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dream, they were so freighted for me with tranquil satisfaction. I could
not have enjoyed my pet vice more if my gentle tormentor had been a
smoker herself, and an advocate of the practice. Well, the sight of her
handwriting reminded me that I way getting very hungry to see her again.
I easily guessed what I should find in her letter. I opened it. Good!
just as I expected; she was coming! Coming this very day, too, and by
the morning train; I might expect her any moment.
I said to myself, "I am thoroughly happy and content now. If my most
pitiless enemy could appear before me at this moment, I would freely
right any wrong I may have done him."
Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He
was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old.
Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape; and so,
while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say,
"
This is a conspicuous deformity," the spectator perceived that this
little person was a deformity as a whole--a vague, general, evenly
blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the
face and the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And
yet, this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote
and ill-defined resemblance to me! It was dully perceptible in the
mean form, the countenance, and even the clothes, gestures, manner,
and attitudes of the creature. He was a farfetched, dim suggestion of
a burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about him
struck me forcibly and most unpleasantly: he was covered all over with
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