ue head, genuine Italian face, strong-marked features,
and long snow-white beard. On being introduced to Father Cyrillus he
asked him innumerable questions about the secrets of monastic life,
especially about those things of which "we profane have only dim
guesses, no clear conceptions." They got into a poetic and exalted
frame of mind, and rose just as it was getting dusk to inspect the
chapel and crypt, and other objects of interest. In the crypt Hoffmann
was powerfully agitated: he reverently doffed his hat, his wine-heated
face became terribly pale, and he visibly showed that he was held in
the thraldom of supernatural awe. When Father Cyrillus went on to point
out the spot where his own mortal remains should rest, and to indulge
in certain pious exhortations to them (Hoffmann and Kunz) to shed a
tear upon his grave if they should come there again in after years,
Hoffmann lost control of himself; he stood like a marble pillar, his
face and eyes set, his hair standing on end, unable to utter a
word.[18] Then making a gesture upwards he hurried out of the crypt
with hasty uncertain steps. The impressions made upon him by this
visit, and the observations he gathered, he employed in the _Elixiere
des Teufels_ and _Kater Murr_ (pt. II.), the meeting between
_Kapellmeister_ Kreisler and Father Hilarius, as well as the
description of the monastery and its situation in the latter, being
invested with a fine poetic flavour.

The scene in the crypt points to another side of Hoffmann's character,
or rather personality, which hitherto has not been alluded to. In fact,
it does not seem, as far as can be gathered from the biographical
sources, that it began to be strongly developed until the Bamberg
period. We have seen how that early in life he conceived a decided
antipathy to the prosaic and the commonplace, and his career up to this
point furnishes abundant evidence that he hated with a genuine hatred
to keep in the ruts of custom and conventionality, as if bound to do so
because such was prescribed by custom and conventionality. His
sentiments he never concealed, and his actions harmonised, almost without
exception, strictly with his sentiments; for one of his most striking and
instructive characteristics was the remarkable fearlessness which he
displayed no less in his actual conduct than in his habits of thought.
Affectation was far from him; thorough genuineness was stamped upon all
he did, showing unmistakably that it cam