merely a piece of my friend's waggery, meant for nothing but to make
fools of us? If so, he has the joke all to himself.

This dumb devil which possesses Monsieur do Miroir is, I am
persuaded, the sole reason that he does not make me the most
flattering protestations of friendship. In many particulars--
indeed, as to all his cognizable and not preternatural points,
except that, once in a great while, I speak a word or two--there
exists the greatest apparent sympathy between us. Such is his
confidence in my taste that he goes astray from the general fashion
and copies all his dresses after mine. I never try on a new garment
without expecting to meet, Monsieur du Miroir in one of the same
pattern. He has duplicates of all my waistcoats and cravats, shirt-
bosoms of precisely a similar plait, and an old coat for private
wear, manufactured, I suspect, by a Chinese tailor, in exact
imitation of a beloved old coat of mine, with a facsimile, stitch by
stitch, of a patch upon the elbow. In truth, the singular and
minute coincidences that occur, both in the accidents of the passing
day and the serious events of our lives, remind me of those doubtful
legends of lovers, or twin children, twins of fate, who have lived,
enjoyed, suffered, and died in unison, each faithfully repeating the
last tremor of the other's breath, though separated by vast tracts
of sea and land. Strange to say, my incommodities belong equally to
my companion, though the burden is nowise alleviated by his
participation. The other morning, after a night of torment from the
toothache, I met Monsieur du Miroir with such a swollen anguish in
his cheek that my own pangs were redoubled, as were also his, if I
might judge by a fresh contortion of his visage. All the
inequalities of my spirits are communicated to him, causing the
unfortunate Monsieur du Miroir to mope and scowl through a whole