_The Bold Dragoon_ is
a spirited, riotous nightmare in which the furniture dances to
the music of the bellows played by an uncanny musician in a long
flannel gown and a nightcap. The _Story of the German Student_ is
in a different key. Here Irving strikes a note of real horror.
The student falls in love with an imaginary lady, woven out of
his dreams. He finds her in distress one night in the streets of
Paris, takes her home, only to find her a corpse in the morning.
A police-officer informs him that the lady was guillotined the
day before, and the student discovers the truth of this statement
when he unrolls a bandage and her head falls to the floor. The
young man loses his reason, and is tormented by the belief that
an evil spirit has reanimated a dead body to ensnare him. The
morning after the recital of this gruesome story, the host reads
aloud to his guests a manuscript entrusted to him, together with
a portrait, by a young Italian. This youth, it chances, learnt
painting with a monk, who, as a penance, drew pictures, or
modelled waxen images, representing death and corruption, a
detail which reminds us of what was concealed by the Black Veil
in _Udolpho_. He later falls in love with his model, Bianca, who,
during his absence abroad, marries his friend Filippo.
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