As I once scotched my boots on the shores of the north and gathered lichens and sea-weed, an ice-bear came unawares upon me round the corner of a rock.  Flinging off my slippers, I would step over to an opposite island, to which a naked crag which protruded midway from the waves offered me a passage.  I stepped with one foot firmly on the rock, and plunged over on the other side into the sea, one of my slippers having unobserved remained fast on the foot.

The excessive cold seized on me; I with difficulty rescued my life from this danger; and the moment I reached land, I ran with the utmost speed to the Lybyan desert in order to dry myself in the sun, but, as I was here exposed, it burned me so furiously on the head that I staggered back again very ill toward the north.  I sought to relieve myself by rapid motion, and ran with swift, uncertain steps, from west to east, from east to west.  I found myself now in the day, now in the night; now in summer, now in the winter’s cold.

I know not how long I thus reeled about on the earth.  A burning fever glowed in my veins; with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking me.  As mischief would have it, in my incautious career, I now trod on some one’s foot; I must have hurt him; I received a heavy blow, and fell to the ground.

When I again returned to consciousness, I lay comfortably in a good bed, which stood amongst many other beds in a handsome hall.  Some one sat at my head; people went through the hall from one bed to another.  They came to mine, and spoke together about me.  They styled me Number Twelve; and on the wall at my feet stood—­yes, certainly it was no delusion, I could distinctly read on a black tablet of marble in great golden letters, quite correctly written, my name—­

  PETER SCHLEMIHL.

On the tablet beneath my name were two other rows of letters, but I was too weak to put them together.  I again closed my eyes.

I heard something of which the subject was Peter Schlemihl read aloud, and articulately, but I could not collect the sense.  I saw a friendly man, and a very lovely woman in black dress appear at my bedside.  The forms were not strange to me, and yet I could not recognize them.

Some time went on, and I recovered my strength.  I was called Number Twelve; and Number Twelve, on account of his long beard, passed for a Jew, on which account, however, he was not at all the less carefully treated.  That he had no shadow appeared to have been unobserved.  My boots, as I was assured, were, with all that I had brought hither, in good keeping, in order to be restored to me on my recovery.  The place in which I lay was called the SCHLEMIHLIUM.  What was daily read aloud concerning Peter Schlemihl was an exhortation to pray for him as the Founder and Benefactor of this institution.  The friendly man whom I had seen by my bed was Bendel; the lovely woman was Mina.