form,
and as he gets accustomed to the heat, moves to another higher up towards the
ceiling, where, of course, the vapor is warmest. In this manner he ascends
gradually to the highest.


And so there he lay on the uppermost bank in the vapor-bath; but with all his
clothes on, in his boots and galoshes, while the hot drops fell scalding from
the ceiling on his face.

"Holloa!" cried he, leaping down. The bathing attendant, on his side, uttered
a loud cry of astonishment when he beheld in the bath, a man completely
dressed.

The other, however, retained sufficient presence of mind to whisper to him,
"'Tis a bet, and I have won it!" But the first thing he did as soon as he got
home, was to have a large blister put on his chest and back to draw out his
madness.

The next morning he had a sore chest and a bleeding back; and, excepting the
fright, that was all that he had gained by the Shoes of Fortune.


V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk

The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile of the
galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now went to fetch
them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in the street, claimed
them as his property, they were delivered over to the police-office.*

*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but
any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well
as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a
police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among many other scribes
of various denominations, of which, it seems, our hero was one.


"Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own," said one of the clerks,

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