se "bivouaced"
under the stone stairs, trembling with fear and anxiety. Hoffmann,
however, could not bear to hide away, so he slipped out by a back door
and went to join one of his theatrical friends. Looking out of his
window they watched the damage done by the shells, and saw one burst in
the market-place below, crushing a soldier's head, tearing open the
body of a passing citizen, and seriously wounding three other people
not far away. Keller the actor, in his start of apprehension, let his
glass fall out of his hand; "I," says Hoffmann, "drank mine empty and
cried, 'What is life? Not able to bear a little bit of hot iron? Poor
weak human nature! God give me calmness and courage in the midst of
danger! We can get over it all better so.'" Then he returned to the
anxious party under the steps, taking them wine and rum--the latter was
Hoffmann's favourite drink. His presence brought the unfailing good
spirits and humour which hardly ever deserted him, even under the
darkest cloud of adversity. On the 29th he visited the battle-field and
saw its cruel sights and its horrors. But other horrors were in store
for the inhabitants of the city; for the next few weeks Dresden was
besieged, and her citizens suffered from famine and pestilence and all
the other usual terrible concomitants of a siege.

Hoffmann's literary activity through all these weeks of turmoil was
something astonishing. Whilst the thunders of cannon were making "the
ground to tremble and the windows to shake," and the shells were
bursting around him and the sharp crack and dull ping of bullets were
incessantly striking upon his ear, this extraordinary man sat
unconcerned amidst it all, absorbed in literary or musical composition,
either writing his _Goldener Topf_ (or _Der Dichter und der Componist_
or _Der Magnetiseur_) or working out his opera _Undine_, which was
begun in Bamberg in 1812. Even when suffering from the dysentery which
raged in the place, his intellectual activity went on without being
impaired. In a letter to Kunz of date Sept 8th of this year he writes,
"I am, as you will observe, unwearied in cultivating the fine arts, and
if to-morrow or the day after I am not blown into the air by a Prussian
or Russian or Austrian shell, you will find me fat and well-favoured
from art enjoyments of every sort."

It was through Kunz's intervention that the Introduction prefixed to
the _Fantasiestuecke_ was obtained from Jean Paul, and that against
Hoffma