He owned it, grinning, and we both laughed together.

"But if I had known it was you," he said, "I should have finished the
chapter another time."

There was a short silence, during which I was observing the very peculiar
physiognomy of this misshapen being--those long deep wrinkles that moated
in his wide mouth, his small eyes with the crow's feet at the outer
corners, that contorted nose, bulbous at its end, and especially that
huge double-storied forehead of his. The whole figure reminded me not a
little of the received pictures of Socrates, and while warming myself and
listening to the crackling of the fire, I went off into contemplations on
the very diversified fortunes of mankind.

"Here is this dwarf," I thought, "an ill-shaped, stunted caricature,
banished into a corner of Nideck, and living just like the cricket that
chirps beneath the hearthstone. Here is this little Knapwurst, who in the
midst of excitement, grand hunts, gallant trains of horsemen coming and
going, the barking of the hounds, the trampling of the horses, and the
shouts of the hunters, is living quietly all alone, buried in his books,
and thinking of nothing but the times long gone by, whilst joy or sorrow,
songs or tears, fill the world around him, while spring and summer,
autumn and winter, come and look in through his dim windows, by turns
brightening, warming, and benumbing the face of nature outside. Whilst
men in the outer world are subject to the gentle influences of love, or
the sterner impulses of ambition or avarice, hoping, coveting, longing,
and desiring, he neither hopes, nor desires, nor covets anything. As long
as he is smoking his pipe, with his eyes feasting on a musty parchment,
he lives in the enjoyment of dreams, and he goes into raptures over
things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is